{"id":13091,"date":"2025-12-19T10:35:48","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T09:35:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=13091"},"modified":"2025-12-22T09:08:42","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T08:08:42","slug":"damilola","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=13091","title":{"rendered":"Damilola"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
Image: \u00a9 Courtesy of Manchester City Galleries<\/span><\/p>\n

Damilola with eyes the colour of sepsis, Damilola with surname like a hieroglyph no one can decipher, Damilola with underwear on back-to-front dawns on his knees begging for virtue, naps upright from Clapham to Charing Cross, thumbs the biblethick in-tray, laughs almost.<\/p>\n

Damilola wonders whether Mrs O\u2019Donoghue will remember to feed Nelson because already (again and already) he foresees a double shift, calculates the hours till he can breathe not-his-breath and the weeks since Nurse Michaela was hurried to ICU. Wears his blackness loosely like the scrubs that bunch and billow around used-up junior doctors or else hoods himself in whiteness, his grandpa\u2019s colonial cast-off.<\/p>\n

Once upon a time he blazed with auroras of altruism.<\/p>\n

Now he is brusque at bedside like a man in a drive-thru window, three pandemic winters wound up in his taut smile.<\/p>\n

Is it some failure in him, he thinks, some nip at his core, jamming the give-flow? Is it really as simple as stiff upper lip, pull up bootstraps, back in my day, one of the lucky ones\u2026<\/p>\n

Damilola treating other doctors for attempted suicide, Damilola cupping the last warmth of those who mustn\u2019t die alone, Damilola this man we all know and depend upon considers if maybe it didn\u2019t have to be this way, the way of the cramped fungal flat and the stomach cramps of stress, unsure what next month\u2019s rent will cost or if tomorrow he will lose another orderly to the sudden white vans with their drivers stepping out, slow as inevitability. There was a way where histories had been shouldered like dead grandfathers, where for once the great tidal ire of the people had flowed the right way, where the busy stinging hands and bloodshot eyes and unfed cat of Damilola mattered more than the diphthong that rings strange, the pong of his lunch, skin-fictions.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Luke Buffini<\/strong> is a British-Irish writer from London and a graduate of the Granta Writers\u2019 Workshop. His stories have appeared in\u00a0Epiphany Magazine\u00a0and\u00a0The Short Fiction Journal.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Image: \u00a9 Courtesy of Manchester City Galleries Damilola with eyes the colour of sepsis, Damilola with surname like a hieroglyph no one can decipher, Damilola with underwear on back-to-front dawns on his knees begging for virtue, naps upright from Clapham to Charing Cross, thumbs the biblethick in-tray, laughs almost. Damilola wonders whether Mrs O\u2019Donoghue will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":407,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[376,438,436],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nDamilola - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=13091\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Damilola - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Image: \u00a9 Courtesy of Manchester City Galleries Damilola with eyes the colour of sepsis, Damilola with surname like a hieroglyph no one can decipher, Damilola with underwear on back-to-front dawns on his knees begging for virtue, naps upright from Clapham to Charing Cross, thumbs the biblethick in-tray, laughs almost. 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