My registrar is not impressed that I'm thinking about becoming a psychiatrist. "They're a bunch of boring, pretentious weirdos with no life who never answer their bleeps," he says.

As he speaks, the cardiac arrest call goes out and we dash off to cubicle six. Actually that's not true. The cardiac arrest bleep goes off and I and the nurses dash off to cubicle six, while the registrar gives me his special "it's good experience for you to run arrests" look.

The medical emergency we are faced with is as follows. The 90-year-old man on home oxygen (who's had three strokes and two previous heart attacks) we needn't worry about for the moment, I can promise you: because half-dead 90-year-old people with no quality of life who've decided to die can make the final push perfectly well on their own without any more broken ribs from the cardiac arrest team; because my hands will do the thinking in a resus quite happily without a brain until I have a heart trace to look at; and because the Good Lord, we can safely assume, has finally spotted all the dignified death opportunities he heartlessly neglected before this guy became bedbound, mute, braindead and stuck in an oxygen mask all day. And you can't argue with the big guy.

No. The real medical emergency in this room, apart from my crushing indifference to death (I promise you that I'm perfectly competent and a very nice guy, but this guy's never coming back and it's going to be cruel trying), is the surgical house officer. "I was just trying to do some blood gases," she weeps. (She is properly crying.) "And he went blue." Well he's grey now, I think to myself. So get on with the chest compressions. Who's the house officer around here anyway?

But she can't move. Which is a shame, because she's right in front of the heart monitor. "Can you stand to one side, please. I can't see the monitor." That's not me speaking, by the way, that's the Advanced Life Support course instructor that lives in my head. My real brain doesn't start working until I see the trace, and it's a shockable trace: "Stand clear."

I look at the punter. He looks like a nice guy, even through the stroke. You can always tell by the time they're 90. It would be nice, consequently, if we could avoid breaking any ribs until the medical registrar gets here to tell us to stop on grounds of futility.

I shock. The house officer winces. This is very poor. Three shocks, no response, big surprise. In case I haven't mentioned it eight million times already, they never come back unless they're previously young, fit and healthy, so don't believe everything you see on telly.

"Carry on CPR," says the ALS course instructor in my head, using my mouth. I look at the house officer pointedly. The best way to terminate a house officer freakout, from my experience of having them, is to get on with it. She is frozen. Apart from the sobbing.

Now check how holistic I am. My plan was that the teeny house officer did the chest compressions, and then we wouldn't have to break any ribs before the medical registrar got here to tell us to stop this charade. Unfortunately, the fear-ridden statue that now quakes before me means that the new, super-keen A&E nurse is going to do the chest compressions. He's built like a brick shithouse, and ribs are cracking audibly. My master plan is foiled.

And so for the finale: the medical reg arrived, then we stopped, then the patient was properly dead, and then the pips went for midnight and it was 2002. So there we go. The house officer, who now goes to bed at midnight (not in my day, etc) buggered off, and I smoked a fag and then saw seven billion drunks with eight zillion sprained ankles, had a poo and went to bed in daylight. Good night.