A hospice in a small town has one bed and two people waiting for it. Both are dying, both are in pain, and neither will last long at home without round-the-clock nursing their families cannot provide.
One is a retired bus driver with no relatives nearby. The other is the mother of Ruth, the nurse who runs the ward and who, by long-standing practice, decides admissions when the doctors are split.
On every clinical measure the two are equal. There is no tie-breaker in the guidelines, and no one else available to make the call today. Ruth has cared for her mother alone for three years.
If she gives the bed to her mother, she has used a public resource for her own blood. If she gives it to the stranger, she has chosen a man she has never met over the woman who raised her, and she will nurse her mother's death in a back bedroom herself.
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Should she report the fraud?