Napalm.(Room for a view)

I have never smelled napalm, and I pray I never will. But I have never arrived on the wards in the morning without being reminded of it, or rather of Robert Duvall's famous quip from Apocalypse Now. But the smell of the wards in the morning is the smell of life itself, the smell of human excrement.

And so perhaps on the morning in question the pungent odour was the only familiar to which I could cling; certainly, I remember it vividly. I was freshly turned out in my crisp white clinical jacket (not coat), timidly and confusedly attempting to navigate through one of my city's crumbling teaching hospitals in search of a patient whose name has long since escaped me.

It was the start of second-year medicine. At home I enjoyed parading in front of mirrors in my little white jacket, but now I was nervous and perspiring, conspicuous and clumsy in my cloak of no colour but many implications (to those who know). Pockets bulging, clipboard in hand and bag of diagnostic paraphernalia slung awkwardly over my shoulder, I entertained the vain hope that perhaps the patient might already have been discharged. But that would have been too easy, and easy isn't always best.

My assignment: CPA, comprehensive patient assessment, wherein neophyte not-yet-clerks interview, examine and "present" patients to a group of classmates and an attending, the patients having been semi-coerced into …