Off grey

Hospitals don't have architects, I think they grow randomly along veins of misery. Even the ubiquetous displays of art by kids meant to cheer things up fail to dampen the corrosive vibe of daily life and death decisions. I turned down a picture-strewn corridor at Addenbrookes, took a stairway to the John Radcliffe and emerged in a hospital gift shop in America somewhere where phantoms in green gowns solve the stranger riddles and rhymes of being human. This particular institution sits in the crushed ruins of a venerable stone-built seat of learning like a grey concrete giant, spilling obese and white into its hinterlands. The walls of its arteries are pale tan, beige, white and the grey of corpses. We ghost past more school art projects, terminated by a healthy eating advertisment sponsored by Subway. A handful of alcohol rub and their irony is cleaned off.  We are ushered into a room where we discuss some corpse grey matter in measured and respectful tones. When we pack up to leave, I look more closely at the display of equipment behind glass along one wall. At the turning point of a forty hour US trip, I'm strangely drawn into their waving tentacles. It's a display of the history of electric shock therapy machines and I can't fathom whether it's a celebration or a warning.