Once Upon a Time, Long Ago and Far Away: Part Four – Compliance, Wearing the Uniform of the Patient

Chapter One

The patient is told to take off their clothes and put on a worn, thin, and soft pale blue hospital gown. Death appears and challenges the patient to an egg and spoon race. Death adds the rule that the patient also has to keep the back of their gown together with one hand while holding the egg in the spoon with the other as they run.

Death says it’s just a question of compliance. The hospital gown must be worn. The patient says no I’d rather not. Death says it is not negotiable. We argue that compliance is a complex negotiation rather than two opposing states. Death laughs so hard they forget the competition.

Initially the patient doesn’t put on the gown but later they comply.

Chapter two

The patient has been left alone in a sunny corner of the corridor. They are looking at the light and shade on the hospital gown as it drapes between their legs. They start taking photographs of the folds in the gown on their phone. The patient feels as if they are channeling a renaissance painter who was known to specialise in drapery and think about posting their pictures on Instagram. 

Chapter three:

Death has stopped laughing.

The end.

copyright Fiona Davies