#medical

I slammed the door shut and brushed the snot off my nose and the tears out of my eyes, then kicked my trainers off. They went sprawling over the door mattress and across the hallway floor. All of that for some stupid pills! My life these days revolved around my illness. I had a chronic seasonal allergy which lead to me snorting and sneezing for hours. Two weeks ago it was so bad that I stopped going to work because my condition became intolerable. My sinus thickened and my eyes were constantly…

Paramedics are incredibly superstitious. It’s surprising how much people will argue with me about this simple fact. “Oh, definitely not. They’re too reasonable, too smart, too calm in a crisis to engage with something as irrational as superstitions.”

My wife has been buried in the old graveyard at Killevy, under Slieve Gullion, since the 9th of October 2025.

The following are notes I wrote on my phone during my night shifts in December 2025, mostly on my breaks, sometimes in the toilets, once lying on the floor of a linen cupboard. I've fixed the spelling and nothing else. I'm posting them because the Trust's investigation has closed, and it says what it says, and this says what happened. — Clare

the first time you crossed paths, they were sitting alone at a bus stop, chewing the inside of their cheek as if trying to swallow themself from the inside out. shoelaces untied, coat a size too big, and had a look of something unfinished. you saw it in the way they held their shoulders; rounded, caving in, and in the way they stared past things instead of directly at them. the thought occurred to you that some people live like they’re already ghosts. you watched as they fumbled with a bag of…

“How the hell am I supposed to memorize all of this?” I texted my girlfriend. Century-old floorboards creaked beneath me as I paced back and forth nervously. “It’s gonna be fine,” she responded. “You got this.”

From the moment I closed my eyes to the accident I had gotten myself into, I knew that it would never be the same ever again. Never would I have guessed though, that I would survive pretty much unharmed. Well... that's still a bit of an understatement. My arms and legs work the way they're supposed to. But my mind... not so much anymore. I've started to see things. The world and the people have changed since the moment I woke up. It's almost as if I've entered another world entirely.