On the top floor, at the very end of the stairway, through the green halls and in dark rooms, is the place they come to die. Above everything else in the hospital, far from the ground and closer to heaven, this is where the knowing, hopeful end occurs. It is here, on this small ward, behind these standard issue double doors and in a way unlike any other part of this building, that people come, to wait, to die.
I come here regularly but am never allowed to pause, because this is not my service, these are not my patients, and there is much mindless paper chasing to be done and it is my task to complete it. I come for small pieces of things, records, reports, vitals. And I walk down the dark halls, looking delicately in, passing too quickly those on the other side. It haunts me, walking by, passing----not stopping, not stopping---not pausing long enough to somehow, in a way I am powerless to fathom, take note, acknowledge, recollect.
Sometimes I do not know if I have what it takes to live a life like this in medicine. Sometimes it seems nothing short of barbaric and cruel, heartless and inhumane. Sometimes, all I can look at in front of me, is our misplaced humanity, the steely fallout of our best intentions. That in our efforts to help, and in our need to galvanize our own persons, we manage to forget that we are all the same species, we are all the same thing; that it will one day be us over there, on the other side, in the dark room, at the end of the green hall, waiting out our own lives, waiting out our deaths.
