Mr Gates is dying in the living room.

Despite the name, it’s the most appropriate place. As well as being the only room big enough to accommodate the bulky hospital bed and dynamic pressure mattress, it’s also the most pleasant, with wide, sunny windows overlooking the garden, warm and well-lit by the sun for most of the day. It has a TV in the corner, too, specially raised up on a wall-mounting so Mr Gates can watch it from his bed. Unfortunately he’s deteriorated so much now that the Emmerdale repeats aren’t really anything more than comforting background noise. He lies semi-conscious, mouth gaping open, breathing in fitful gasps, hugging a pillow, his wasted legs crooked up. He doesn’t look as if he’d last till the advert break, but apparently he’s been like this for weeks. He doesn’t seem distressed, though, and his son, Frank, who’s temporarily moved back to help look after his father, is bearing up surprisingly well considering.

Everything’s in place. There are District Nurses visiting regularly, the GP has supplied the anticipatory meds, there are carers coming in four times a day to freshen him up. The only hitch is that the bed is jammed in the down position.

‘You couldn’t do it again if you tried,’ says Frank. ‘The carers threw a covered cushion on the floor when they were turning him, forgot about it, and when they lowered the bed it dragged the vinyl cover into the mechanism.’ He bends down to tug at the mess sticking out from one of the hydraulic legs. ‘See what I mean? We’ve tried everything to free it, but nothing’s worked.’

The carers can’t give bed care safely or effectively at this height, so the only option is to install a second bed alongside the first, slide Mr Gates over whilst still on the mattress, dismantle the broken bed, then push him back into position.

Four of us have agreed to rendezvous with Zac, the equipment supplies guy. Zac isn’t thrilled with any of this, not the timing, the circumstances, the interruption to his schedule, and certainly not with the number of people milling around, spoiling his routine.

Zac is covered with tattoos, even into those dangerous and anti-social areas, up the neck and the side of his face. He looks like a Maori warrior – so much so that with the stress of all this I wouldn’t be surprised if he did a war dance, flashing his eyes and poking out his tongue. As it is he gives a series of alarming sighs and grunts, and then hurries back outside to the truck to start off-loading. We follow after him in a line like so many ducklings, and immediately start getting in the way. But I suppose theoretically at least we’re some kind of help; in no time at all we’ve got the parts of the new bed carried inside and placed either foot or head end ready to assemble. Zac declines any help with this.

‘I’ve got a system, okay?’ he says, which mostly seems to be a lot of muttering and kicking.

We want to be on hand to pass things over, though, and ultimately to slide Mr Gates across. So instead of all going out into the hallway, we stand around watching Emmerdale.

I’d guess from some of the clothes and hairstyles it’s from the Eighties. The whole thing seems oddly amateurish, like a skit in a local church hall production. There’s a sad looking woman sitting on a swing, and a huge, red-faced guy in a white shirt and golden bow tie telling her how disappointed he is with her and how could she and so on. At one point she turns her eyes up to him in a pathetically pleading way, kicking herself back a little on the swing.

‘It’s no good, Janet,’ says the man. ‘Spare me the sob story. You’ve played your games for the very last time. We’re finished. Do you understand? Finished!’

He walks off.

The theme music plays, and the TV cuts to an advert – insurance for funeral costs.

We all grimace.

‘Can one of you pass me that?’ says Zac, pointing to a strange looking multi-tool on the floor.

We all go to get it at the same time, then all pull back again.

‘Jesus Christ!’ says Zac.