'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. 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...'

Dr Malcolm Goldblatt has one last chance in the NHS. As the new but temporary senior registrar of a London hospital, he needs to prove to himself, and the medical establishment, that he can toe the corporate line. But this new hospital is all rather depressingly familiar - from Dr Madic's ferocious aversion to work, Dr Burton's knife-in-the-back ambition, right up to the pathologically insecure yet monstrously vain Professor Small, it is an environment of short tempers, back-biting and office politics - a place in which caring for patients seems secondary to caring for professional reputations. As Goldblatt attempts to hold on to his job in the medical chaos of Floor Five he finds himself sinking dangerously towards a point of no return, where it feels as though self-abnegation is killing him and self-destruction seems like the only remedy...

Michael Honig trained in medicine and worked at a number of London's teaching hospitals. He lives in London with his wife and son.