Bare to the waist I lie, and curtained off,
waiting for Debra to attend me
(I've read her name badge). I eavesdrop. Uneasily
I hear the chat of the computer buff
who's bug-hunting beyond the drape; he laughs:
"Who the hell can they expect?... look at the way
they've logged these lists... no, really, my old granny
could teach them a thing or three." Now a cough
from a fellow patient. It's "just routine"
but I am lonely lying here and wondering
whether it's my diagnosis that's lost in cyberspace.
Debra arrives and daubs my chest with grease,
attaches cups and flicks a switch: a juddering
from the printer. "That's all. Tell doctor you've been seen."

· Gerard Benson writes for both children and adults, and is co-founder and -organiser of Poems on the Underground. He worked for 10 years with psychiatric patients at the North Middlesex hospital. He was recently poet-in-practice in a GP's surgery in inner-city Bradford.