Failure to die

A long time ago, as a locum senior house officer, I followed the senior consultant round the ward. One of his patients, a frail, eccentric woman in the last stages of dementia, had a serious chest infection. He frowned and pondered, warned us off antibiotics, said he would talk to the family, and told us that our remaining duties were to ensure “comfort, dignity, and peace at the last.”

The next time we went round our patient was looking very …