Emily O'Reilly

And four days in a row, he had had nil by mouth, you know, over the bed to say you can't be fed.

And one day he rang me and he said, Emily, they forgot to reorder my lunch.

You know, once they heard that the operation had been cancelled.

So could you bring me in a Pret-a-Manger sandwich?

And I can't pass by a Pret-a-Manger cafe in London now without thinking about him.

So that was it and he couldn't, he had the shoulder break, he had the leg thing, he was in a wheelchair, he lost four stone in the space of six months to a year.

He was withering away and still nobody could say what was fundamentally wrong.

wrong with him and how it was going to be fixed, because everybody was happy with their own little silo piece.

But collectively, there was no one individual, no medic looking at the bigger picture, if indeed he could have been saved at that point.

Well, he did not accept it.

He would not accept it.

I mean, even a month or so when I sort of said something that might have entered that area, he said, I mean, I'm not dying.

You know, I said, no, it's OK, Brian.

Nobody's told me that you are.

Nobody had.

I tried to.

I didn't want to.

The first person to tell him he was dying was...

The doctor, a random doctor who went to see him when he was admitted after a collapse in his nursing home and who very bristly said to him, by the way, if your heart fails, we're not going to resuscitate you because you're in too bad shape.

And that would have been the first time that anybody had indicated to Brian that he was dying and he died one hour later.