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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

We always assume we understand death, I think, watching the world buzz around me in the hospital cafeteria. God knows we see enough of it. Now I know the truth. For all my medical experience, I have just as little comprehension of what death means as Mr Davies the night he sobbed down the phone when I called to tell him his wife had died.

Remember man that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return.

There are few true equalisers in the world, but death is one of them. Grief—the universal adaptor, almost cruel in its convenience—can fit any human plug.

FIFTY-FOUR

fifty-four

Rachel Copeland was born on 7 July 1985 and died on 28 November 2016. She was thirty-one years old. When she was a child she liked playing tennis and told her mother she wanted to be an actress but gave it up for the pursuit of medicine. Children always dream of being actresses or writers but, like my mum always said, actresses and writers starve and doctors don’t. Maybe Rachel’s mum told her the same thing, I don’t know. After medical school, she was set on becoming a surgeon. The only place she wanted to be was inside an operating theatre. She exchanged the ambition for one stage with another.

When she was my registrar I hated her. She reduced me to tears, belittled me, and made my work days a living hell. Other people told me that when they knew her, not so very long before I was her intern and the Joker her boss, she was funny and nice and loved doing karaoke. She missed her ex-boyfriend, who lived in another state, but she’d had to break up with him to come to Sydney to take the job of her dreams. She had a pet dog called Wolverine, and a collection of fridge magnets she’d bought on her travels through her early twenties. I found it hard to reconcile the woman I had known with the picture they painted. It made me realise that I hadn’t really known her at all.

Her friends told me about her enormous intellect and determination, that these qualities could have got her anywhere. In the end, I guess they did. The morning she died she convinced the nursing staff to let her out on leave after her morning session with the psychiatrist, and she fled the psych unit on foot. She ran to the nearest major intersection and threw herself in front of a bus. They say she died on the footpath about two minutes later, and that she didn’t utter a single word.