There is an old woman lying in the bed, her regular breathing lifts the eiderdown from the delicate body, and lowers it once again around her sleeping form. Her eyes are closed, and she breathes heavily and murmurs in her sleep. Little tics of pain flicker across her forehead; she sighs in her sleep, and a small hand twitches beneath the counterpane. The woman is ill; she ‘presents with breast, kidney and bony metastases.’* Death, when it comes will be a relief. Now, she lives in a twilight zone; pill-taking, bed-changing, morphine induced hypnotic states, which render loved ones blurred and forgettable, after time, and soothe the dreamer into a painless void.

A man enters the room. He too is old, and although tall, is now somewhat bent and thin with age. Liver spots lurk beneath the surprisingly thick white hair; useless loops of flesh hang from once brawny arms, atrophied into sinewy twigs. A smug expression alights on his face as he surveys the sleeper; she, lost in her drugged and dreamy world, smiles in her sleep, then moans at the little pain that shoots across her brow. The man bends down to the sleeping woman, gently taking her by the shoulder as he does so. he shakes her from her sleep;

“Joan, Joan.”

She stirs, and opens her eyes a little.

“What?…Oh yes Ian?”

“Joan… I just thought i’d tell you. I got the money back for your new glasses. You won’t really be needing them now, will you?”