The Physician's Confession

IV. The Physicians’ Confession said they did their best. They said they didn’t know. But in every autoclaved room, in every logbook and coded file, a shadow kept its shape. The doctors who once called themselves saviors sat beneath fluorescent confessionals, their hands trembling, not from illness but memory. They had worn white coats like armor, believed in the purity of purpose, believed in the oath: Not harm. But harm, like infection, doesn’t always announce itself. At first, it was easy to believe that the system would correct itself. That the next shipment would be pure.The rumors were exaggerations from frightened families and overworked nurses. They told themselves that progress required risk, that the few must fall for the many to live..And so they sterilized their conscience they sterilized their tools, be, believing they could cut cleanly through the moral wound. But .But numbers grew. Tgrewals multiplied. And the charts—those tidy maps of suffering—began to resemble prayers.