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From the hands of the creature on top of it fluttered scarlet streamers, which glittered wetly in the too-much light. It emitted a ghostly tinkling.
What is going on?
asked Dr. Becket, staring grimly upwards.
    The Staff Nurse said it was his idea, Dr. Becket’s idea. It was one of the art students, said Nurse McKitterick. Who had given up time and materials to cheer the place up in an original way. Dr. Becket had suggested it to the Art-College liaison committee, such a clever idea. . . . Yes, yes, yes, said Dr. Becket, I see. It looks a little dangerous. His tired senses took in the fact that the ward beyond the ladder was criss-crossed with a rainbow of coloured strips of plastic, and strips of Indian-looking cloth spangled with mirror-glass. There were also brass bells and clusters of those eye-shaped beads that ward off the Evil Eye. They did lighten the darkness of the upper vaulting. They also emphasised it.
    His patient, whose name, Yasmin Muller, was of course written on the end of her bed, was sobbing quietly. She looked guilty when she opened her swollen eyelids and saw Dr. Becket’s severe young face staring down at her. She said she was sorry, and he said he didn’t see what she had to be sorry about. His fingers were gentle. He said she was rather a mess but it couldn’t be helped and would improve. She asked after her son. Dr. Becket said he was hanging in. He was strong, in so far as anyone born so much too soon could be strong. It is early days, said Dr. Becket, who had concluded that exact truthfulness was almost always the best path to take, though the quantity of truth might vary. We can’t tell yet what will happen, he said gravely, reasonably, sensibly. She saw him in a blur, for the first time really. A wiry man in his early forties, with a close-cut cap of soft dark hair, slightly bloodshot eyes and a white coat. She said, out of her own drugged drowsiness, “You look as though you should get some rest.” And he frowned again, for he did not like personal remarks, and he particularly did not like to appear to be in need of anything.
    On his way back he remembered the ladder, and was about to side-step, when the whole rickety structure began to sway and then toppled. Damian Becket put out a steady hand, directed the thing itself away from the bed it threatened, and staggered back under the full weight of the falling artist, whose head hit his chest, whose skinny ankles were briefly flung over his shoulder. He clutched; his arms were full of light, light female flesh and bone, wound up in the rayon and muslin harem trousers and tunic, embroidered in gold and silver. His nose was in baby-soft, silver-dyed, spun-glass spikes of hair. Lumpy things began to bounce on the floor. Bitten apples, a banana, a bent box of chocolates. The woman in the nearest bed laid claim, loudly, to these last. “
That’s
where my chocolates went, I was looking all over, there was only a few left, I was blaming the cleaners.” The person in Dr. Becket’s arms had quite definitely lost consciousness. Her skin was cold and clammy; her breathing was irregular. There was not, of course, a spare bed to put her on, so he carried her along the ward, and out into the nurses’ area, followed by his entourage. There he laid her carefully across the desk, felt her pulse, flicked up her eyelids. She seemed bloodless and anaemic. Skinny.
    “Just a simple faint,” he said, as she opened her eyes and took him in. “In need of a good meal, I’d say, whatever else.”
    She had a nice little pointed face, rendered grotesque, in his view, by gold studs and rings in pierced lips and nostrils. She was white like milled flour. She sat up and pulled her shapeless garments around her. “I’m so sorry,” she said in a breathy voice. “I’m OK now. I hope nothing got broken.”
    “Mr. Becket saved the situation,” said the Staff Nurse. “Did you slip?”
    “I felt dizzy. I don’t like heights.”
    “What were you doing up there