The surreal purgatory of A&E

‘This is my father, and his pronoun is he,’ said the builder boyfriend, checking his dad into Accident and Emergency.

‘And how do we address you?’ said the personage at the reception desk. ‘You can address me as they,’ said the builder b, who was happy to go along with the way the hospital wanted to do things, if only to entertain himself during what was obviously going to be a long wait.

His father had fallen on top of a gas canister in their building yard and he was now in so much pain they suspected he had broken his ribs.

So off they went to a London casualty department that turned out to be something called ‘secondary’ in NHS jargon, which meant that if anything was seriously wrong it would require the involvement of a specialist from the ‘primary’ hospital down the road.

But, in any case, the process of becoming embroiled in our wonderful system could only be started by engaging with the ultra-woke check-in desk.