My husband has not had a full-blown stroke.  He has more than likely had a TIA.  He is feeling better.  It’s 9pm.  We’re tired, and ready for home.  But we settle in with everyone else in the uncomfortable rows of chairs.  I have a quiet word with the sister to get someone to clean the blood from the back of a chair that everyone is avoiding and tutting about.

We didn’t think to bring books.  “Read something on your phone,” I suggest.  I’ve got Kindle and Borrowbox on mine, but he never reads on his phone, and he’s scared the words might not all be there.  “Here, try this.”  I hand him my phone.

“The Binturong Problem by Laura Rikono,” he reads.

“Don’t read it out loud,” I say.  “Just read it.”

“Hey, this is pretty good.”

“Well, of course; she’s a brilliant writer.”

“I can read all the words,” he says like a four-year-old with a Ladybird book.  But he’ll be sixty-four in a few weeks’ time.

Paul McCartney made sixty-four seem old, but it isn’t.  My husband is no different than when I met him in his thirties – little greyer perhaps, but with the same sense of joy and fun.  But it’s a difficult age – no longer young, and not particularly old.

There are plenty of elderly people in the waiting room tonight.  I recall a recent telephone consultation with a patient’s son who objected most vociferously that his ninety-year-old father would have to wait in A&E with everyone else and told me I was failing by not ensuring he went straight onto a ward.  I wanted to say that whilst his father may be very special to him, he is not actually special at all, and in general practice, we have no direct access to hospital wards.  Everyone else’s ninety-year-old parents have to wait, so why shouldn’t his?  I didn’t say this, of course.  I was polite and empathetic and said of course his father was vulnerable and deserved the very highest standards of care.  Unfortunately, the highest standards of care in England in 2025 amount to a seven hour wait in an uncomfortable chair.

There’s not much drama tonight.  No teenage drunks lying on the floor flailing their limbs, no handcuffed prisoners, nobody threatening to kill themselves if they aren’t attended to immediately.  Just low-level grumbling that nobody is doing anything.

But what we can’t see from here are the Majors.  We don’t have a clue about the cardiac arrests behind that door over there.  We don’t know about the road traffic accidents or the ruptured aortic aneurysms or the genuine suicide attempts.  And it’s just as well because those things are unthinkable.  Better that we all whinge about how rubbish the NHS is than face up to grim reality.

The monotony is broken by the intermittent excitement of being called to a consulting room only to find it’s for a blood pressure check and not to see a doctor.  We thank them and return to different seats because ours have been taken.  We’ve got a better view of what’s going on from here.  We see the staff emerging from behind closed doors to call patients in for something, and we see patients returning, disappointed, to wait again.  I listen to the names being called and wonder why their parents chose them.  How many people in the world share the common and familiar names?  How amazing are the weird and unfamiliar ones?  There is a fantastic name of a gentleman I guess to be in his eighties.  I can’t repeat it for sake of confidentiality, but his was the best name I’ve heard in ages.  I desperately want it for a character, but it would be unethical to steal it.

People are buying sandwiches from the vending machine for something to do.  There’s a complicated meal-deal thing going on, and I wonder at what point in our evolution did a can of pop and a packet of crisps transform anything into a meal.  A woman sitting near the machine has adopted a supervisory role to ensure nobody is short changed.  The lag between dispensing drink and snack is so long, people think the doctor will call them in before their cheese and onion lands, and some of them give up.  “Hey, come back,” the woman calls.  “You’re missing some of your meal.”

There’s another vending machine on the other side of the waiting room.  Several people, including me, have approached it to see what it’s got, but nobody buys anything.  It vends chargers and power banks for £20 a piece and unbranded earphones for £15.  For those deluded enough to think they might get any sleep tonight, ear plugs and eye masks cost £6 a set and a sorry-looking teddy bear is available for £7.50.  Should you need to blow your nose, a tiny packet of Kleenex will set you back a quid because the NHS can’t afford to hand the tissues round no matter how upset you might be.  At least they don’t charge for toilet paper – yet.

We are finally called to see the doctor.  Despite being close to the end of his very long shift, he gives due attention and treats my husband’s case seriously even though he feels back to normal now.  We still have to wait for the radiologist to report the CT scan, but eventually we’re sent home with an appointment for the TIA clinic in a few days time.

It’s around 6am when we get home.  I’ve been awake for twenty-four hours.  Luckily, it’s my day off, but I can only sleep until half-eleven because I’m being interviewed by a literary magazine at noon.  They want to talk about my first short story which they plan to publish in their forthcoming issue.  The story is about a woman who loses her words after a stroke.

Life imitating art can take a running jump.