I woke up, cold, in an empty hospital ward. Detaching each needle and tube carefully, I slid off the trolley and stood back up on my filthy, bare feet and started walking. No one was there and the silence clung around me like cotton wool to a once-bleeding finger. The doors and windows were locked and felt as solid as kilometer-thick stone. Hitting them made no sound. Everything was impenetrable, especially the silence and near-darkness of the rooms and corridors. I kept wandering the empty building, gripping the white linen sheet I was wrapped in tightly as if the cave-like, sterile ward and corridors, silence and darkness was not enough to hermetically seal myself away. I imagined drawing the darkness and silence closer, forming even more dense layers like a cocoon of absences.

You might see me. You might think I am in Waitrose choosing tomatoes. You might get the impression that I am at work, sat at my desk, typing. But I am not, I am in the empty hospital. The tubes and needles lie on the cold zinc trolley, glistening, waiting.