Night Visiting
==============

* Dr Jennifer Strawson

*   End of life care

> > A wallowy wet night
> > 
> > they called me in.
> > 
> > *‘They want a doctor, only a doctor will do.'*
> > 
> > I take the back steps into the hospice,
> > 
> > tiptoe past the dark.
> > 
> > *‘The family are waiting.'*
> > 
> > I follow the nurse's translucent finger
> > 
> > pointing the way.
> > 
> > *‘I must see the patient first.'*
> > 
> > My voice tired, harsher than I'd hoped.
> 
> > Supine, slither of moon caught in the net curtain
> > 
> > illuminates the beauty of skin.
> > 
> > A morbid game,
> > 
> > we count to ten between breaths.
> 
> > Slipping from the room,
> > 
> > through treacle I walk
> > 
> > to the designated family room.
> > 
> > Séance like under the sickly glow
> > 
> > of an energy saving light bulb,
> > 
> > a chair awaits my all-knowing bottom.
> > 
> > *‘As a family we have decided - antibiotics, a blood transfusion,*
> > 
> > *there must be something you can do Doctor?'*
> 
> > But what can I do?
> > 
> > Explain the biology of death,
> > 
> > the magician's hat run out of rabbits?
> > 
> > *‘Where we are from, our country, we never give up,*
> > 
> > *we pray always for a miracle.'*
> > 
> > Hope hangs in the air,
> > 
> > fragile golden thread.
> > 
> > I cannot compete with miracles.
> > 
> > *‘I'm sorry.'*
> 
> > I watch them leave, heads bowed,
> > 
> > pad back to her room.
> > 
> > Standing, I examine the filament of the light bulb,
> > 
> > imagine the deep sulci of the brain.
> > 
> > I make to leave,
> > 
> > but on the last step,
> > 
> > something stops me -
> > 
> > singing,
> > 
> > from her room,
> > 
> > sweet gospel, all the way home. 

## Footnotes

*   Competing interests None.

*   Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.