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We met in strange circumstances. In fact we never met. We were merely thrown together by a throw of the dice, by the invisible hand of chance, to share briefly our common ground.My fourth day at St Mary's. The initial shock of being in a hospital was over. My leg, well stitched up, was in plaster till the knee. Now I could sit up in a chair. I could even walk a few steps on crutches with the help of Immelda, my beautiful Philippino trainee nurse. Almost everybody in the all-male ward was friendly. There was an odd exception, though – four beds from mine on the opposite side. He had a few toes and fingers severed in a road accident.
He cried when he talked and said how everything was ‘wong, wong, wong'. No one minded what he said. We all felt for each other – blacks, browns and whites united by a ‘wong' throw of that dice. Every morning, we woke up to find one or two new arrivals, mummy-like figures in brilliant white bandages who groaned or slept long hours under sedation. Our ward seemed like a Red Cross encampment in a theatre of war which was sending forth a truculently regular supply of casualties. It was only the London roads!
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