ABSTRACT
Wednesday lunchtime at the Albion Children’s Hospital. A heavy autumnal sky dulls the out-patient area, where Susan Johnson, her husband Matthew and their six-week-old son Daniel are waiting to see the doctor. An abandoned newspaper on the chair beside Susan carries the headline ‘NHS Rocked by Organ Scandal’. She doesn’t want to read it, but needs something to take her mind off the wait. She chats briefly to the mother of a very noisy toddler who has already had two tantrums in the past half hour and looks set to launch into a third. Somehow this makes things worse. Susan can’t help thinking that the other little boy looks so well, and she’s sure that there’s something seriously wrong with Daniel. Once again, she pulls out his baby book and tries to convince herself that his painfully slow weight gain is just down to his stormy first weeks in hospital. That it will soon pick up.
