Doctor On The Boil

by Richard Gordon

  ‘Hello, love,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Sorry I’m late.’

  He ordered a cup of tea for himself and sat down. Muriel said nothing.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘You know what’s up.’

  Terry assumed a look of innocence. ‘Should I?’

  ‘That girl.’

  ‘Which girl?’

  ‘In X-ray.’

  ‘Oh, that girl!’ He smiled. ‘Look, love, I can explain absolutely everything about her–’

  ‘That won’t be necessary. I know everything about it already. It’s all round the hospital. You must be a dimwit, imagining you can pick up a female at the front door in a Rolls-Royce without anyone noticing. I just couldn’t believe it at first. Now I know it’s true. You not only drove her off in a Rolls, but you took her to dinner at the Crécy Hotel.’ Muriel’s lips trembled. ‘And you only take me to fish bars.’

  ‘Where did you get all that from?’ he asked, looking alarmed.

  ‘Dr Grimsdyke told the whole story on a ward-round.’ She produced her handkerchief and started to sniff. ‘Everyone laughed their insides out.’

  ‘Look, Muriel, love, this bird Stella isn’t even talking to me any more.’

  He laid his hand on hers. She snatched it away. ‘I don’t want you to touch me again, Terry, ever. I don’t want you even to look at me, though I suppose you’ll have to in the hospital.’ She added in a crushed voice, ‘And you said you loved me.’

  ‘But I did! I do. That business of Stella was just an aside, an aberration–’

  ‘It’s been difficult enough for me already, hasn’t it? Going steady with you these few months.’

  He paused. ‘Perhaps that’s the point. All this hole-and-corner business. It’s making me nervous. I feel like something out of a spy film, only meeting you in places like this.’

  ‘You know we can’t see each other openly in the hospital,’ she protested impatiently. ‘If my father got to know about it–’

  ‘I can’t see what the fuss is about.’ He was starting to grow annoyed himself. ‘Why should your father object to me? I’m clean. I don’t smoke pot. I haven’t got a black grandmother. I don’t know how to play any noisy instruments. I haven’t been arrested even once.’

  ‘You know what father’s like. He thinks I should keep my mind on my work till I qualify.’

  Terry stirred his cup of tea. ‘Look, love,’ he said at last. ‘That business with the X-ray girl is over and done with. I promise you. I assure you. I’m sorry. Painfully sorry. Can’t I ask you to forgive me? And start all over again where we left off? I didn’t know my own feelings. I only did it for…well, for a change, I suppose. Like all the boys. Even the ones who are engaged. Even some of the ones who are married.’

  ‘Good. Now I know exactly how you’d behave if we had got married.’

  ‘No, I didn’t mean that!’

  She stood up. ‘My brother’s been invited to Ken Kerrberry’s party tonight. I’m going to ask him to take me along.’ Her eyes flashed. ‘Yes, I thought that would get you. Ken knows a pretty groovy crowd, doesn’t he? People from outside the hospital, who wouldn’t cause a lot of complications in the way of making dates. Now I must be off. I have already missed one lecture this morning because of you. And you certainly aren’t worth another.’

  12

  Muriel strode from the café. Terry sat gloomily looking into his tea. His thoughts had become so confused that he was not entirely certain what they were, or if cerebration was proceeding at all. He decided like a good doctor heartlessly to extract the unpleasant truth from the inessentials. He saw first of all that he had been remarkably stupid. He had been in love with Muriel, whom he would much liked to have had as his wife. He had taken a fancy to Stella, whom he would much liked to have had in bed. He supposed glumly that it was a fairly generalized problem. Now he had lost the chance of both.

  ‘Oh, bloody hell,’ he muttered. He threw some coins on the counter and slouched into the street. ‘Bloody women,’ he grumbled.

  Hands stuck in his pockets, he made slowly back to the hospital. The first student he met in the courtyard was Ken Kerrberry. Terry steeled himself to tell the full story.

  ‘Pity,’ said Ken. ‘I was going to ask you along to my party tonight. It’s the cricket club dinner, and I’m suddenly short of men.’

  ‘You’ll never find me voluntarily occupying the same room as either of those birds again,’ said Terry sourly.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Ken told him kindly. ‘Just in case you should think of picking up the strings again, I’ll see Muriel’s pushed on to some unprepossessing slob who’s unlikely to contaminate her in your absence.’

  ‘I’m not interested. Not a bit. You know, Ken, it struck me this last week what I came to St Swithin’s for – to learn medicine, not to chase a lot of birds who don’t appreciate it, anyway.’

  ‘I’m delighted to find that at least one of us in the medical school has some principles.’

  ‘It’s work, boy, from now on. Work! What was it that Sir William Osler told his own students? “Put your emotions in cold storage.” The old fellow was right.’

  ‘Yes, keep your testicles on ice until you qualify. Just think how much better the choice will be then.’

  ‘It’s a blessing in disguise,’ Terry concluded. ‘At least, I can settle down and get some studying done this week-end. I’d almost forgotten the class exam on Monday morning.’

  Having so convinced himself, Terry spent the weekend in his room at the students’ hostel staring at a pile of open textbooks, and occasionally reading a few lines from one of them. On the Monday morning, in short white jacket with stethoscope sprouting from the pocket, he made up the main staircase towards the dean’s wards. His step expressed his usual determination. The dean might once have been his prospective father-in-law, but all that could be forgotten. The only item of importance now was not to let the bloody little man bamboozle him.

  When Terry’s turn came to enter the side-room, the dean looked up from his baize-topped table with a smile. He was in a good mood that morning. The prospect of examining students always cheered him more than the prospect of a week-end’s golf.

  ‘Well, now, you’re Mr… ’

  ‘Summerbee, sir.’

  ‘Of course, of course. I see you almost every day. I shall be forgetting my own name next. Well, Mr Summerbee, what shall we start off with?’ The dean rubbed his hands at the delightful problems he had in store. ‘Just step over to the viewing-box in the corner and tell me what you make of that X-ray.’

  Terry went across to the illuminated screen. X-ray of a chest, he saw. He inspected it long and thoughtfully.

  ‘Well, Mr Summerbee?’

  Terry scratched his chin. Now isn’t that typical of a dirty old sod like the dean? he decided. Luckily, he’d heard in the medical school how this nasty little trick was pulled on the students year after year.

  ‘You want my diagnosis, sir?’

  ‘That would be the general idea,’ the dean told him coldly.

  ‘Very well, sir. Normal, sir.’

  The dean put his fingers together. ‘Come, come. Surely you can do better than that?’

  Terry gave a slight, confident smile. ‘Perhaps you’re expecting me to recognize some outlandish condition in the X-ray, sir?’

  ‘You may be getting a little warmer.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. I can’t oblige. I think it’s a normal X-ray, and I’m sticking to my opinion.’

  The dean gave a brief sigh. ‘Thank you, Mr Summerbee. That will be all.’

  ‘But, sir –!’ Terry looked amazed. ‘What about the rest of the exam?’ An idea struck him. ‘Or have I done so well, no more is necessary?’

  ‘You have failed, Summerbee.’

  ‘Failed?’

  ‘If you are unable at this stage of your career to recognize when a radiograph of the chest is grossly abnormal, you had better spend the next three months in the X-ray museum.’

  ‘But it is n
ormal, sir.’

  ‘Good morning, Mr Summerbee. Please do not waste more of my time.’

  ‘It is. I insist you look at it, sir.’

  The dean rose angrily. ‘Very well. If you wish to start a clinical argument with me, young man, I shall be delighted to put you in your place. Furthermore, you do not address members of the consultant staff in that peremptory manner. I must ask you to come to my office at two o’clock on that score alone. Anyone not totally blind, even a seaside snapshot photographer, could tell you that X-ray is most certainly not–’

  The dean stopped. He peered. He leant forward.

  ‘How strange.’ He stroked his chin. ‘Do you know, Mr Summerbee, you happen to be quite correct. Amazing. This X-ray shows a normal chest. Absolutely normal. Just look – heart, lungs, diaphragm perfect. From the bone-structure, a man of latish middle-age. Rather heavy flesh shadow – the patient was somewhat disgustingly overweight. So there we are. Yes, my boy. Splendid. Quite a test, I always think, to make a diagnosis of nothing in an examination, when something difficult and even unusual is expected? And yet…’ He looked round anxiously. ‘I distinctly remember, this time I decided not to play that little dodge. Where’s the X-ray envelope?’

  ‘The patient’s name is marked on the film, sir.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course. I always seem to forget that. Everything is packets and labels these days. Let me see – Oh God!’ cried the dean. ‘Oh horror! Oh, Sir Lancelot!’

  13

  Sir Lancelot was finishing his lunch in the hospital refectory when Harry the porter came hurrying across the long room crowded with chattering, eating students.

  ‘Sir Lancelot – the dean wants you in his office. It’s urgent.’

  ‘Good God, what’s the matter?’ The surgeon noticed the man’s alarmed expression. ‘Has he perforated, or something?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir. But he sounded proper worried when he gave me the message.’

  ‘Oh, it’s probably something about my moving in with them today.’ Sir Lancelot drained his coffee. ‘Very well, I’ll put him out of his misery.’

  He found the dean alone in his room, bouncing agitatedly on the edge of his chair. ‘Ah! Lancelot. Thank God. Yes. Well. How are you feeling?’

  The surgeon gave a broad grin. ‘I might say, my dear Dean, that I have never felt better in my life than at this particular moment.’

  ‘Splendid!’ said the dean heartily.

  Sir Lancelot noisily whisked a pinch of snuff into his nostrils. ‘What’s splendid about it?’ he asked less cheerfully. ‘You told me yourself that’s exactly what I had to expect. A euphoric feeling of well-being – your exact words. Then in six months…woomph.’

  ‘Woomph,’ repeated the dean weakly, mopping his forehead with his handkerchief.

  ‘Though I suppose now it’s down to twenty-five weeks,’ Sir Lancelot calculated gloomily. ‘I say, Dean, are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I’ve just my usual worries–’

  ‘Perhaps my disease is catching?’ Sir Lancelot suggested with some enthusiasm. ‘You might have it, too.’

  ‘That would be impossible. From you, I mean. You see, you haven’t got it.’

  ‘My dear Dean,’ said Sir Lancelot gently. ‘I appreciate your humanity in trying to leave me with a little hope, but I assure you I am resigned to my fate. There is no need to pull the wool over my eyes – even if you could.’

  ‘But you haven’t got it. It was all a mistake. A clerical error.’

  Sir Lancelot frowned. ‘Pray explain.’

  ‘The X-rays got muddled up.’ The dean miserably indicated two sets of radiographs on his desk. ‘I wanted a real stinker for the students in my class exam this morning. So I asked the X-ray department to look out something from the museum. I suggested Asiatic diseases. Rare ones.’

  ‘H’m,’ said Sir Lancelot.

  ‘But the girl in X-ray put the films in the wrong envelopes. I thought they were the ones I’d had specially taken of you.’ He drummed his fingers on his desk. ‘Mistakes will happen,’ he added in a faint voice.

  ‘Good God!’ roared Sir Lancelot. He sprang to his feet and started pacing the office. His expression, which a moment ago recalled a bear who had swallowed a honeypot, now indicated the creature had ingested the bees as well. ‘How in the name of sanity can such malpractice, such muddle, such a bleeding cock-up, occur in a well-organized place like St Swithin’s? It’s as bad as cutting off the wrong leg.’

  ‘I suppose the girl was lackadaisical, as they all are in these times,’ the dean continued uncomfortably. ‘She’s the rather flighty sort, I understand from my house physician. And of course inexperienced, being one of the young radiography pupils.’

  ‘What’s this witless female’s name?’

  The dean glanced at his desk-jotter. ‘A Miss Gray.’

  Sir Lancelot grunted. ‘And she condemned me to death.’

  ‘She’ll have to go, of course. No doubt about that. I’ll see the senior radiologist directly.’

  ‘Then what was my blasted cough due to?’

  The dean looked lost.

  ‘I know!’ Sir Lancelot slapped his waistcoat pocket. ‘I was trying a new brand of snuff.’

  ‘Look on the bright side, Lancelot. You may have been condemned to death, but now you are reprieved. You will live, doubtless to the ripest of old ages. Surely that fills your heart with joy? Why, you have nothing else whatever to worry about in the world.’

  Sir Lancelot stopped pacing. He stroked his beard. ‘I wouldn’t be too certain about that.’

  ‘But I don’t follow? You’re perfectly healthy. Quite as fit as the entire St Swithin’s rugger team.’

  ‘Do you know where I’ve been this past week?’

  ‘With your solicitors.’

  ‘No. With the matron in Le Touquet.’

  Sir Lancelot sat down again.

  ‘Ah, tut,’ said the dean.

  ‘Look here,’ Sir Lancelot continued earnestly. ‘You and I are lifelong friends. There are no secrets between us, or precious few. I can speak frankly. The matron and I lived together in a small hotel as man and wife. We caught the car ferry plane back to Lydd only this morning.’

  ‘Well, you got something out of the mix-up, anyway,’ said the dean brightly. ‘I mean,’ he added quickly, ‘I’m sure it was quite excusable under the circumstances.’

  ‘You don’t understand–’

  ‘Oh! That reminds me of something,’ the dean interrupted. He made a pencilled note on his desk jotter, Don’t forget with Josephine tonight.

  ‘What are you doing, man, taking down the evidence?’

  ‘No, no, just a little domestic detail.’

  ‘Dean, I can confess to you. I am conducting something of an affaire de coeur with Tottie Sinclair. I implore you to keep it dark in a place like this, with everyone always sniffing for the stink of scandal. But Tottie only agreed to come away with me because…well, because I told her I would have married her, had I been going to live.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think I should let that worry you,’ the dean told him airily. ‘The times have long passed when a gentleman felt in honour bound to marry a lady just because he’d…he’d…I mean, people are doing it now all the time all over the place.’

  ‘It is good of you to imbue me with such principles. But there is a little more to it. In Le Touquet last night I did in fact invite her to become my wife, regardless of my perilous state of health. She accepted.’

  ‘Why on earth did you do that?’

  ‘Firstly, my accountants seemed to think marriage advisable. Secondly…’ Sir Lancelot took another pinch of snuff. ‘She’s bloody good value, once she sets her mind to it.’

  ‘Then why don’t you marry the matron?’ the dean suggested. ‘After all, she’s not a bad-looking lass.’

  ‘My dear fellow, don’t be stupid,’ Sir Lancelot told him shortly. ‘A man of my age marrying a much younger woman really would be dead in six months. That week in Le Touquet
was about all I could manage at a stretch. We’ve seen that sort of situation in practice time and time again. Even the laity know it well enough – businessmen dishing their wives and marrying their secretaries and collecting a coronary on their honeymoons.’ He paused. ‘Besides, I don’t think I like her all that much,’ he added reflectively. ‘She isn’t my cup of tea at all. I was just taken by the way she waggles her glutei.’

  ‘Perhaps you could tell her you didn’t mean it?’

  ‘Dean, I am not wholly bereft of integrity. Besides, it might get in the newspapers.’

  ‘I know,’ the dean added enthusiastically. ‘You could go away to Wales and pretend you’d dropped dead, anyway.’

  ‘What happens when I come back next summer for the Lord’s Test Match?’

  ‘Then for the life of me, I really can’t see what’s to be done.’

  ‘Nothing’s to be done. Nothing whatever. I shall marry Tottie, that’s all. I trust you will act as best man? A registry office I feel will suffice. Somewhat early in the morning, before the crowds are about.’

  There was a knock on the door.

  ‘Come in!’

  Terry Summerbee’s face appeared. The dean looked at his watch. ‘My dear Mr Summerbee, there is now no need to appear before me for insubordination, as I directed. The situation has resolved itself.’

  ‘Might I have a word with you anyway, sir?’

  ‘I’m very busy–’

  ‘I must be on my way.’ Sir Lancelot rose. ‘My new status as a more permanent member of the human race means a good deal of urgent work. I know you, don’t I?’ he demanded in the doorway.

  ‘Yes, sir. You lent me your car, sir.’

  ‘Must have been mad,’ murmured Sir Lancelot, leaving the room.

  ‘Well, well, Mr Summerbee, what is it?’ the dean asked impatiently.

  ‘About those X-rays, sir. It’s all my fault.’

  ‘No fault about it. I told you in the ward, you were perfectly right. It was a normal chest. I trust you don’t want it in writing?’

  ‘I mean it was my fault they got muddled, sir. You see, I was in the dark-room with Miss Gray while she was sorting them.’