Four weeks + four

Diane says being in hospital is a bit like being on a long flight—trying to find ways to sleep, unable to settle to a book, a magazine, another book, some airline food, a play on the Game Boy, back to the magazine.

Our conversation is interrupted by a commotion in the corridor and we learn the pregnant nurse has just gone into labour. We imagine her in the maternity suite a floor below. We hold our breath like friends, or mothers. That night we tell our visitors: the pregnant nurse had a baby girl.

Morning on the ward

The charge nurse has brought me in a gift. It is a farting gnome that was given to her husband for his 50th birthday. Apparently he is happy to lend it to me. The gnome looks like your normal garden page 109variety, but is made of plastic and has batteries and a recording inside. When someone walks past and breaks the sensor light the recording is triggered. The gnome has a repertoire of about five farting sequences, so someone walking back and forth is likely to get a different sound each time—short, loud, virtuoso.

By the time breakfast is finished and the doctors' rounds begin, the gnome has been placed in a strategic position on my bedside table. By the time the surgeon makes his way into my room, his entourage has doubled and nurses are hovering just outside the door.

How are you today? he says, standing just back from the end of the bed. Fine, I say, smiling.

I hear there's something a little different in here today, he says, moving closer to the bed. The gnome lets rip. He smiles and leaves. One of the other surgeons stays behind briefly to experiment. Very funny, he says.

There is a steady stream of visitors to the cubicle that day, but it's the woman in the bed directly opposite who enjoys the gnome the most. He set me off, she explains to the house surgeons as she and the gnome echo off each other.

Evening on the ward

The nurse says there's a call from my friend Wendy and hands me the ward phone.

Hi Wendy, hey could you ring back on my phone—the ward might need this—

No

Are you okay?

No.

Has something happened? It's Paul. He's dead. Oh Wendy. What happened? When? Was he in an accident? No. He killed himself.

After I get off the phone Diane says, are you alright? I don't know how I am. Paul is Wendy's eldest son. Diane tells me of her sister, who took her own life in her 20s.