Oscar et la dame rose résumé!
As a child I spent a lot of time in hospitals.
La dame en rose
Not that I was often ill, but I used to accompany my father who worked as a physiotherapist in pediatric hospitals, homes for patients with cerebral palsy, and centres for the deaf and dumb. My instinct on those first visits was fear: fear of children who were different, fear of the illness that forced them to keep to their impersonal rooms.
'Is it catching?' I asked.
'I wouldn't bring you if you were at risk,' my father answered.
Though barely convinced, I got to know the boys and girls, and over the weeks, they became my friends.
The education I received, as I held my father's hand, was an odd one. I grew up in a world where normality was not the norm, where illness was taken for granted and good health was unusual, a world where some patients disappeared, not because they had gone home but because their illness had carried them off.
Death for me quickly became familiar, a neighbour, a figure close at hand that prowled in our mids