Clocks often appear in Robert’s work, especially after his illness. One thinks his drawings of Terry Fox jogging past Halifax’s Old Town Clock, or of the clocks that appear in his images of waiting rooms. This de Chirico-like scene, combining still life and landscape, long shadows and a sense of perspective that suggests a stage, features an ordinary object that takes on a mysterious living presence. It is not a clock that belongs to the hospital. It is a small object belonging to a patient. The round-headed clock is perched precariously on the ledge of an open window. A reviving and hopeful connection to the outside world is tempered by a sense of danger. The clock could mark the hour of death or could be counting off the hours of being hospital-bound. The blossoms on the trees outside signal the arrival of Spring, marking a larger cycle of time.