Goldblatt's Descent

'But I just killed someone!''I don't know if I'd shout about it if I were you.' Malcolm Goldblatt paused. 'Look, you didn't kill him. He had a malignancy, didn't he? It was waiting to happen. You just ... helped.''Malcolm, they'll strike me off!''They can't strike you off. You're still a House Officer. They haven't struck you on yet...' Contrary, obstinate but brilliant, Dr. Goldblatt is on his last chance in the NHS. As the new but temporary registrar of an anonymous London hospital, he needs to prove to himself, and the medical establishment, that he can fall in line - but Malcolm Goldblatt has made and almost destroyed a career by doing exactly the opposite. From Dr. Madic, all Balkan haughtiness, tight skirts and unresolved sexual issues to Dr. Burton, all knife-in-the-back ambition, Goldblatt finds that this hospital is frighteningly familiar to those he has temped in before; dysfunctional and bureaucratic, a place in which caring for patients is secondary to caring for business. As Goldblatt descends into the medical chaos of floor five, overseen by the fragile yet monstrous ego of Professor Small, he slowly sinks to the point of no return, where self-abnegation is killing him, and self-destruction seems like the only remedy.