Given the option I would much prefer to die in a government hospital. Not that I have a special affinity for death. But as convention goes, I have to die some day or the other. There is this long tradition of dying and it is hardly any worth trying to break this tradition.
I would prefer to die in a hospital, because it is much neater to die in a hospital than dying outside. There is not an iota of doubt that more people die outside the hospital than inside. And outside the hospital it is all very messy.
Outside the hospital death stalks in every nook and corner. You can be crushed by a bus or taken for an involuntary ride to have your throat slit up, drop in a manhole, be electrocuted standing in a pool of water with a live wire submerged; you can die of a train accident or simply because of a gas leak, or you can have a well publicized glorious chilling death in a war zone while trying to kill other people instead. Least glamorous would be dying in the pavement sitting with a heart attack, with cautious passer by speeding along avoiding a break in their daily routine.
Outside the hospital it is a messy death indeed. If you are run over by a bus they will take you to a chilling morgue and cut you up to prove that you have actually been run over by a bus and not killed by arsenic poisoning or a bullet wound. And then they will make you eat your brain. They will open your skull, pluck out the brain and after a cursory glance dump it inside your already opened up abdomen and sew you up. This is how they punish you for giving them all the trouble of dying outside the hospital. And be sure nobody will notice, least of all your closest ones. They were already in doubt about you not having a brain in the right place, right!
In government hospital you can die rather peacefully—nobody bothering you much. When there are attending staff for 200 patients trying to attend to 20000, there is a very thin chance that you will be attended to even if they are trying their best. At the most you get cursory glance from a hurried doctor, who gives illegible directions to the on duty sister, who promptly forgets the whole thing. So no chance of being much disturbed. You can die in peace. Even the relatives can’t bother you much. At the most they can pester the sisters or beat up the doctors if they have nothing better to do.
And you die due to cardio respiratory failure, whatever the cause. Whether you have a perforated appendix or a renal failure, your death certificate will always declare a cardio respiratory failure. No hassles, no autopsy.
You can’t dream of such peace in corporate hospitals. They start jabbing and poking you as soon as you enter the premises. You are an investment and so long they can prolong your death, they have better returns.
Corporate hospitals will never allow you to die in peace. I am particularly apprehensive about how they try to take possession of every pore of your body. I consider my pores very private and what I do with them—pick them or stuff them, is absolutely my business and very confidential.
In the corporate hospitals, tubes will stick out of every pore of your body to drain off your remaining financial reserves. The deathly silence punctuated by the ticking sounds will remind you that you are almost, but still not there and reassure the authorities that they are successfully prolonging the inevitable and improving their balance sheet. Not that I bother much about what happens to my remaining bank balance after I pass away. My dear and near ones will squander it away anyway without me enjoying any of it.
The ultimate answer to a peaceful death is the government hospital. But there is a catch. Catch 22. When 20000 are queuing up to die in a hospital meant for 200, how do I get in?
