The End of the Corridor

Halfway through the conversation with Director Shi, a woman walked in, looking for Director Shi. She carried herself with an easy confidence, speaking in a bright voice that immediately filled the room with warmth. When she learned we had been discussing hospice care, she smiled and, without hesitation, joined our conversation. She had come to the hospital to care for her eighty-two-year-old father, who had recently been admitted to the hospice ward.

She surprised me by asking about my own plans before I had finished asking about hers. When she heard that I hoped to study medicine, she nodded enthusiastically. "I really admire people who choose medicine," she said. "I mean that sincerely." She admitted that when she was young, becoming a doctor had never crossed her mind. Life had simply carried her forward. It wasn't until she reached her forties, when illness began to affect one family member after another, that she realized how powerless she felt. "We knew nothing," she said. "Looking back, I always wonder why I didn't have the courage to study medicine when I was twenty." 

The conversation shifted when I asked about the patient she was caring for. "My father," she answered. He had been diagnosed with lung cancer more than seven years earlier. The family had travelled to Shanghai for surgery, which had initially gone well. Doctors believed he might live another five years. Instead, he survived seven. She smiled faintly as she said it, as if grateful for every extra year they had been given. "But after surgery," she sighed, "he only quit smoking for six months." Eventually the cancer returned, spreading to his other lung. There were no more curative options left. "We've accepted that," she said quietly. Unlike many families, they had chosen not to hide the diagnosis. Her father had been well educated, an engineer who once designed technical improvements at work. He read every pathology report himself. "We never lied to him," she explained. "We just told him gently."

What proved harder than discussing cancer was living with the person he had always been. She described him as intelligent, stubborn, and proud. Throughout his life he had been kind to colleagues and friends, but demanding toward his wife. Now, even as illness confined him to a hospital bed, that pattern had not changed. "My mother has suffered the most," she admitted. Her mother, nearly eighty herself and living with hypertension, diabetes, and high cholesterol, remained at his bedside day and night. The children rotated through the ward whenever work allowed, but their father wanted only his wife. "If she leaves for a few minutes," the daughter said, "he gets angry." She spoke without bitterness, only with the resignation of someone who had spent years trying to understand a marriage that belonged to another generation. "They married in the 1960s," she said. "Back then, men thought differently. My father always believed he knew better because he was educated. He called her “stupid” “pig”. My mother never argued. Sometimes I blame her for tolerating him for so many years—but then I realize they simply belonged to a different time." 

She laughed softly. "We've even told my mother that we'd buy her a separate apartment if she wanted one. But she'd never leave him. They've spent a lifetime together. They argue constantly, but they can't bear to be apart." As she spoke, it became clear that caring for a terminally ill parent meant far more than managing medications or hospital admissions. It meant carrying decades of family history into a hospital room.

When I asked how her father was coping emotionally, she paused, "He knows." He knew the cancer could no longer be cured. Sometimes he accepted it quietly. Other times he became angry, refusing treatment or trying to climb out of bed despite barely being able to breathe. Afterwards he blamed everyone around him—for not curing him, for not understanding him. "We are caught in a really difficult position. We feel heartbroken over his suffering, but we do not know how to comfort him. I think he's just scared," she sighed, "Getting angry is the only way he knows how to let it out."

For the family, the uncertainty was almost harder than the disease itself. "We don't know what comes next," she confessed, "I've never been through this before. I don't know what the final days will look like. That’s what I asked the Director earlier. Even she cannot provide a definitive answer; it is impossible to predict potential late-stage complications. What began as a localized lesion in the chest could cause many issues involving the blood vessels or the brain—there are simply too many variables." 

It was that uncertainty that had led them to the hospice ward. She described how, after years of repeated hospital admissions, another physician had recommended transferring her father there instead of pursuing further aggressive treatment. They agreed almost immediately. "The philosophy here makes sense to us," she said. "They don't try to prolong suffering. They focus on comfort." Since admission, morphine had eased his pain. He could finally lie flat without gasping for breath. His appetite returned in small amounts. Most importantly, he seemed calmer. "I wish every hospital had a place like this," she said. "People think intensive care is always the answer, but sometimes what patients really need is peace."

By then we had been talking for much longer than either of us expected. What had begun as a chance meeting had turned into a conversation about medicine, caregiving, marriage, aging, and the invisible burden carried by families. Before leaving, she returned once more to the subject of medicine. "If you decide to become a doctor," she told me, "don't give up because it's hard," she smiled, "The road is long, but one doctor can change an entire family's life." 

As we said goodbye, she walked back toward her father's room. Watching her disappear into the corridor, I realized that throughout my time in the hospital I had heard many patients describe physical pain. Yet it was often their families who carried the quieter burden—the weight of making impossible decisions, of watching someone they loved slowly change, and of trying, despite everything, to make the end of a life feel as gentle as the years that had come before.