WORDS: TIM HEAP
I AM SITTING on a Central line Tube train, on a half-an-hour journey from east to west London when I find myself blubbing uncontrollably in the carriage. I’m Northern. We’re not much for big shows of public emotion unless pissed, at a close family funeral, or both. But there was something about this particular chapter of Tom Eubanks’ Ghosts of St Vincent’s that caught me offside. I couldn’t control myself. The floodgates opened.
I’d first become aware of Tom’s book via a cursory search through social media. The name St Vincent’s has always carried a particular poignancy for me. The first time I ever went to New York — an instance you never forget — in 1994, I ended up in a gay bar round the corner from the hospital of the same name.