The brunt of my anger, however, is borne by medicine itself. For all these things I cannot forgive medicine. And for its covetousness, its jealousy, its proprietorial imperative, binding its practitioners to a life of servitude at the expense of family, friends, fitness and, at the end of the day, the very writing that might have served as an antidote to its unbending tyranny. And there is no hiatus during the day through which I can indulge my other self in rehearsals or meetings or the kind of schmoozing that actually gets a play on. Patients will insist on getting sick.
Time waits for no man.
And that's not an actor waiting in the wings, but Death itself. Which means that the only true sense in which there is life beyond medicine is in the sense of the life of the mind, which retains its capacity to traverse the universe even as Mrs Blogg describes the bouquet of her stool. My real work, that is. The great love of my professional life. And it is the terrible irony central to that work which lifts it above the level of mere diversion, imbuing it with what passes for a semblance of meaning, so that when I sit behind my desk, struggling to retain consciousness through endless tales of dysfunctional body cavities, I can almost convince myself that it's all been worth the effort.