Many of lifes extreme human moments, good and bad, take place in hospitals but how do we really feel about them? Acclaimed Australian novelist Tim Winton explores his own complicated attitude to an institution that has loomed large in his lifeIn 1995, veteran folk singer Loudon Wainwright III released a typically mordant song in which he catalogued the births, breakdowns, deaths and near misses of friends and family. Somehow all the health campuses of memory coalesce as a single monolithic entity, a site of inescapable mortality. That hospital, Wainwright senses, will never be done with him; it will always be there, waiting.Hospital. The word itself carries historical notions of shelter, respite and hospitality. The modern institution remains a refuge, a place of deliverance. Its a bulwark against chaos. Anyone whos ever needed a hospital in a hurry knows the other-worldly sanctuary it promises. In the Greek islands 30 years ago I once sat in a small boat holding my infant sons scalp together with my thumbs as we beat into a gale towards the prospect of harbour and hospital. Although the clinic we were trying so desperately to reach was a seedy little affair Id previously avoided, during that rocky passage it became in my mind a citadel of hygiene and expertise. In extremis, we yearn for that hospital, and yet at any other time, if youre anything like me, the very word brims with dread. Like the ageing Canadian strummer, I have a lifelong preoccupation with that hospital, an aversion I refuse to call a phobia.A pale and wizened creature was carried into our house If I squinted a little he looked a bit like my dadI imagined limbs plastered into gothic contortions, bandaged heads in which black mouths gaped and pulsed like anemonesSuffering is supposed to be ennobling but being in hospital could make even a saint cruel and peevish Continue reading...
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