Last year I had the happy experience of going under general anaesthetic and coming out of it again. ‘Won’t be long,’ the orderly said, wheeling me into a dimly lit space resembling a basement, ‘they’re just finishing up on the patient before you.’ Left alone in the sterile gloom, I hauled myself onto my elbows to take note of my surroundings. The room seemed of perfectly square dimensions and covered wall-to-wall with large pale tiles, bare but for a few sinks, trolleys and storage shelves. Concluding that there was nothing interesting enough to justify the exertion of propping myself up, I lay back down again. Then I noticed that, if I strained my neck a bit, I could see two doors with porthole windows to my right, and behind them, the shower-capped heads of surgeons toiling. Later, when the anaesthetist was embarking on the simultaneous tasks of hooking me up and making small talk, I sensed the doors suddenly swing open, and I caught a glimpse of the patient before me, a flash of skin under the bright lights of the operating table. Then the doors swung closed again.

Aside from the vaguely comic aspect of the situation, my feeling of being the first and only person in the queue was comforting—I was a mere matter of business to be attended to in a brisk, workmanlike and presumably competent manner. Yet the small talk, despite its undisguised function to distract, was reassuring too. I’ve long been interested in the workings of the body, and this tension, between recognising the individual and at the same time offering them up to the greater machinery of the system, I find intriguing. Having a body with all its quirks and failings is of course a fundamental part of human experience, and there are vast industries with legions of trained professionals dedicated to its management. So it’s a pity, I think, if not very surprising, that the work of medics is something that is not explored more often in fiction. Thankfully, there is such a thing as a ‘physician writer’—medical practitioners who, miraculously in my opinion, somehow find the time and energy to also engage in creative writing.