These foolish things [antikvár]

The Truth will set you free. (Swami Purna) Muriel Donnelly, an old girl in her seventies, was left in a hospital cubicle for forty-eight hours. She had taken a tumble in Peckham High Street and was admitted with cuts, bruises and suspected concussion. Two days she lay in A & E, untended, the blood stiffening on her clothes. It made the headlines. TWO DAYS! screamed the tabloids. Two days on a trolley, old, neglected, alone. St lude's was besieged by reporters, waylaying nurses and shouting into their mobiles, didn't they know the things were forbidden? Photos showed her lolling grey head and black eye. Plucky pensioner, she had survived the Blitz for this? Her image was beamed around the country: Muriel Donnelly, the latest victim of the collapsing NHS, the latest shocking statistic showing that the British health system, once the best in the world, was disintegrating in a welter of under-funding, staff shortages and collapsing morale. A hand-wringing why-oh-why piece appeared in the Daily Mail, an internal investigation was ordered. Dr Ravi Kapoor was interviewed. He was weary but polite. He said Mrs Donnelly had received the appropriate care and that she was waiting for a bed. He didn't mention that he would kill for an hour's sleep. He didn't mention that since the closure of the Casualty department at the neighbouring hospital his own, St lude's, had to cope with twice the number of drunks, drug overdoses and victims of pointless violence; that St lude's would soon be closing because its site, in