nurse on the plastics ward

Once the operation was complete the trolley was wheeled to the recovery bay. I had one job to do. Watch the blood transfusion, check that it continued to replenish this body for the next three hours.

This body. This child of eighteen months and six days. A boy who had been too close, too noisy, too easy to hurt the week before.

His legs were wrapped in old fashioned crepe bandage. Bulky sleeves protecting the donor sites for the skin grafts. Chest, face and scalp covered with special gauze stained pinks and deep yellow.

Goose bumps and bruises filled gaps in the story of lighter fluid ignited by a man named Dad.

Prepared I began the task. Nursery rhymes and simple songs delivered by a body reliving an inadequacy of sunburn on skin.