Dr. Auschlander quotes from St. Elsewhere

I'm not a child to be clucked over and cared for! I'm not an invalid to be whispered about behind my back! I know better than anyone what's going on inside my body! Please, have the decency to pay me that respect! I've treated hundreds of cases like mine before!

My apologies to Hippocrates but sometimes the best cure for all is death.

I'm 72 years old now and dying of cancer. Ironic, isn't it? A distinguished liver man like myself betrayed by his own liver. With the radiation and the chemotherapy I'd have a slightly better chance, but the nausea, diarrhea, stomach cramps... I'd be septicemic from the skin infections...The slightest cold could easily turn into pneumonia and finish me off in a week...

Dr. Westphall

What are you going to do?

I'm not sure.

Dr. Westphall

You know what I think?

Tell me.

Dr. Westphall

You should see a doctor.

Now, I know I'm going to die soon and there isn't anything anyone can do about it. But I'd give everything I own, if I could have just one more day... one more minute... to enjoy everything my family has meant to me. And that's why I know... that what you're doing to yourself is absolutely wrong.

Yeah, it's easy for you to say but I bet if you died 20 years ago, you'd have still lived a better life than I ever will.

Life has dealt us both a bad card but you have many more left in the deck and it's only a fool who wouldn't play out his hand.

Dr. Westphall

You know, we spend so much time in this place dealing with all kinds of sadness that when we get a chance like this to celebrate a new life, it becomes even more cherished. And now that you're all here I want to thank you for your skill, your dedication and your compassion.

A toast. To life!

To life!

Dr. Morrison

You said yourself it was a textbook case of leukemia.

We're treating a little boy here, not a textbook.

I'm what you call an agnostic. Do you know what that is?

Someone who doesn't want to be an atheist.

Luther Hawkins

Excuse me, Dr. Craig.

Yeah?

Luther Hawkins

We lost one of your patients, Florence Hufnagel.

Where is she?

Luther Hawkins

In here, on her way to the morgue.

What happened?

Luther Hawkins

Cardiac arrest.

Why haven't her test results been charted? We have ward clerks up the wazoo, but you can't get a simple blood test back from the lab before high noon?

Luther Hawkins

Well, the doctors didn't seem to know what caused the heart attack. Though my guess is it was brought on by the bed.

Dr. Westphall

The bed, what bed?

Luther Hawkins

Well, Miss Hufnagel was found... Well, she had been swallowed up by the bed.

[Auschlander laughs as all four exit the elevator] I don't think it's so damn funny.

I'm not laughing, I'm really not. It's tragic.

Wait till the hospital gets slapped with a lawsuit for shoddy equipment.