Again, this is not a post for sensitive souls. I went to visit a man in a frail care centre in Cape Town, who was close to death. He was too ill to move from his bed. The evening before he died, a doctor deposited a large vial of morphine in his room -- someone said, enough to kill a horse. The morphine was intended to be used by administering a teaspoon as needed. That same evening, the man showed me a photo of him kneeling before a Spitfire in a pilot's uniform. He said he wanted me to have it when he was gone. In the morning, he was dead, and the vial was gone. The night nurse said she had no idea how the vial had disappeared -- and she was distressed that it had. It had been her responsibility. His wife said she was perplexed by its disappearance. He had likely overdosed on morphine -- but if so, he could not have done it alone.
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