Samuel Johnson Is Indignant

The Patient

The day after the patient was admitted to the hospital, the young doctor operated on her upper colon, where he felt sure the cause of her illness lay. But his medical training had not been good, the doctors who taught him were careless men, and he had been pushed through school quickly because he was clever and the country was desperate for doctors; the hospital was poorly staffed and the building itself was falling into ruin because of government mismanagement: piles of broken plaster choked the hallways. Because of all this, or for some other reason, the woman’s condition did not improve, but grew rapidly worse. The young doctor tried everything. At last he admitted that there was nothing more he could do and that she was on the point of dying. He was overwhelmed by the grief and guilt that come with the first death of a patient. He was at the same time filled with strange excitement, and felt he had joined the ranks of serious men of the world, men who hold the lives of others in their hands and are like gods. Inexplicably, then, the woman did not die. She lay peacefully in a twilight coma. As each day passed with no change, the young doctor grew more and more maddened by her immobility. He could not sleep and his eyes became bloodshot. He had trouble eating and his face became gaunt. At last he could not contain his frustration any longer. He went to her bedside and drove his fist again and again into her pinched, yellow face until she did not look human anymore. One last breath leaked from her mouth and then, battered and bruised, she died.