Chapters (70)
- COVER PAGE
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- DEDICATION
- PROLOGUE
- PART I BIRTH
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- PART II LIFE
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- PART III DEATH
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- FORTY-TWO
- FORTY-THREE
- FORTY-FOUR
- FORTY-FIVE
- FORTY-SIX
- FORTY-SEVEN
- FORTY-EIGHT
- FORTY-NINE
- FIFTY
- FIFTY-ONE
- FIFTY-TWO
- FIFTY-THREE
- FIFTY-FOUR
- FIFTY-FIVE
- FIFTY-SIX
- FIFTY-SEVEN
- FIFTY-EIGHT
- FIFTY-NINE
- SIXTY
- EPILOGUE
- AUTHOR’S NOTE
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
‘Dr Woo called the ward.’
I’m impressed that Dr Woo has somehow managed to get in one last palliation before take-off. But I can’t shake the uneasy feeling that something not quite right is happening.
The Godfather confirms my instincts. I’m charting the palliative care crisis medications and actively stopping Mrs Richards’s lifesaving antibiotics when he appears beside me.
‘Do you feel like they palliate a lot of patients in this hospital?’ I ask, worried that I’m just being paranoid.
‘Of course,’ he says, hovering over the medication chart. He takes a pen from his pocket to increase the morphine dose I’ve just written up. ‘They need the beds.’
‘No!’ I drop my own pen. ‘They can’t do that! We can’t kill off old patients when they get a little bit sick just to free up bed space!’
He raises his eyebrows. ‘How many times have you been to the morgue this week?’ He hands me the penny and it drops, like a ton of lead into a bath.
‘My God!’ I am shaking my head. ‘Mate.’
‘Look, they’re all old and suffering anyway,’ he says reasonably. ‘Maybe it’s for the best. In the city we keep people alive for so long it’s cruel, if you ask me.’
Right on cue, my pager goes off. It’s the nurse manager. Another of our patients has died, and I have to go to the morgue to certify the death and do the paperwork.
I finish charting the medications that will free up Mrs Richards’s bed and think about what the Godfather said. He’s right; I seem to be going to the morgue to certify deaths surprisingly often.
The whole act of certifying a death is a little weird. I mean, everyone knows when a person is dead. But for the sake of making sure that nobody (or bodies) slip through the cracks, I guess it isn’t a bad policy to have a doctor make sure.
This little exercise involves me popping into the fridge, where, using a key I’ve been given by hospital security, I unlock the drawer and pull out the body. This can be dangerous: if I pull on it too enthusiastically, there’s a risk the drawer will tip down and the body will roll out on top of me. This happened to another junior doctor the year before, the security guard has warned me.