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Back Going Under Save as PDF
Chapters (70)
  1. COVER PAGE
  2. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  3. DEDICATION
  4. PROLOGUE
  5. PART I BIRTH
  6. ONE
  7. TWO
  8. THREE
  9. FOUR
  10. FIVE
  11. SIX
  12. SEVEN
  13. EIGHT
  14. NINE
  15. TEN
  16. ELEVEN
  17. TWELVE
  18. THIRTEEN
  19. FOURTEEN
  20. FIFTEEN
  21. PART II LIFE
  22. SIXTEEN
  23. SEVENTEEN
  24. EIGHTEEN
  25. NINETEEN
  26. TWENTY
  27. TWENTY-ONE
  28. TWENTY-TWO
  29. TWENTY-THREE
  30. TWENTY-FOUR
  31. TWENTY-FIVE
  32. TWENTY-SIX
  33. TWENTY-SEVEN
  34. TWENTY-EIGHT
  35. TWENTY-NINE
  36. THIRTY
  37. THIRTY-ONE
  38. THIRTY-TWO
  39. THIRTY-THREE
  40. THIRTY-FOUR
  41. PART III DEATH
  42. THIRTY-FIVE
  43. THIRTY-SIX
  44. THIRTY-SEVEN
  45. THIRTY-EIGHT
  46. THIRTY-NINE
  47. FORTY
  48. FORTY-ONE
  49. FORTY-TWO
  50. FORTY-THREE
  51. FORTY-FOUR
  52. FORTY-FIVE
  53. FORTY-SIX
  54. FORTY-SEVEN
  55. FORTY-EIGHT
  56. FORTY-NINE
  57. FIFTY
  58. FIFTY-ONE
  59. FIFTY-TWO
  60. FIFTY-THREE
  61. FIFTY-FOUR
  62. FIFTY-FIVE
  63. FIFTY-SIX
  64. FIFTY-SEVEN
  65. FIFTY-EIGHT
  66. FIFTY-NINE
  67. SIXTY
  68. EPILOGUE
  69. AUTHOR’S NOTE
  70. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

It occurs to me that there are a lot of very sad and unloved people in society for whom coming into the emergency department means that, at least for a little while, someone will care for them. I develop this theory as I sit in one of the assessment rooms five hours later, as the clock ticks over to 4 am, listening to the woman in front of me cry about her hip, which has been hurting for seven years.

Something breaks inside me.

‘Look, Sandra,’ I say, interrupting her long story, ‘what’s really going on?’

Most of the time they just want someone to talk to. Sandra came into the emergency department consciously seeking medical care but subconsciously seeking something else, something that I can’t give her and something that no hospital can provide.

There are so many lonely people in this world. Their loneliness shrouds them, so they become invisible. They’re in the corner of your eye, hovering in the periphery. Yet we always miss them—sometimes even when they’re sitting right in front of us. For every attention-seeking time-waster who floats through the doors of the emergency department, there’s another patient, invisible, who slips in between them. I’m always meeting these people at 4 am, I think sadly, hearing these stories when we all should be peacefully asleep in bed.

‘I think my husband is cheating on me,’ Sandra says, and starts to cry. ‘And I’m scared I’ve got herpes.’

I take a look. Sandra is right. She has such a severe case of herpes she ends up being admitted under gynaecology for pain management. I write her up for regular morphine, feeling guilty.

People say you see life when you experience certain things. When you travel around the world, or get married, or have a baby. But the most I’ve learned about life has been while working in the emergency department in the early hours of a Tuesday morning. We’re always told in magazines and online and in movies that life is this endless notion of possibility. We dream of the adventure, but we live a different sort of reality. The kind of reality that walks into a hospital at four in the morning. At 4 am in the emergency department, people feel like they don’t need to pretend anymore.

I sit at the desk, writing up Sandra’s notes, and wonder what they think of doctors, to give up these intensely personal things so easily. The stethoscope and the scrubs must give me an invisibility cloak of my own. People come in because they’re seeking someone or something to make them feel better. A doctor in a hospital seems like a good answer.