The Last Policeman (Last Policeman, #1)

by Ben H. Winters

“Aren’t we all depressed, Detective? Under the weight of all this unbearable immanence? Aren’t you depressed?”

She had to rush out early to perform an emergency delivery at Concord Hospital, a turn of events for which her husband is profusely apologetic. He meets me on the stoop wearing khaki slacks and a turtleneck, a gentle man with a trim golden beard carrying a mug of fragrant tea, explaining how Sophia often has irregular hours, especially now that most of the other midwives in her practice have quit.

“Not her, though. She’s determined to do right by her patients, right up to the end. And believe it or not, there are plenty of new patients.

The perseverance in this world, despite it all, of things done right.

The end of the world changes everything, from a law-enforcement perspective.

meanwhile the whole car is hurtling to the right, a giant hockey puck that someone whaled at,

can midwives prescribe? Turns out, they can.

Yes we fucking can

drugs

I'd have changed this to "medication", hire me as hire midwife editor

one of her prescription pads had gone missing from the stack in the top-right drawer of her office desk.

If her office got inspected she'd get dinged for not having them locked up

People’s inability to face up to this thing is worse than the thing, it really is.

and now two are out, and that’s just it. The world is decaying bit by bit, every piece degrading at its own erratic rate, everything trembling and crumbling in advance, the terror of the coming devastation a devastation of its own, and each minor degradation has its consequences.