In the main building, the sixth floor was full of strolling people with puffy crimson cheeks, bandaged noses, and with sheets wrapped around their waists like skirts. I walked to the receptionist past a hunched group of patients waiting to have their bandages changed. Doors into wards were open; the rooms resembled the waiting rooms of a railway station, and I looked in at random. At an empty receptionist’s desk in the middle of the floor, a phone rang and a table lamp burnt hotly. I bent across the counter, looked for a sheet of paper with the appointments for the wards, and found the one I needed.
I walked between the beds in the ward, trying not to look at the rows of ancient Adam’s apples with gray fluff on them, the livid faces, the devices for extracting s**t, the slurping jars, the
