ADMISSIONS

Admissions, by Mira Harrison, is a work of contemporary adult fiction, first published in New Zealand in December 2018 and republished by The Copy Press (Nelson, NZ) in March 2021.

In 2020, Admissions was selected by the international blog site Big Think as “1 of 7 powerful books that bring the UN’s SGD goals to life”. Selected by the UNESCO Cities of Literature to represent Sustainability Development Goal 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth) Admissions was described by journalist Charlotte Edmond as follows:

“Admissions is a collection of short stories that shares the experiences of eight women — doctors, nurses, cooks and cleaners — who have dedicated their lives to caring. The fictional tales, selected by the New Zealand city of Dunedin, recount the highs and lows of working in clinical medicine. The book demonstrates the many ways different women from all walks of life keep a struggling institution up and running while navigating their lives at home.”

https://bigthink.com/politics-current-affairs/books-un-sustainable-development-goals?rebelltitem=2#rebelltitem2

Contents

The Receptionist’s Tale (Raelene’s Story)

The hospital’s front woman meets a Syrian refugee who arrives to work as an operating theatre orderly. The relationship which develops between them changes their lives.

The Obstetrician’s Tale (Mary’s Story)

A young obstetrician from the Cook Islands faces the reality of motherhood during one dramatic day working on labour ward.

The Cleaner’s Tale (Rachael’s Story)

A cleaner in the mental health unit with a passion for music shares her story of loss and recovery in three movements of her own concerto.

The House Officer’s Tale (Lizzie’s Story)

The story of a junior doctor’s first job on a medical ward, amidst the complications of lusting and longing in a tale of young love.

The Theatre Sister’s Tale (Denise’s Story)

An unpopular senior theatre sister who has bullied the hospital’s junior staff for years discovers she has cancer and is forced to confront her future.

The Cook’s Tale (Sharmila’s Story)

The hospital’s Sri Lankan cook tells her life story spanning three continents and shares some of her recipes for life.

The Professor’s Tale (Sarah and Anil’s Story)

A romantic tale of unexpected love between a high-flying professor of women's health and a lonely anaesthetist culminates in a steamy sexual encounter.

The Night Nurse’s Tale (Rosie’s Story)

An older nurse describes another long dark night on the geriatric ward, entwined with thoughts about her own family relationships and her friendship with Raelene (see the Receptionist’s Tale, no 1 above).

Links between the characters in Admissions emerge as the stories unfold, with the significant events in each tale taking place during one week of hospital life. While the stories are intended to be read chronologically (as above) this can be open to interpretation by a filmmaker. The book is set in southern New Zealand, but the stories could be adapted to another hospital anywhere in the world.

The manuscript for the whole book is available as a PDF file on request

Audience

Admissions could be ideal for adaptation to a screenplay, particularly for a set of serialised episodes suitable for broadcasters looking for relevant, contemporary dramas which encourage viewers to look at the world in a new or different way, with local content and global themes. Set in the South Island of Aotearoa NZ, each chapter of Admissions tells the personal stories of eight women who keep the wheels of the public hospital turning. These should have broad appeal and be a character-driven show that explore human relationships.

Themes

The stories in Admissions show the friendships which develop between women working in hospitals — and other intimate bonds as mothers, daughters, friends and lovers in women’s lives beyond professional healthcare roles. In every workplace there are a multitude of relationships playing out: the strength and compassion of the writing in Admissions highlights the different forms of love — such as emotional, sexual, platonic and charitable love — experienced by the diverse characters. While entirely fictional, these stories are based on the real-life experiences of Dr Mira Harrison, who previously worked as a hospital doctor in the UK and NZ.

There is potential for these stories to provide strong and sensitive roles for female actors from a variety of ethnic and geographical backgrounds, including the global south. There are also roles for actors of other genders and ages, which would broaden the viewing interest for a film of Admissions. Reviews of the book on Amazon show readers from different global regions: https://www.amazon.com/Admissions-Hospital-Tales-Life-Death-ebook/product-reviews/B087T71964/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_show_all_btm?ie=UTF8&reviewerType=all_reviews

While each chapter of Admissions is a complete and independent tale, the narrative is enhanced by links between the principal characters and powerful themes of caring throughout the text. The interplay between the characters illuminates the common humanity in the face of life, death and love, wherever we may work and live in the world.

Text from first story in Admissions:

The Receptionist’s Tale

Raelene

About a year ago something happened that changed my outlook on life in a fundamental way. It occurred in the small city where I live, where I have always lived, and while the events took place in a dot on the map at the bottom of the globe, they brought the world to me.

Until the time when this story began, my life had been ordinary. I was born and raised in this town in the far south of Aotearoa, I went to school, passed my exams, then got a job at our local public hospital. Of course, there was much more to it than that – I argued with my parents when I was a teenager; I made friends, some of whom I kept, some I lost. And I fell in love with a guy in my year at high school. I say ‘fell in love’ but I now know it was lust, not love, and after too much lusting without the right precautions, the inevitable happened and I found I was pregnant. Confused and cornered, I married Steve in some haste and gave birth to Melissa a few months later. Her birth was easy enough, but the first weeks of parenting were a shock to two previously unencumbered and selfish youths, and after a few months, Steve left. He went back to drinking with his friends most nights of the week.

I carried on living in the cramped, dark flat we were renting and looked after Melissa. Although it was hard being a solo mum, it was a relief when Steve left. His needs drained me as much as the baby I now found myself responsible for, and my needs didn’t even feature in his world, so it was simpler when he wasn’t there. It was calmer too – comforting a crying baby is easier than pacifying a dissatisfied and angry young man. The last time Steve hit me, I told him to leave and not come back. I adjusted to being on my own with Melissa quite quickly, but then we hadn’t had much time with anyone else.

I went back to work when Melissa was nine months old. It wasn’t because they desperately wanted me back, or that I was a crucial part of the Kiwi healthcare system: I was just a receptionist on the front desk of an average district hospital. I returned because I had to get out of my gloomy flat and escape the loneliness of being a single parent, at least for a few hours a week. The hospital daycare wasn’t too expensive - and Melissa seemed happy enough there - so if I worked at least thirty hours a week, I could earn just enough money to keep my head above water. It wasn’t only about getting out of the house and earning my own wages either - although I hated the idea of being on benefits – it was because I enjoyed my job. I still enjoy my job. I’m just a small part of an anonymous and pretty run-down establishment, but I am its front woman, its face if you like. Usually I’m the first person people meet on entering our hospital and I love that. Over the years, I must have met thousands of people: all the staff, patients and visitors who come through our front doors. I have known some for less than a few minutes and others, like my friend Rosie, for more than twenty years.

So I continued in the job I loved for all the years I was a young mum, seeing Melissa start school and progress through all the stages I’d done before her. Our life wasn’t always easy – we had little support from family and money was tight, but I had a couple of close friends who kept me going when I thought I couldn’t take it any more. As well as Rosie, who’s a nurse up on Level 8, I had Gaylene, who used to work on the paediatric ward. She used to joke about looking after kids all day and then going home to the little buggers every night too. We all put our kids in the hospital daycare and having a chat and a smoke together was what kept us going in those days.

Melissa and I led a relatively simple life – work and school in the week, playgrounds and parks and sometimes the beach at the weekend. We didn’t have holidays away from our town, but in summer I would take a week off work and we would have what we called our special days when we would plan a whole day out, treating ourselves and doing things we really enjoyed doing together. That’s my best memory of Melissa’s childhood, and thoughts of those special days still make me smile, now she has grown up and gone.

After Melissa finished school and moved away, I carried on working at the hospital. I could do more hours and give it more energy now. You may think being a receptionist is pretty boring, that each day is more or less the same, that the effort required is fairly constant, but it’s not how I’ve found it. No two days are the same at my desk. Of course, there are patterns – Tuesdays and Thursdays are coronary angiography days on Level 6, and gynae outpatients runs on Wednesdays on Level 1. There are many timetables and patterns in a hospital: when I’m training new receptionists I show them all the files, but I say you always have to check, because things change all the time. Receptionists have to be adaptable too – we are not always told when things change. I’m making it sound like rocket science I know, but there’s more to it than you might think. Much of our work is meeting and greeting, giving directions and filling out forms, but there is a skill to what we do. Noticing things is part of our work.

It was during a new receptionist’s training session that I first noticed Mohammed. I was in the middle of one of my motivational talks to Courtney, who had previously worked in an office doing IT support.

“Receptionists have to be ‘people people,’” I explained enthusiastically, although Courtney was already looking a bit bored.

“There’s no point doing this job if you don’t care about people,” I was saying, when I became aware of a man waiting near our reception desk. I remember thinking immediately he didn’t seem like a local – it wasn’t just his dark skin, jet-black hair and neatly trimmed beard - it was his stance, his approach, or rather his lack of it. The men in our town stride up to reception desks and demand attention. This guy just waited patiently, seeking my invitation to approach, and I noticed that.

I looked over and smiled my receptionist’s smile. “Good morning. Morena.” I added the Maori greeting – as encouraged in the training manual I helped write – but I was pretty sure he wasn’t Maori. “Can I help you?”

He spoke politely, quietly, “Please, where I should report? I am here to work as a theatre porter. Today is my first day.”

I smiled again and gave him instructions and a map of the hospital, modelling professional friendliness and efficiency in front of Courtney, who was hovering uncertainly behind me. When he had gone she said, “Well, he seemed like a strange one!”

I was going to pick her up on this, discuss her attitude, but as it was her first week I thought I’d leave it. It was only later that I thought I should have welcomed the stranger to our hospital, welcomed him to our town, introduced myself. Normally, I would have done all that, but in that brief moment when we first met I was mesmerised by the sadness of his dark brown eyes. I also regretted not asking him where he was from. At first, I thought he might be from India, but I wasn’t really sure.

During the following weeks I noticed the new porter took his lunch to the staff courtyard we have behind the Atrium, which is the fancy name some bigwig dreamt up for the hospital reception when they built this place back in the ‘70s. I like the courtyard, because on good days it’s sunny and warm and on bad days - which are many in our far-flung southern land - it’s at least sheltered from the winds which blast us, sometimes for weeks on end. The courtyard feels a world away from the main hospital. The Patients’ Association has planted it up with some tree ferns and other native plant, but the walls are now cracked and mouldy, because no one has fixed a bit of broken guttering which leaks above our heads if we sit in the wrong spot.

Sometimes I take my lunch to the courtyard to see who I can catch up with. Gaylene doesn’t work here any more and Rosie works nights, so it’s often Rachel, whose kids are still young and tiring her out. They are great kids but, as I always say to her, even great kids are bloody exhausting.

One day I noticed him sitting alone at one of the wooden tables.

“Can I sit here?” I gestured towards the empty seats as I put my lunchbox down on his table.

He smiled and nodded and only later - much later - he explained how strange it felt to him in those early days to be approached by a woman in this way: it was not what he was used to.

“I’m Raelene, from Reception. We met on your first day.” I cheerfully introduced myself (I didn’t forget this time) and then added, “How’s it going?” in my friendliest Kiwi-speak.

“Hello Raelene, my name is Mohammed. It is good to meet you again,” he replied, rather formally. We exchanged a few more pleasantries and I chatted away about the hospital, which I can talk about for hours, having worked here for so long. Mohammed listened and I talked some more, until I realised I was talking too much and should have at least asked him where he came from. When he told me he was from Syria, I was embarrassed as I didn’t really know where that was. Of course I had heard about it on the news and knew there was a terrible war going on there, and I also knew that our city had recently accepted a group of Syrian refugees. The paper had featured articles about families being resettled and there had been photos of people growing vegetables and learning how to cook. I looked at Mohammed’s lunchbox and wanted to ask him about all the colours and flavours and smells, but I really wanted to ask him if he was a refugee. Suddenly it all felt a bit intrusive, so I wrapped up the remains of my sandwich and said I had to get back to work.

That night I searched online for news articles about Syria, but there were so many it was confusing, and it left me feeling sad and bewildered. I changed my search to Syrian food and that was much better. I found photos of exotic dishes, some of which I recognised, because hummus has become quite popular. I learned that Syrian cooking is similar to Turkish cuisine, but that didn’t help, because I wasn’t really sure what they eat in Turkey either. Melissa knows about other countries and these new foods and she tells me they are not new, people have been eating them for hundreds of years. I’m embarrassed about my ignorance of foreign places.

The next day I asked Mohammed if he was a refugee and he said “sort of”. That confused me again and for a moment I couldn’t fill the silence with my usual chatter. He said that while he had not been part of the recent Syrian groups resettled in our town, he was indeed a refugee as he had left Syria after all his family had been killed. Now I really couldn’t speak. What do you say when someone tells you that? We sat there in silence for an over-long moment and I was glad that most of the other staff had left. The courtyard was almost empty and I remember looking up into the fronds of the tree fern we were sitting under and thinking, I live in one of the safest countries in the world, so how could I possibly understand that? I wanted to ask so many questions – who were his family? who did he lose? how could he possibly cope with their deaths? – but I just said “I’m really sorry, that’s terrible.”

I didn’t see Mohammed for a few days after that. I wondered if he was working different shifts, as he didn’t come through reception during the hours I was working. In my job I get to know people’s routines, when to expect them. He wasn’t in the courtyard at lunchtime either and, even when I was chatting to Rachel or someone else, I found myself missing our conversations. He returned after a few days, explaining that he had been working nights. Mohammed was easy to talk to. He listened intently to everything I had to say and for several weeks we met regularly to eat our lunch. We never planned to meet, but it just happened that we were there at the same time. I nattered on about the hospital, the city, our country and, as he was newly arrived, he liked to “listen and learn” as he would put it. I told him things I thought a foreigner would need to know, what I thought our customs were, but then I found myself wondering if we really had many traditions and what they meant. It made me think about what it means to be from somewhere and I asked him if things were the same in Syria.

“In what way?” he asked.

“In any way. Just tell me anything you want to about where you’re from - I know nothing about it.”

As we talked, I came to appreciate that largely things were not the same in Syria, not in most ways. His stories were fascinating and sad and beautiful too – like his eyes, which I had noticed the first time we met. He never mentioned his family and I never talked about mine.

As summer moved on, a holiday weekend loomed and I decided I would ask Mohammed if he’d like to come on a day out with me. Usually I spent these days at home, tidying the house, perhaps a bit of gardening - nothing that interesting. I didn’t know where he lived, but I pictured him alone in a cold flat, maybe cooking up lunches for the following week. So I suggested I take him on a day trip, a visit to a local beach, maybe a picnic.

“I could show you the sights,” I enthused, adding that I could tell him more about the town where we lived.

“That would be wonderful.” He seemed surprised but delighted by the invitation. “How will we travel?”

“I’ll drive, of course.” I guessed he probably didn’t have a car. “And we don’t want to have to catch the bus on a holiday weekend in this town.”

He smiled when I said that and I noticed him looking at me directly. I wondered what was funny, because until then he was not someone who smiled much at all.

It turned out to be a lovely day. The weather in our part of the world is notoriously unreliable and as we drove out of town, I told Mohammed that some people call our coastline the Riviera of the Antarctic. He laughed and said he hadn’t felt warm since leaving Syria, but it was very scenic here and that made up for the cold. He brought food – so much food – which we ate as a picnic on a small grassy area overlooking a rocky bay. I was amazed by how many dishes he had made and how delicious they all were, including one with eggplant, that mysterious purple vegetable I had seen in the supermarket, but had never known what to do with. When I told him this, he said that the Turks had at least one hundred and fifty ways of cooking aubergine and I felt pleased to know that Turkish cuisine is similar to Syrian cooking.

It was at this point I decided to tell him about Melissa, about my family, my life story, such as it was. It wasn’t a tactic to learn about his family: I just wanted to tell him, I wanted him to know more about me. He had finished eating and lay down on his side on the grass to listen. It was the first time I had ever seen him relaxed, he was always so formal in his manners, but it made me feel more at ease. His dark eyes watched my face as I told my story. Occasionally his long lashes rested for a moment on his cheeks, then his eyes fixed on me again, held me there.

When I had finished, he was still looking at me – he had this way of being very still, quiet and calm. He said gently that he thought I was a strong woman. For some reason my eyes filled with tears and I suddenly felt vulnerable and young in his presence, although I knew I must be years older than him. I reached for my sunnies in an attempt to hide my tears, but somehow his hand was there instead and then he was holding my hand and stroking it gently. I was now crying uncontrollably and wanted to explain that this was not like me, I hadn’t cried in years - it was generally me mopping up other people’s tears, comforting the sick, sorting out the kids. But I couldn’t speak at all. Then my head was on his chest and my tears were soaking his clean white cotton shirt. I felt his arms wrap around me and the side of his face against the top of my head. In that moment – the first that I’d been close to anyone for so long - Mohammed smelt like another world. We sat like that for some time, him holding me, stroking my back, his fingers running down along the line of my shoulder blade and up again to the nape of my neck, slowly, over and over again. I rested my head on his shoulder and he played with my hair as if he were exploring something for the first time. When I had stopped crying I could see the harbour glistening in the late summer sun.

That day was a turning point for us - the time at which our friendship became much closer. After my outburst during our picnic, we were quiet for a while, then we talked about this and that. Later that afternoon as we drove around the bays, Mohammed told me more about himself and his life before he came to our country. At one point I had to stop the car and ask him to repeat what he had just said, because I thought he had told me that in Syria he was a doctor.

“I was. I am!” He laughed at the way my mouth had dropped open as I pulled the car off the road. “I used to be a surgeon at a large hospital in Aleppo. Honestly. I am telling you the truth.” He wasn’t smiling now.

Once I had recovered from the shock and closed my mouth, I asked, “Do the other theatre staff know? Does anyone have any idea? What about Dr Malik?” I thought he might have confided in the lovely Indian anaesthetist all my friends had their eyes on.

“I haven’t told anyone until now.”

“Why not?” I was still incredulous.

He explained that his qualifications were not recognised in our country and despite his repeated attempts, the New Zealand Medical Council would not register him. After several months, he had needed work – any work – and a theatre porter was the closest he could find to what he did at home. I was aghast: I started babbling that he must have trained for so long, must have so much experience in trauma surgery, that he should tell everyone who he is, what he can do, what he could do if they just let him.

“They should let you do some of the more difficult cases. Or you could teach our trainee doctors how to do surgery.” From what I’d heard, some of them needed help.

Mohammed laughed again. “It doesn’t quite work like that. Rules are rules and have to be followed.”

I was glad he could laugh about it, but I couldn’t understand how he could go to work each day and see others do the operations he was so qualified to perform. I started thinking about what I could find out, who I could ask, as I knew there was a shortage of surgeons in our region. Surely doing the work he was qualified for would help him heal, would relieve the sadness in his eyes?

**********

A year later and my world has changed so much since I met Mohammed. After our day trip we went out together a few more times as friends. Mohammed has always been proper about our relationship and things developed, although not in a physical way. Sometimes we held hands, but no more than that, until the day he asked me to become his wife. We were again out beside the harbour and again my mouth dropped open and we both started laughing. By then I’d told him I was in my fifties (although I was a bit vague about which end of the decade I fell into) and knew he was more than ten years younger than me, so of course I had to say no.

“You should find a younger woman, so you could have children and become a dad and then you could all live happily ever after in our Land of the Long White Cloud.” I wanted him to have all the happiness he was deprived of in Syria.

“I don’t want a younger woman, I want you, Raelene.”

I didn’t respond – I was still in shock.

“What does age matter if you love someone?” Mohammed asked.

I couldn’t argue with that, and we continued walking hand in hand on a grassy footpath above the sea. When we found a bench to sit on, I told him I had loved him since the day he took me in his arms on our first picnic, knowing it was such a cliché, but I had to be truthful with him. Sharing our truths had brought us together: we had shared our pasts, our stories, now with a common ending. I found myself in a man from the other side of the world, and what was once so foreign is now so familiar.

It’s not just a dreamy romance either – I’ve helped him reapply to the Medical Council (after he finally asked Anil how to go about this) and he is now ‘retraining under supervision’, as the Council call it, although I bet Mohammed will teach them a few things. One of the gynae profs was great too – we were chatting when she came down to Reception to tell me that there’d been some changes to her day surgery list. The idiots who protest outside our hospital every week were causing more problems than usual. She told me she thought the orthopaedic lot could really do with some help from an experienced trauma surgeon. A couple of weeks later, Mohammed got a letter saying they would be pleased to supervise him.

We don’t live together yet (I told you he was proper) but Mohammed has met Melissa and it’s all going surprisingly well. I was worried because it had been Melissa and me for so long, but they got on from the start and they’ve even shared a few recipes. She cried like a baby when we told her we were officially engaged to be married, but she was laughing at the same time, so I thought she must be happy about it and told her not to be so soft.

The news has caused quite a stir at the hospital too. Rosie and Rachel were both over the moon for me, but Courtney couldn’t believe it. I watched her run off to tell anyone she could find to tell, leaving me holding the fort as usual. For days after that I could sense people whispering about us in the courtyard, in the canteen, on the different paths throughout our workplace. When I saw Rosie at the end of her shift one morning, she said the night porters had been chatting about Mohammed and me. Normally, I try not to get involved in hospital gossip, but I have to admit, I’ve quite enjoyed hearing the story of the receptionist and the refugee repeated with varying degrees of truthfulness.