The support for daughters offered by palliative care is based on the patient’s autonomy, involving an open discourse around death that is approaching. In order to deploy their offer to hospital, palliative care professionals want to formalise entry into the palliative phase so that it is better anticipated and coordinated, but also more explicit to the patient. This ‘passage’ raises important challenges, particularly in terms of interprofessional collaboration between a mobile team of palliative care and those on the front line of a hospital, while at the same time requiring ‘reinforced’ patient support around the announcement of the end of life. In this article we look closely at certain treatments (opiaceae, sedatives used in palliative sedations), as they generate significant tensions and negotiations to accompany the end of life. More specifically, the diverted uses of these substances — which make it possible to speed up, postpone or even alter the end of life — tell us what end-of-life care in hospital means for patients, their relatives and healthcare professionals respectively. The relationship to opioids and sedatives, acting on the remaining time, points to the dilemmas and difficulties involved in accompanying a conscientious and responsible end of life advocated by palliative care.