Journey 4 of 9 · Day two · 15:00 · Alder General, floor by floor

The Hospital

What risks will you accept?

Ten past three on day two, and the river is climbing Alder General a floor at a time. Six hundred people are in the lower wards. Bram, the engineer, counts two ways out by the lives they save; the matron counts the same two ways in her bed book by the deaths. Then you go up the one stair with her: fever medicine for the camps, a cracked valve and Otto, the last free oxygen bottle on Ward Six, a mask on the top ward, and at eight o’clock the leg on the table is yours.

Seven calls about risk and about how it is counted, floor by floor until dark. Where you take the gamble, you spin the wheel, and what happened stays happened.

Play The Hospital →Free. No account. Your place is saved on your device.

How it opens

The first scene, in the game’s own words. In the game each line is written into the drawing as you tap.

1. Ten past three, the lower wards: six hundred people are still down here, in beds and on trolleys, and the water is at the doors.
2. The lifts are dead, and the one stair up is too narrow for a bed.
3. Bram, the engineer, has his pencil behind his ear and two ways out, and the order goes to the matron to sign.
4. The boats run from the ambulance bay until it floods, and two hundred people are saved by them, for sure.
5. The other is the covered way up to the hill: one chance in three that all six hundred are saved, and two in three that nobody is.
6. “I have checked it three times,” Bram says, “those are the odds, and there is no third way.”

Which one do I take to her?

The seven calls

Each call is a different thing at a different place in the hospital, as the water climbs from the lower wards to the theatre, and one of them turns the question on you.

1. The lower wards
2. The bed book
3. The medicine that harms
4. The oxygen store
5. The last oxygen bottle
6. Take it back
7. Your own leg

The long night

When you have finished the journey you can play it whole: all twelve calls. These are the other five.

• What Bram asks
• The plant room steps
• What the matron asks
• The girl on the radio
• What Bram admits

It happened

The valley is invented. This is not: The Challenger launch decision: would you have signed?

What the research says

This journey adapts questions that have been studied. These pages say what the studies found, with their sources.

• The framing effect: lives saved or lives lostThe same two plans, described once by the lives they save and once by the deaths they cause.
• The identifiable victim effect: one voice against manyOne named person moves us more than a number, however large the number.
• Omission bias: the harm you cause and the harm you allowA medicine that kills fewer children than the disease it prevents, and why many still refuse it.

Play The Hospital →Free. No account. Your place is saved on your device.

Next journey: The Radio When is a lie right?