My work lies in between.
It skirts the main event.
It trails between cough and cure and appointments never kept.
It calibrates the basis,
That enumerates the waiting,
To enervate the point size of the jaded banner press.

My work is residue:
The fallout of the process between due date and death;
The confetti trace of health red tape;
The litter of care evidence.

These numbers I coalesce, code and quantify.
I pattern the correlations
Between:
Health and wealth;
Births and deaths;
Change and time.

And the masticated statistics are fed back
To the battlefield of main events.

And the process begins again.

· Najam Mughal works for the NHS in Birmingham.