Evenings and Weekends

by Oisín McKenna

She loves the NHS. She has choked back tears of gratitude during or after every medical appointment she’s been to for the past decade, and today is no different. She cries, thinking of the dream that every person deserves to be treated with care. She cries at the beauty of that dream and feels lucky to have lived a part of her life before the dream dies.

Since 2010, Tory austerity has resulted in 130,000 preventable deaths. She thinks of social housing. Her mother bought their terrace from the council when Maggie was four years old, and since Maggie moved to London nearly a decade ago, she’s only ever lived in ex-council flats. She thinks of the fifties and sixties, all those people who were finally given a secure place to live, somewhere to care for their families forever and the promise that they would be treated with dignity when sick, or poor, or hungry, or dying. How excited the people must have felt back then, to feel as if there were a place for them. How thrilling it must have been, to look towards the future and to see yourself in it.