Poppy Shakespeare by Clare Allan Page A

Harbinger. Airways, breathing
     and something else, 'cause every floor got two first-aiders and she'd been made first-aider for her floor. Like Patients' Council,
     said Middle-Class Michael, but it sounded more like guiding to me, and Poppy said it weren't like neither it was just like
     first fucking aid. 'What you so uptight about?'said Astrid, really nasty. But there's me getting ahead of myself, 'cause she never said nothing, not at
     the time; it was only later when everything changed, which I ain't got up to there yet. That day the sun shone out Poppy's
     arse 'cause she'd saved Brian the Butcher's life.
    Course everyone had their own explanation why Brian the Butcher fainted. Which seeing as he couldn't remember nothing, he
     weren't in no position to say and all he could do was sit in his chair and nod and say, 'Very much so.' Sue the Sticks said
     it was love at first sight, she'd seen it happen she said. Which being as she sat with her back to the door she couldn't of done unless she got eyes in her crutches. But that didn't stop her seeing him in her imagination and what Sue imagined
     and what Sue seen was one and the same, pretty much. So from that time on, she always sworn the moment he first set eyes on
     Poppy Brian the Butcher got blown off his feet by love. Literally, she said, blown off his feet, she'd seen it happen herself.
     And she said Brian should go on the breakfast TV. 'They always have stuff on like that,' she said. 'Give everyone a bit of
     something to hope for.' And she even offered to go on with him, like just as a witness to say she'd seen it happen.
    Michael said Brian had had a premonition. Said he'd seen everything that was going to happen if they sold off Mental Health
     Services and it was such an awful terrible sight, he'd fainted clean away. And he told us all the things Brian seen and Brian's
     sat there nodding his head, but when I asked him later he couldn't remember none of it.
    Course six months later people remembered, said maybe Brian did have a premonition, and they tried to make out they'd said so all along. It weren't no coincidence he fainted the morning
     Poppy arrived they said; there was even dribblers who'd have you believe Brian the Butcher was some sort of prophet. When
     all actually happened was Brian come through seen the flops hadn't got their dinner yet. And he started to panic on account
     of that meant he must of stopped hand-washing early, and that meant the tower was about to fall over and seeing the flops kicking about on the floor he reckoned it already started. And
     that's when he fainted and fell to the floor like a tomb on the shit-coloured carpet.
    Not that it mattered to me either way. By the time they got Brian back on his feet I was through in the canteen eating my
     fatty lamb stew. And I ain't saying it was nice exactly, but it weren't the worst I've tasted. And I felt pretty lucky to
     of squeezed through in time, the last before the hatch come down. And I felt kind of sorry for the others as well on account
     of they'd missed their dinner.

18. How everyone reckoned the sun shone out Poppy's arse
    That first day Poppy gone down alright. After she'd saved Brian the Butcher's life, people give her the benefit. So when she
     started slagging the doctors off, how she shat better crap than they come out with, I ain't saying there weren't a bristle
     gone round but people was prepared to overlook it. On top of which she got novelty value; no one met a dribbler like Poppy
     before, and when they finally got their heads round the fact she meant what she said, she didn't want to be there, they was that fucking jiggered, that stunned to the core, it never occurred to them they should be offended.
    All afternoon they sat round her asking questions. How many times she been sectioned? (She hadn't.) Where had she been in
     before? (She hadn't never been nowhere.) What meds was she taking? (She weren't taking meds and she weren't going to take none neither.)