My Mother; the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TH

October.

Black clouds. A gale force wind. Crows and magpies on the wing.

Down on the the land below, the ex-wife and I, trudged through the muddy car park. The hems of our jeans caked in mud. Mud like the Somme, a thick unyielding sod. What I would have given for a pair of wings. We went on, and on, up the incline, passed an old guy pushing a woman in a wheel-chair. I said 'do you want a hand?' The reply was curt and quick, 'no, we're okay mate.' I raised an eye brow and thought, 'too proud.'

We arrived at the top of the hill with our lungs near empty. We stood, and then we bowed; the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TH, where two stone lions guarded the entrance. I  pushed hard on old heavy doors. They resisted and refused to open and I took heart from that, as though it were some kind of an omen. I was about to turn heel and run, when a 'white coat'  appeared and opened the doors; 'Hello, it's this way sir.'

Immediately, I sensed tension, apprehension and desperation. This was the stuff of acute medicine. This was not a general hospital, this was not broken bones and appendectomy, this was the end of the line; the place where the ghosts hung out and where, the line, between the kill and the cure, was a fine one.
I scrutinized the map and the colour zones, just like London's Underground. Streams of bodies everywhere, bound for the stations of oncology, neurosurgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and my destination; imagery.