"[explaining his prison barcode tattoo, to Ripley] After my student years, despite the fact that I had become secretly addicted to morphine, I was considered to be most promising. A man with a future. Then during my first residency, I did a thirty-six hour stretch on an ER. So I went out and I got more than a little drunk. Then I got called back. Boiler had blown on a fuel plant, and there were thirty casualties... and eleven of them died. Not as a result of the accident, but because I prescribed the wrong dosage of painkiller. And I got seven years in prison and my licence reduced to a 3C. [pause] At least I got off the morphine."