A silent, anonymous place I was still a child the last time I’d seen it. The hospital was an anonymous place my parents had taken me to, somewhere in the big city, far from home. I didn’t know where I was at the time, but when I saw it again as an adult, there was a match with something stored in my skull: the outline of the building like a stack of building blocks, the primary colours, the silence that seems out of place around a place built for children. Medical science failed me in that hospital. I was diagnosed early with “slow growth syndrome,” and this was the first mistake that science made with me: giving it a name. Slow growth syndrome is no syndrome at all. Some people grow slowly. So what? I was small for my age. I didn’t have a pathology: I had a velocity. I was taking my time. Nevertheless, the doctor wanted to keep an eye on me, so my parents dutifully took me back every two years to be measured and the pace of my growth evaluated for more distressing signs of oddity. I...