They wheeled him in, the stretcher familiar stainless steel, the sheet tight under him. Raving. Brought from the bus station on his way north. Turned out it was appendicitis. Later, we talk. No family, but a grandfather told him to be quiet and gave him other advice. This is the first place in a long time he has felt at home. People to look after him; people who don’t pay as much attention to who he is as to how his drain is doing; people who live in the present, his present, no strings attached.

In Journal of Emergency Medicine 2002; 22(3); 321.