The Bed-Table Scanner

An examination room of a Glasgow hospital on a dim winter afternoon, white tiled walls, across a hospital bed a frame of grey steel tubing carrying a rail, on it a flat sheet-grey box on two small rollers with a short lever, a grey woollen blanket smoothed flat over the empty mattress, a hand in a tweed jacket sleeve pushing the box by its lever, beneath the frame a loop of steel roller chain over small brass sprockets, behind on a table a stack of grey electronic units with a round screen showing one small green spot, a broad grey instrument with a row of knobs, an articulated lamp on a stand.