Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery - as seen on 'life-changing' BBC documentary Confessions of a Brain Surgeon

by Henry Marsh

‘Well, I’m ninety per cent certain. But we . . .’ I said, lapsing into the plural form so loved by policemen and bureaucrats and doctors which absolves us from personal responsibility and relieves us of the awful burden of the first person singular, ‘we might be able to help with an operation.’ He cried and cried. ‘Have you got any family?’ I asked, although I already knew the answer. ‘I’m all alone,’ he replied, through his tears. ‘Any children?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Don’t they want to come and see you – even now when you’re ill?’ I asked and, once again, immediately regretted it. ‘No.’ He burst into floods of tears again. I waited for him to stop and we sat together in silence for a while. ‘So you’re all alone?’ I said. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I used to work in a hospital, you know. I’m going to die there aren’t I? All the piss and shit . . . All I want is a cigarette. You’ve just told me I’m going to die. I want a cigarette.’ As he said this he desperately mimed smoking a cigarette with his one good hand, as though his life depended on it.