H O S P I T AL . S T A F F . & . P A T I E N T S
I think it might be useful if I told you a little something about each of the
characters in Hospital.
So, in alphabetical
Ahmed
Patient in Children's Cancer Ward.
Shatha Al-Nuaimi
Patient. Muslim woman.
WPC Melanie Angel
Works with PC Peter Dixon (see below).
Io Aoki
A&E patient. Japanese girl. Close friend of Ai Ooki.
Fritzgerald Auxilaire
Porter. Haitian. Best friend of Luckson StJust. We like them both, equally.
Magnus 'Spanner' Avenir
Sidekick of Colm 'Case' McNaught (see below). They are here to get mashed.
Janvier Baptiste
Porter. Haitian. Cameo role. Favourite film: Scarface. Favourite food: Kentucky
Fried Chicken. Favourite actress: Jamie Lee Curtis
Dickie Bedford
Patient. Likes a good steak and kidney pudding. Not pie. Pudding.
Akiko Beep
Midwife. Japanese. Teenage. Fuschia hair. Spiky.
Carl-Henry Bien-Aimé
Porter. Haitian.
Bill 'Zapper' Billson
Paramedic. Works closely with Hank 'Cowboy' Smith. Was driving the ambulance
which ran over Sir Reginald Saint-Hellier's wife.
Nurse Ginger Bland
Works on Pink Elephant Ward. Extremely thin. The last time Ginger saw her father,
he was giving the thumbs-up sign through the back window of a pulling-away London
double-decker bus. At the time, she was horribly embarrassed, mostly because
her two best friends - Jeanine and Claire - had seen it as well. They were all
twelve. It was 1981. No-one did the thumbs-up sign any more. In later years,
Ginger has come to realise how wonderful it was to have such a positive final
image of her father's departure. As if he were wishing her well for the rest
of her life. Eternally smiling. Eternally optimistic. Others, she knows from
her work, aren't anywhere near so lucky. The things their loved ones said. They
would have regretted it later, if they'd had a later.
Sukhveer Blenkinsop
Geriatric Patient. 62. Ex-postman. Extremely thin. Almost see-through.
Marsh Blunt
Patient. Smelly in the extreme. Can't help it.
Zeke Bogart
Patient. 37. Luxatio erecta. (Much less exciting than it sounds.) Hispanic and
no looker.
Simon Bolland
Did he jump or was he pushed? Look very closely.
Duncan Bowis
Chief Executive of the Hospital. Only seen briefly and in flashback. [There
are very few flashbacks in the book.]
The Boy
Patient.
Dr F.U. Bundy
Apocryphal. Slangy.
Othniel Calixte
Porter. Haitiian. A truly heroic figure.
Caroline
Patient in the Children's Cancer Ward. Weak and getting weaker. Secretly obsessed
with Leisl from The Sound of Music. Wants to be her. Perhaps because the idea
of being sixteen going on seventeen seems so unattainable.
Nurse Martha Castle
Nurse. A Christian. Has just come back from holiday in Corsica where her a white
shark came close enough to whack her with its tail. But no-one believes her
when she tells them. And now she's starting to doubt herself.
Lou Champion
Patient. Smoker. Followed by his faithful oxygen tank, as he sneaks out to have
a cigarette with his fag-buddy Titch Lopez (see below). Lou was once a welterweight
boxer.
The Hospital Chaplain
Lead us not into temptation.
Chemo
Patient in the Children's Cancer Ward. Practically runs the place. Has a secret
stash of chocolate but keeps puking it. I like him. I really like him.
Ogden Chomsky-ffountayne
Patient. Tympanic membrane rupture. Tango'd?
Cropper
Chief Security Guard. Hard bastard. Bastard.
Tanya Cropper
Patient. Best friend of Charmayne White (see below). Daughter of Cropper (see
above). Has certainly got a mouth on her. Sovs on her digits.
Cutmore
Security Guard. Scalextrix addict, despite the developments in video-gaming
technology.
Janet Dammers
Oncology patient. 71. Refers to Porters as 'nigger boys'. Dying.
Sister Agnes Day
Works in A&E Reception. Dealing with whatever comes through the door. Has
a glass eye.
Cyrille Delira
Porter. Haitiian. You know the deal by now. Likes to read and re-read novels
by Arthur Hailey, such as Hotel, Airport, Wheels and Strong Medicine. Not to
be confused with Alex Haley, author of Roots.
Nurse Angela Dixon
Ex-wife of PC Peter Dixon. Their marriage fell apart when she found out he was
trying to rescue a young prostitute. Bitter?
PC Peter Dixon
Former husband of Nurse Angela Dixon (see above).
[There are two names in Hospital that are there because they were bid for, at
charity auction. Peter Dixon is one of them. The other is Melanie Angel (see
above).]
J. Guthrie Down
Loses it completely.
Patrice Duchamps
A patient in the Burns Unit. Tried to rescue his wife from a chip-pan fire.
She was a typical Pisces.
A.I. Dunk
Died 1916. Shrapnel wound followed by pneumonia.
[Name taken from the War Memorial in Rye, where I finished the last draft of
Hospital.]
Jenny Ebb
Has just had a baby girl. A natural birth. Is allergic to chocolate.
Pierre Estime
Porter. Haitiian. As if you hadn't guessed already.
Excellent Excellent
Porter. Haitiian. Does not have a scene with Mohammed Mohammed, but there's
a missed opportunity for you.
Johannes Fast
Saw it coming. Nobody can say he didn't.
Sarah Felt
Anaesthesiologist. Seen by Nurse Gemma Swallow as her main rival for the affections
of a certain handsome surgeon (see below).
Iqbal Fermier
Trainee surgeon. Idolizes John Steel (see below).
Nurse Fist
Trauma nurse. Quite young. Not much character.
Nikki Froth
Mr Froth's granddaughter. Prostitute and drug-user. Turned out, if you can call
it that, by Spanner and Case.
Mr Froth
Nikki Froth's grandfather. He's not in a very good state, I'm afraid.
Raymond Gill
Like an eighteenth-century Englishman. Corpulent.
Holly Gonne
Spunky, if you're still allowed to say that.
Bunty Hardwick
Radiologist. What a name Bunty is! How could you possibly inflict it upon a
child? Apart from nailing them solidly into the wifflier parts of posh, it practically
guarantees that no-one is ever going to take them seriously, ever. Unless what
they have to say is, 'It's a subarachnoid haemorrhage, definitely.'
Nurse Hobsbawm
Yes, it would definitely take too long to explain.
Herbert Hoof
Patient. 98 or 99. They didn't keep very good records in his village. In for
a host of age-related illnesses. Fought in the First World War and remembers
it far more clearly than yesterday; still wakes up screaming with nightmares
of gas attacks; lovely placid old gentleman, in-between times; lost hearing
in left ear when a shell went off that side of him, and has had a loud ringing
like a wind-up alarm clock going off ever since, poor fellow; if only they were
all like Herbert.
Honey Hopeful
Midwife. 37. Jamaican. Kind but firm. Her favourite writer is Melville, but
she also likes Conrad - particularly his sea stories.
Celia Iden
Patient on Pink Elephant ward. Appendectomy. Easily horrifiable.
Lady Grace Jansen
Patient. Combative. Outspoken. Well-preserved. Soft silver-haired and a devotee
of yoga. Her grandfather was inclined to fascism. [Originally, her ailment was
to be laryngotracheobronchitis. But during the copy-editing, I was informed
that this was a condition only suffered by children. So I lost the chance to
use what is a lovely word for a horrible thing. I'll resurrect it here, for
a moment.]
Nurse Audrey Keith
Has now left the building.
Matron Kettle
The kindest Matron in Hospital. When handing over to another nurse, gives them
a detailed rundown of all the patients on the ward. She thinks of all of them
tenderly, even the difficult.
Mr Kissa
Manager. In charge of the porters. A detested man. Four pens in the top pocket
of his neatly pressed shirt. His most notorious hour came during the Christmas
party, at which he 'let his hair down' and danced to a disco megamix. The porters
have never forgotten this, and are known to imitate it at certain moments. I
won't, at this point, reveal which moments.
Suzi Lerph
Nurse. Self-harmer.
Dr Norman LeStrange
Very thin. Takes no nonsense from anyone. Has devoted most of his life, outside
work, to organizing and participating in battle re-enactments. His greatest
ambition is, one day, to re-do Gallipoli.
Akliku Lij
Burns Patient. 33. Attacked at a wedding. Vodka poured over him and cigarettes
flicked at his face; it was half a joke, half because he was black and had danced
with one of the groom's daughters from a previous marriage.
Nurse Linda Loos
Oncology Nurse. Linda? Oh, God. Don't get me started. I mean, Linda's just Linda,
isn't she? A total bitch - really. I'm not like this about most people, but
there's something about her that really gets my back up. She goes around so
high and mighty all the time, like she's something special. But just take a
look at her nails. She's a terrible biter. They bleed all the time. Completely
neurotic, Linda. And goes straight to the loo, right after lunch - doesn't keep
it down ten minutes. And that's after eating salad or just a fruit salad. Her
teeth are just rotting away. If she doesn't do something about it, she'll end
up looking even more of an old crone than she does now… Well, maybe I'm
being a little unfair. She used to be quite pretty, a year or two ago. But she's
so haggard these days, and her tits have shrunk away to granny bags because
of all the dieting. The doctors don't seem to mind, though. Oh, yes. Why, only
yesterday…
Nessa Long
Patient. 45. Diabetes. A believer, from the start.
Titch Lopez
Patient. 55. Light spots on lung x-ray to be surgically investigated. Dedicated
smoker. Very tall. Don't fancy his chances much.
Sukie Lu
Patient on Pink Elephant Ward - which is for young girls, not alcoholics. Sukie
has jaundice, and looks like someone has covered her, head to toe, in yellow
fluorescent marker pen.
Jock McKnock
Slaughterhouseman. What the hell is he doing here?Colm 'Case' McNaught
'Case' is short for 'Headcase' which, in turn, is short for 'Total Fucking Headcase'.
Henderson MacVanish
Chief Obstetrical Consultant. Scottish. Fingers in many pies. Diagnosed with
testicular cancer a while ago, but believes he has been successfully treated.
Has worked at Hospital for what seems like an eternity.
The Man
Of mystery.
Mohammed Mohammed
Burns Unit Patient. Self-immolator
Molesworth
Pathology Department worker. 32. Short-sighted. Used to buy all his electrical
equipment at Tandy near Midford bus station. This is only tangentially relevant.
But I thought you'd like to know
Fergus Moore
Hospital worker. Known to all as 'the Disposal Man'. In charge of the incinerator.
A chess player and reader of good books, particularly by Dostoyevsky. Works
in the lowest sub-basement level of Hospital
Helen Mugabe
Social worker. Wears brightly coloured African prints, made in Scandinavian
countries. Likes flavoured coffees, romantic comedies and bunjee jumping - but
you wouldn't know it to look at her. Has a very good way with adolescents, which
comes in handy when she's dealing with Nikki Froth. (See above.)
Ludger Myrthil
Porter. Not the best friend of Fritzgerald Auxilaire or Luckson StJust.
Jill Name
Recently deceased. American. A distant cousin of Billy Name, who used to work
in Andy Warhol's factory, and was responsible for painting it silver. Name was
not Jill's original name. She changed it from Linich, which was Billy Name's
original name. Jill was not her original name, either. That was Jane.
Ai Ooki
A&E patient. Japanese girl. Close friend of Io Aoki. (See above.)
Omifunke Osunkunle
Patient. A Nigerian woman. She has probably the best name in the book. Unfortunately,
she only appears once, and even then fleetingly.
Olu
Another patient in the Children's Cancer Ward. It's not all doom and gloom,
though. Wait and see.
Orlando
Patient in the Children's Cancer Ward. Not one of the biggest characters there.
A battler, no doubt. His mother was a big Virginia Woolf fan - and disappointed
not to have had a daughter.
Bob Packard
A patient in the Burns Unit. Fireman. Has fallen through the glass roof of a
skylight and into a blazing school kitchen. He is dressed head to foot in bandages.
A true hero. Let nothing be said against him.
Zandra Pandit
Midwife. What more is there to say? She's quite nice, I suppose. Not the bravest
person in the world, but not the most fearful, either. A certain unconscious
elegance to her movements. Takes salsa classes, which may explain it. Very fond
of macaroons.
Patricia Parish
Senior member of Trauma Team. Works very closely with Sir Reginald Saint-Hellier,
often late into the night.
Owyn Parry
A druggie. Undeniably Welsh.
Yogi Patel
A trauma patient. Gunshot wounds. On his left hand, he has lost all the fingers
except the index; his right knee has been irreparably shattered and one shot
has passed clean through his cheek. This is a very lucky young man. Oh, best
friend of Marcus Sprint.
Marit Person
Recently deceased by suicide; hanging. Put on her best little black dress and
Billie Holiday's 'Gloomy Sunday'. Swedish. Single.
Margaret Pfister
A patient. Mastectomy. Never had children, and feels it terribly. Austrian.
Vaughan Piccolo
An anaesthetist. Murky past. What a strange name.
Myrtle Plymouth
A geriatric patient. Was once quite flighty. Not as in 'Veronica' by Paul McCartney
and Elvis Costello.
Pollard
A Security Guard. Very loyal to the Head Security Guard, Cropper. (See above.)
Nasty.
Asif Prakash
Ginger haired. There is an explanation.
Mr Proudfoot
A foot has no dignity, listen to me. What kind of knowledge is it, the knowledge
gained by a foot? I'll tell you. It is a dark and vegetable knowledge. Once
upon a time, before the invention of shoes, we feet knew everything - dryness
as well as moistness. Yes, we risked stones and cuts and divots, but we also
loyally served and informed the brain upstairs. As we walked, the brain upstairs
showered the light of its gratitude upon us. Now, we are kept stupid - all our
potentialities are still here, within us. Listen, even now I can speak English
and not sound ridiculous like a speaking foot. My name is Proudfoot; Proudfoot
is my name. But I am just one foot on its own, a solo non-performer, and I need
to be in-tandem. You and I, my friend, together we could strike out for the
horizon. I know at first it would be embarrassing for you, being seen by all
the young girls escorting or rather being teamed up with a big, veiny, hairy
foot. After a while, though, once we were a little closer to the horizon and
a little further away from this place - by then you'd have got used to life
with me. As feet go, I'm not so smelly. I can shut up - you might not believe
that from me now, but I know what a boy's thoughts are often of special private
boy-things. I will leave you silence for thinking-time; you will allow me to
go off and visit ladies of the night. No questions will be asked, either way.
It will be good.
Yi Qu
A geriatric patient. Sixty-six years old. Chinese and doesn't speak a word of
English apart from thank you (fang-queue); has emphysema from lifelong smoking
of cheap cigarettes; joins the ward poker game, if it's going; wins. A survivor.
Vanessa Queen
A patient. MRSA. Assertive. Religious.
Minnie Raus
Patient. Maternity Ward. Has just given birth to a lovely baby girl with bright
blue eyes.
Duncan Roodrest
Surgeon. Arrogant, as most of them are. Including John Steel. (See below.) Good
at re-arranging things.
The Rubber Nurse
Impossibly long-limbed. A sexy and bizarre mystery. Expert in the diagnosis
and treatment of 'naughtiness'. I leave her up to your imagination.
Nurse Digby Rutter
Trauma nurse. A little workshy.
Sir Reginald Saint-Hellier
Consultant in Charge of Intensive Therapy. An inspirational leader to the Trauma
Team, of which Gemma Swallow is the newest member. (See below.) Lost his wife
tragically when she was run over by an ambulance driven by Bill 'Zapper' Billson.
(See above.) Sir Reginald is a major character, important throughout the novel.
Luckson StJust
Porter. Haitiian. Venerable. A perfect Afro of white hair. Best friends with
fellow porter Fritzgerald Auxilaire. We like them a lot.
Shears
Security Guard. Minor git.
Trilochan Singh
A&E patient. Sikh. Severed thumb. His first name, rather wonderfully, means
'Having three eyes, one of higher knowledge'.
Dexter von Sinistre
Head Pathologist. Tall, bald, creepy. A bit like Richard O'Brien's character,
Cosmo McKinley, on the poster for Shock Treatment - a film I have never seen.
Oh, how I enjoyed writing Dexter.
Hank 'Cowboy' Smith
Helicopter pilot. Responsible for the chukka-chukka-chukka-chukka. Going off
shift soon. Has a night in meticulously planned. Big John Wayne fan. Also big-leggy
himself.
Kitty Somerled
A patient. Retired midwife. Cataracts. Kindly but a waspish tongue.
The Spaceman
A geriatric patient. In his fifties. Diabetes; hypertension; will only give
his name as 'the Spaceman' and insists he is 'not of this planet', but will
not tell us which planet he is of; refuses all 'earth-treatments' and says it's
only a matter of time before the mothership returns to take him back to his
home planet
Nurse Nina Spinks
Ditsy.
Marcus Sprint
Recently deceased of gunshot wounds. Best friend of Yogi Patel. (See above.)
John Steel
A certain handsome surgeon. (See below.) Could he be secretly in love with a
certain attractive female anaesthetist? (See above.)
Betty Steppingford
A geriatric patient. Eighty-two years old. Mother of three, grandmother of six,
waitress and then carer for her elderly mother and disabled brother. Lost to
Alzheimers.
Billy Stickers
A geriatric patient. Sixty-nine years old, cancer of the just about everything;
minor British film star of the 1950s, comedies mainly.
Arnost Svoboda
A patient in the Burns Unit. Suffered third-degree burns in a house fire started
by his daughter's boyfriend's crack-pipe. It's only a matter of time. Czech,
as his name would suggest. Arnots meaning 'battle to the death' and Svoboda
meaning 'a free man'. Give me liberty or give me death.
Nurse Gemma Swallow
And so we come to our heroine. Trauma nurse. Delicately freckled skin, strawberry
blonde bob.Winningly compassionate. Could she be carrying a torch for a certain
handsome surgeon? (See above.)
Thomas
A patient in the Children's Cancer Ward. Eight years-old. Fifty-fifty chance
of surviving, after chemotherapy. Butt of Chemo Boy's jokes. (See above.)
Dirk Trent
A patient. Necrotising fasciitis. Retired television executive. Heyday in the
mid-1970s. Could quite easily have stepped out of a J.G.Ballard novel. High-Rise,
for example.
Joseph Trick
A patient. Pneumonia. Has a deep fascination with the edges of things - particularly
the sharp edges.
Eugene Uno
Recently deceased of as yet unknown causes.
Harold Upward
Eighty-two years old, cancer of the liver, moss-green eyes, thick white hair,
with a prostate that's been shot to billy-o; Naval man, he'll tell you, not
a dirty squaddie; used to getting up, as he puts it, au crack sparrowfart; wants
more than anything to go home - just to be at home to die; says, 'If I can make
trips to the wazzer by myself, use the old bumpf to clean up, I'll be fine on
my ownsome, won't I?'; likes very much to dress in women's clothes, and doesn't
care who knows it; 'No-one's going to tell me what's sissy or not. I did nine
years at sea with the buggers - rum, bum and tiddly-um-pum-pum - if I'd wanted
it, I'd have got it, I can tell you. Plenty of it.'
The Virgin
Would take too long to explain. [22.10.06 I'm just back from a week at The Hurst,
playwright John Osborne's old house. His two-volume autobiography was published
under the title, 'Never Apologise, Never Explain', which seems to be the wrong
way round ('Explain' then 'Apologise'), but anyhow. It's a very attractive maxim.
And maybe one that should be followed. But I'm always tempted to say something
rather than nothing about what I've written. Tempted, for example, by the fact
I've been asked a question, and it's impolite not to answer. The other role
model for opacity is Beckett, who insisted 'No symbols where none intended'.
Let's just say, as far as explanation goes, I aspire to shutting up completely.]
Geoff Vowles
Died 1974. Abdominal aortic aneurysm. Bit lippy.
Wim van der Vries
Does not appear.
James and Mary Walker
Arrive in the hospital late in the evening. Mary is in labour with twins, a
boy and a girl. James is doing his best to assist her. They are a nice middle-class
couple, and they have no idea whatsoever what's about to happen to them.
Nurse Fanny Wall
Trauma nurse. Loses her head easily. Minor character. Relax.
Horatia Spugg-Warfield
Geriatric patient. Rheumatoid arthritis. Has eaten cod and chips.
Holgate Washburn
Surgical patient. Transexual. Has just had a bilateral orchidectomy. A high
and piping voice, even before.
Charmayne White
A&E patient. Best friend of Tanya Cropper, the daughter of Cropper, the
Chief Security Guard. Drink-related injury. (She was stabbed with a broken-off
car aerial whilst fighting behind the Hare and Foxes pub.)
Andy Woods
A patient in the Burns Unit. He has been caught in a chemical fire on the motorway.
A lorry overturned, spilling a napalm-like substance, on its way to make children's
plastic toys. This ignited, all around Andy's car.
[Note: None of the characters in Hospital has a surname beginning with X,Y or Z.]