Camera Phone. Brooke Biaz

sense of us both moving together. The corridor is packed either side with shops and, just to really make my night, each one of them is headed by a gold promo strip, lit from behind, so it seems like I’m flying through the Milky Way. There’s everything here from 7-Eleven that sells mostly soft toys, to a (quote) “unisex” hairdresser (Quuaint! Sounds like it’s composed by Sonny and Cher), an insurance agent, a florist, of course, and an antique shop (no idea). We take a right at radiology and walk along through the Eye Center, past Dialysis and the Red Cross until we can either take the lift (a choice of seven) to Male II—XI or go straight ahead through Oncology and Immunology. Ras suggests, however, that we take a left and go instead through Accident and Emergency (A&E).

      We seem to be off the main route now: the corridors becoming narrower. I can smell metholated spirits, chlorine, Dettol. Nurses in green, and with masks hung around their necks, are replacing nurses in white and there’s none at all now in pink. There’s a chorus line of cleaners with mops doing a dance number from The Rocky Horror Picture Show (“we take a jump to the left. Then a jump to the ri-i-i-i-ight”), led by Dr Frank N. Furter (aka Tim Curry) chewing an ExtraMint and speaking into his mobile. The corridors are lined both sides with stainless steel trolleys. Someone’s preparing for launch. Flesh Gordon. Lost in Space.

      Staying as steady as possible, I duck out from behind my phone to say: “I don’t think this is the right way, Ras.” But Ras, who is walking ahead now (great over the shoulder shot), only shrugs. His shoulders, narrow and bony, giving the impression of being two CGI arms, cranked up, made of stainless steel, just sharp and hard and pinned there on the pivot of his neck.

      We pass Cardiography, all red lights and thick plastic curtains; CCT, REANIMATION (???). And then the corridor turns abruptly. At this point a whole shit load of zombies from Hell appear in front of us, their arms out in front, whistling the tune from the Bridge Over the River Kwai. When we turn to run the lights flicker and go out. Now, in inky darkness, the ever-present sound of a heartbeat, growing faster . . . okay, not actually, but suggestively. The first thing Ras does when the corridor ends is say:

      “Hey Ciaran, I’m Jack Nicholson in The Shining” and he raises his hand over his head as if it’s an axe and brings it down on my shoulder.

      Wox! We’re at the back of this building, overlooking the chimneys and boiler room, ambulance bay and some sort of office block that bears the coat of arms of the university (that is: Sigourney Weaver rampant on a crest of aliens). Ras is talking about the wonders of Science, the kinds of things that are possible in the scientific world with carefully encouraged transformations of certain types of cells, and the new achievements in genetic engineering and the combination of spores of vascular plants, and the complex molecular structure of lipoproteins.

      I push through the plastic doors which slap behind me, and the waiting room for Emergency opens up in front us.

      It’s a nightmare, naturally. There’s kids playing house in a broom cupboard opposite called The Fun House, a girl (12 maybe) is crying in the front row, the seats being arranged like this place is a Boeing. A guy with a tattoo on his neck (he’s maybe circa 20 years old, hair barbered in a Bavarian crop, eyes like a tortoise, the tattoo looks like the bear in a vice from the album covers of the Super Furry Animals), is holding his left arm across his chest and there’s just no doubt it’s shattered into two trillion places. He licks his fat lips, looks up at the NO SMOKING signs which wall paper the walls. There’s two lushlike nurses bent over trimming the plaster off a kid’s arm. Where there isn’t victims and mucus there’s whole families who look like they come here every day to stock up on quantities of this pure clinical quality borefest.

      I prop beside the Coke machine and compose the scene this way:

      Crying girl, Furries tattoo, plastic falling from boy’s arm, lushlike nurse adjusting her bra (turns out she’s got teeth like a keyboard), gorm-free family of three, mother missing, two little girls eating Cheetos, Registration window . . . and now, closing up on STANDARD CHARGES and ITEMS OF IDENTIFICATION REQUIRED.

      If you, like the rest of the civilized world, have been re-watching ER (except, of course, the episode in which Dr Greene goes AWOL to San Deigo to save his parents, because that is utter dog shit) you’ll know that there are more ways to capture the sheer craziness of hospital environments than jump cuts and endless over the shoulder shots. Lens choice is an option, for one thing. I’m only sorry I don’t have an Innovision or a Cine Photo Tech because then, with a beak as narrow and full-on as that, I could slip between the Coke machine and the payphone and film the whole shebang in a series of angular cutaways. And a man-lift would be nice, because a high shot would really add much needed weight to the sequence which otherwise, to my mind, has the potential to become too static.

      But now the nurse in Registration (she’s got badges on her hat, possibly a Gulf War veteran I figure) is calling out: “Hey, what are you doing there?” Followed by, inevitably, something like: “Do you have permission to do that?”

      Fortunately, the elevator’s opening ahead.

      When we’re in and the doors close, Ras peers down at the guy on the trolley beside us. There’s no elevator noise: just absolute silence. . . . and motion. It’s worse than The Night of the Living Dead. At least Russell Streiner, who plays the brother and also produced the film, moaned. But this trolley jockey, who must be 85 if he’s a day, just stares up at the white cork lift lining and the male nurse with him, no Samuel L. Jackson that’s for sure, is wearing headphones and listening to what appears to be the new Celine Dion album.

      “Not feeling too well?” I say to the old guy, but he just goes on staring at the lift ceiling.

      “Fine,” I think. “Have it your way.”

      Instead of making dialogue in which I’m likely to be the only participant, I point to Ras and motion for him to move in close to the guy. I realize suddenly (and, frankly, I’m surprised) that this is the first time I’ve directly directed one of the actors in my film and, as if I’ve just put my finger in the wall socket and something absolutely extraterrestrial has come down the wire to me, I recognize that this might have been a mistake.

      “Yes,” I say, “Ras. Yes. Good. Now shake the guy’s hand.”

      The guy’s hand is buried under a hospital blanket and a sheet tucked in regulation (which no doubt is the handiwork of Tonto here in the green), but I tell Ras not to let that stop him. For a moment, however, it seems like he will not take direction—staring down at the guy with a half-grimace, lip-curling look.

      “Ciaran . . .” he starts, questioningly.