I walked into Diane's room and discovered that she had gained a new room mate in the afternoon I was away. There were a few visitors at the new patient's bed. I gathered from their conversation that she had been coughing "very badly" and "non-stop at night". I asked Diane if she knew what her room mate was warded for and she said, "She is coughing up blood."

Only in Malaysia can this happen. Even I, a non-medical staff, can realise that coughing up blood may signify some bad news to come and that it may be contagious. How then can they place a person with a potentially contagious illness with another with a weak immune system?? I walked over to the nurses station and asked, "What are you doing????????" and the staff nurse actually tried to worm her way around by saying, "Don't worry, she hasn't got H1N1 and we checked her, she hasn't got TB." Oh yes? What tests have you made? "We have," trailing off with "they haven't return yet." Irresponsible, that is what. Unadulterated pure stupidity is what. How can you?????

We got our change of room half an hour after I arrived.

It was not even the new patient's fault but she was subject to the offence of our quick evacuation of the room though we tried to be as discreet as possible.

But what if it had been other people far more pleasant than I and her cough is TB after all?