The intensive care ward

of a neurological hospital has an eerie calm
Patients are lined up on beds
in neat rows
Most of them hooked
to life-support machines
All of them still
All of them silent
The only sound is that of electronic beeping
and the whisperings of medical staff
It’s bleaker than a Thomas Hardy landscape



From A sudden stroke - and then Mum was gone, The Guardian, 26th January 2013. Punctuation removed. Submitted by Lisa Oliver.