It was only the desperation spilling from Angela – a softer, less high-handed Angela – that persuaded her. She had wanted to go to bed, to go to sleep, to forget about the whole day and wake in the morning just in time to catch the train home. The room into which Angela has brought her is dim and crowded, Non’s seat is hard and too small, and she is jammed up against a large woman sitting next to her on one side and Angela in the aisle seat on the other. She refuses to be drawn into conversation by Angela. The noise is already at a pitch, every single person must be chattering. It is too much. Today has been one tribulation after another. First, that dreadful ward with those poor men. How could Angela use them in that way as a lesson to Non? Is that how a nurse should behave? And for her to end hating them, or at least hating what they represented, that was wrong, too. Then Seb – her cheeks burn at having mistaken his name so stupidly, he must have thought she was foolish from the start – and his diagnosis; she is still not sure what to think about that.
