Day seven

The nurse comes in. We've got to move you, sorry, someone else needs the single room.

But how will I, what about when I, in a room full of other people?

We have a perfume spray, she says, it'll be okay.

While I'm anxious about privacy, I'm also hungry for a different view—the corridor, the nurses' station—anything. I'm hungry to have sounds connected to people and objects.

They steer my bed into a cubicle with three other women. I'm lucky, I still have a window view. This time I am facing the Belmont hills and beyond them to Porirua, Plimmerton and home.