A brief interlude

Just back from work and decided to share my thoughts. Heavy day after the weekend. Full ward on arrival, only a few left at the end- and not because they went home. One doctor showed up for work making it a long ward round. Important drugs had not been given over the weekend, or during my round. You might be forgiven looking in from the outside for interpreting the staffs' indifference as an implication that out here death has become normal; acceptable. But then you take a closer look. You see the boy lying curled up on the iron bed hugging his older brother who has been in a coma for two days with cerebral malaria, only to pass two hours later; or the entire family of a young man looking on in silent shock, squeezing his lifeless arms as a sheet is pulled over his head their only comfort the fact that his agonised screams have finally ceased; or as I walk out from the gloom into the sunlight to hear an elderly woman wailing with her face pressed close to the brick wall lamenting the loss of her husband. You see this and realise that out here, in the depths of Africa, and a war torn land, that the death of a loved one is no less painful, no less traumatic and no less heart breaking.