The weather forecast was rain, torrential, all day, so I took my anorak. In the hospital car park it was spitting, nothing much, so I left it in the car.
My appointment was scheduled for 1.30. Before my name was called, I had time to browse the waiting-room bookshelf (paperbacks 50p, hardbacks £1). There, in the red livery of the Wordsworth Military Library, was Rorke’s Drift: A Victorian Epic by Michael Glover. I bore it back to my high-backed chair and started to read. When a nurse came in and called my name, I had to come all the way back from South Africa in 1879 to answer it.
This appointment was to receive the results of a scan. I was shown to an examination room and a minute later in she sailed, my lovely oncologist. As I’d guessed — the appointment had been hastily brought forward — this time I hadn’t got away with it.
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