" laughter filling that end of the ward, overflowing, one bringing a chair for Eleanora, another a cup of coffee, marveling that at long last she has come, they fearing, as her mother feared, that she had gone somewhere as far-flung as Peru, but at least it was only Denmark and for a conference, as they’d been told, to do with her work. "

― Edna O'Brien , The Light of Evening