First Sentence

"1. No way, not me! My childhood was very short. It ended soon after my twelfth birthday in early 1952, when I arrived flat on my back at the Royal Brisbane Hospital. Being sick was nothing new to me - I had been in and out of hospitals ever since I was born - only this time they didn't take me to the children's wing. Rules were rules. When you turned twelve you were an adult, and that meant the men's ward for me. What hit me first was the terrible silence. I was used to the sounds of children laughing and crying and calling for their mothers to come and make it all better. Even a room full of sick children has a feeling of life and hope and future, and that funny mixture of happiness and sadness when friends get well enough to go home. Ward 1A had none of that. It had bare walls and faded screens and a sour unfriendly smell. The only sounds I heard were the sick old men groaning and coughing, tossing and turning, afraid to sleep in case they never woke up again. Those who left the place didn't walk out. They were wrapped in a bedsheet and wheeled away on a tin trolley. Ward 1A was the terminal ward, but I didn't know that at the time."