As witnessed last Tuesday in room A15

She grabs him by the shoulders, calls him back, and he shifts slightly as his eyelids struggle to flutter open for the briefest instant—but then he deflates back into the hospital bed. The emergency department brims with the resources to provide total care for any patient—but, for all that seeming power, as a physician I fear all my hands can offer are the medications simultaneously infusing through three IVs. Furiously she shakes her head at...