The year that Berowne spends in hospital does not exactly have a three act structure, though he supposes he’s following one of two arcs – either his humor shall prove useful in the face of death and he’ll get the girl, or it shall be exposed as foolish vanity and he’ll leave it behind.

But he doesn’t think about this most of the time when it’s all about the day to day, a plodding but fulfilling sort of work. He’s managed to make patients laugh, and shed bitter tears at their parting, and gotten reasonably good at rolling lint when a nurse asks him to, and it’s not a bad life at all, really.