I called to deliver the bad news that the patient, their father, had died. As medical students we are trained on how to do this, but that never seems to make it any easier. His daughter started wailing a cry I now know after my year and a half as a doctor is distinct from any cry I had ever heard. It is the cry reserved only for a family member when you tell them their loved one has died. A cry so deep that you cannot escape the full sensation behind your eyes and tightening of your throat, no matter how many times you hear it. A cry that amplified when I had to reiterate that she was not allowed to see her father due to hospital policy, a policy I understand in theory, but one that is hard to imagine I would comply with had it been my own father.

I got off the phone and placed the “discharge as deceased” order to notify our admitting department of the death and to start the process of taking the body to the morgue. The clerk came up to the resident room to have me fill out the death certificate and I asked him how many he had done today.

“This is the eighth one.”