- 02 Ιουν 2020, 00:24
#650249
'This man knows he's dying as surely as I do': a doctor's dispatches from the NHS frontline
Η συγκεκριμένη γιατρός έχει γράψει ένα -μη τεχνικό- βιβλίο, και όντως φαίνεται ότι το έχει. Δεν είναι συχνό να διαβάζω κάτι που όχι μόνο ενημερώνει αλλά αγγίζει τον αναγνώστη.
Η συγκεκριμένη γιατρός έχει γράψει ένα -μη τεχνικό- βιβλίο, και όντως φαίνεται ότι το έχει. Δεν είναι συχνό να διαβάζω κάτι που όχι μόνο ενημερώνει αλλά αγγίζει τον αναγνώστη.
The language of war has been rife during the pandemic but never more so than when the prime minister was rushed to intensive care. Since then, battle tropes have dominated the national conversation. Cabinet members assured us Boris Johnson would beat the disease because he’s a fighter, as though survival is somehow a test of character, a matter primarily of valour. The reality, of course, is more banal. People do not die from this illness – or from any other – because they lack grit. Nor do they live by sheer pugnaciousness.
I look down at the bedsheets, stained with sweat, and the coil of limbs squirming in fear. It could not be plainer to anyone here that Winston is no participant in a battle. He is, instead, merely the battlefield. His body, worn out to begin with, is being methodically disposed of by a virus so primitive it scarcely qualifies as life. Character has precisely nothing to do with it. It never does in the real world of the hospital where the good, the bad, the brave and the timid all kneel alike before cancers and microbes.
(...)
Gently, I take his hand in both of mine. His pulse flutters so faintly, it is barely there. No warmth from his flesh creeps through my gloves. I am holding the hand of a man who is dying and who knows it as surely as I do. Behind closed doors, with neither fanfare nor drama, he has been quietly drowning all night.
Tό τοι νομισθὲν τῆς ἀληθείας κρατεῖ.
