Ancillary characters

With a story outline ruminating, I was starting to look at ancillary characters.

On top of the story progression (wait for it...) I started to realise that our protagonist's environment could reflect his circumstance, his state of mind, psychology, history, psychoses.

I'd also started to think in terms of authority figures. I already had an idea of:

• Parental authority - memories of maternal strength and paternal absence
• The doctor - the keeper, judge and gaolor, almost god-like in authority
• The hospital - with institutional rules, the law.

While I could attempt (and will try) to develop the hospital environment's authoritarian character in its own right, I also considered human characters that could act as agents of subjugation. Two contrasting approaches appealed to me. One cruel and one benign.

These are the hospital porters.