Clinical Judgements

by Claire Rayner

  ‘— and meet,’ J.J. Gerrard went on, ‘a most notable and most senior doctor, a lady obstetrician and gynaecologist, Miss Fay Buckland. The issue will be abortion and the rights of mothers as well as babies. Stay with Probe, ladies and gentlemen — your programme remember, and no one else’s —’

  ‘I take it all back,’ Kate said and giggled into her glass. It was amazing how pleasant the wine tasted, remembering how sour she had thought it when they had given her some before the programme. Now it seemed light and flowery and a perfect match for the way she was feeling. Even the sandwiches seemed worth eating now, for she was ravenous; she had eaten little all day, ever since the morning radio programme she had done which had quite destroyed her appetite. ‘He really is all right, this Angus McSorley man, isn’t he?’

  ‘I told you,’ Oliver said. ‘I know he’s a bit fulsome and it’s not what you’re used to. But people are in this business. It’s the theatrical overtones, I suppose, affecting even sensible journalists. They’re much worse on light entertainment shows — they’d drive you potty there.’

  ‘Are you coming to work here with him then? Or was that just talk?’ He looked uncomfortable for a moment but she was too relaxed now and a little too glittery with wine to pay as much attention as she might have done to the nuances of his mood.

  ‘I thought you liked radio best of all,’ she said. ‘You always said so. Or was it just a case of faute de mieux?’

  ‘Not at all,’ he said a little sharply. ‘I do like radio. Immensely. But he’s offering me a remarkably interesting job. He needs a solid journalist here and I could do the job well —’

  ‘But you wouldn’t be seen, would you? This is J.J.’s programme, isn’t it?’ she said in a moment of shrewdness and he laughed at that, a little ruefully but a laugh nonetheless.

  ‘You can be as sharp as the proverbial, Kate. Yes, that’s the rub. I don’t think I want to be deep background for anyone, even J.J. On City I do my own thing, get my own airtime — I’m pretty autonomous, too. It’s a comfortable way to be. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with it.’

  ‘Then stay there.’

  ‘Money’s better here.’

  ‘Oh, blow money,’ she said. ‘We get on well enough on what we have —’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘We do —’ and then reached for some more wine and as though he had actually tossed a glass full of the cold stuff over her to make her catch her breath she realised she had done it again. Opened the old sore, started the dialogue going again, reminded him of Sonia. She was always needing more money, always complaining that the children needed things, always nudging and pushing at him — and Kate swallowed the rest of her own wine recklessly and held out the glass for a refill.

  ‘Well,’ she said lightly. ‘I dare say you’ll do what you think is best. Oliver, did I do all right?’

  He laughed then. ‘Mahvellous dahling,’ he drawled. ‘Too too mahvellous. Oh, you are funny, Kate. You people who sneer the hardest at showbiz types are really the worst. The first time you get within a sniff of an audience it’s, “How was I, darling, how did I do, darling? Was I super, darling?” Well, you did well enough.’

  She made a face. ‘It’s all right for you. You’re used to this sort of thing. Me, I’m a complete tyro. All I know is that it was the most nerve-wracking thing I’ve ever done. I’d sooner go through my fellowship vivas again, and you can’t say worse than that.’

  He reached out and hugged her and laughed, but it was kinder now. ‘Kate, my love, you were splendid. Dignified and honest and — well, splendid. Lemon must have realised you would be or he was tipped off. I can’t see any other reason for him staying away. If he’d been here you’d have showed him up for the pompous gasbag he is —’

  ‘Believe it or not, I’m a bit sorry for him. Professor Levy says he’s a sick man. Paranoid. Needs psychiatric care. And I must say I begin to agree with him —’

  She lifted her head to look down the room to where Angus McSorley was talking to Jimmy Rhoda, their heads close together. ‘And I suppose I must also say that I now know I’ve been less than fair to your friend Rhoda.’

  ‘Wow! Nothing like a little time in the hot limelight to soften a woman!’ Oliver said and laughed softly. ‘Why, all of a sudden?’

  ‘This other business — the one about Fay Buckland — he handled that exactly right, didn’t he?’

  ‘You mean it was all right for him to run a story about one of Fay Buckland’s patients, not right for him to run one about one of yours?’

  ‘Pig,’ she said equably. ‘No. I don’t mean that. I mean the way that poor woman was being bullied — attempts to buy babies — there are some things that have to be exposed. That was one of them.’

  ‘And the problems of operating on patients who may or may not be exposed to AIDS and may or may not infect others, including hospital staff, and the problems of dealing with patients who demand sex-change operations? They’re different?’

  ‘Stop being so pompous, Oliver! You know bloody well what I mean. And I wish you’d listen to what I say — though thank God it didn’t come up on the programme, and I didn’t have to say it to Gerrard. But I’ll say it again to you — there’s no such thing as sex-change operations, only gender reassignment treatment. You can’t change sex — real sex. Only the appearance of it. So you can’t call the sort of surgery Kim had more than that —’

  ‘A rose is a rose is a rose,’ Oliver said. ‘Answer me. Why is it all right for Jimmy to write an exposé of a woman who is suffering from sub-fertility and who gets so desperate to have a child that she resorts to admittedly unpleasant subterfuges such as trying to buy another woman’s baby, but not all right for him to expose the problem of gender reassignment operations in crowded poverty-stricken hospitals where all sorts of other possibly more deserving cases are on the waiting list?’

  She blinked. ‘You’ll have to say that again. The state I’m in I couldn’t take it all in — you really should stop addressing me like a radio audience —’

  He had the grace to look embarrassed. ‘Well, all right, I’m sorry. But it’s true, isn’t it? What Jimmy did in writing about that Malone woman seems on the face of it to be highly virtuous. The noble knight carrying his lance into battle against plain evil. But that woman isn’t evil any more than you maintain your Kim is evil. She’s just a poor sad creature who couldn’t have what every other woman takes for granted, and when she’s faced with someone who tries to get rid of a baby with an abortion, offers to take it on. Looked at that way, she’s not so wicked, is she? Though I gather she has an unpleasant personality — but that’s no crime. Yet when Jimmy wrote up Kim’s story — at Kim’s own request remember, and for her own profit — you regarded that as sinful in the extreme. Yet to lots of people what she had done was as close to sheer evil as you can get — flying in the face of God and Nature —’

  ‘No!’ Kate was flushed now and standing close to him, staring up into his face, prodding him with one finger to push home the emphasis of her words. ‘Kim is as sick and unhappy as any old man with an enlarged prostate who wakes up umpteen times a night. Her distress may not be the sort most people can empathise with, but that doesn’t make it any the less real and important, and —’

  ‘Put that man down, Kate, you’ll break him!’

  Kate whirled and after a moment smiled widely and held out both hands. ‘Fay, I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you — and how thrilled I am you did so well. You did, you know —’

  Fay, looking as rumpled and messy as ever, grinned at her complacently. ‘I did, didn’t I?’ she said. ‘I’ve been talking to my solicitor on the phone — I told him to watch as soon as I knew I was going to do this damned programme and he called the barrister and he watched too. And they both say the same — after this, it’s very unlikely the DPP will take the matter any further. Those mischievous anti-abortionists will have to shut up and leave us in peace —’

  ‘The day they do you’re in trouble,’ Oliver said dr
yly. ‘Hello, Miss Buckland. Do you remember me? We met at one of the Old East parties last Christmas —’

  ‘Mm? Oh, yes, you’re Kate’s young man, aren’t you? I remember perfectly well — What do you mean, the day they do I’m in trouble? They’re the bane of my life, these people —’

  ‘But you need them. Without them you might not stop and think about what you’re doing —’

  Fay rubbed her head with one hand, managing to make herself look even wilder, if that were possible, than she usually did. ‘Piffle! I think carefully all the time. The difference between me and them, though, is that I think about each individual case. They just go in for their damned blanket condemnations. God, how I hate these absolute moralists! There can’t be any such thing as an absolute morality — it’s a philosophical impossibility. Listen, let me —’ And she was clearly about to launch herself on a long diatribe but Kate jumped in before she could get going.

  ‘How did it happen that you were on the programme?’ she asked. ‘I was so worried. I’d guessed they’d got someone else to be on, and then when I heard Gerrard say it was going to be another Old East issue I thought — well, I’m not sure what I thought. I was afraid they were going to wheel Kim Hynes out. You remember, my reassignment case. It’s the sort of thing she’d love and she’s discharged herself from the ward so — and then when they brought you on I could have cheered — oh, damn!’ She looked deeply flustered then. ‘That was bloody selfish of me. I mean, I’m not glad you’ve got this wretched problem — but I have to admit I was damned grateful they weren’t pushing on Kim’s case —’

  ‘That’s all right,’ Fay said cheerfully. ‘I’d be the same, I dare say. It’s all so silly, all this fuss, isn’t it? Why can’t they trust us? We do the best job we can, we always put our patients first, so why do they niggle away at us like this? I’d be much better off at home reading up on the work I’m doing tomorrow — I’ve got a hell of a long list — instead of wasting my time here. But there it is —’

  ‘But why should we trust you, Miss Buckland?’ Angus McSorley had joined the little group and now he stood and smiled round at them all with that same emollient grin he had worn before, and Kate looked at him a little sharply. She could see him now much more clearly: behind the urbane manner there was a mind and a will that were not to be dismissed easily as mere showbiz exuberance.

  ‘Would you want patients to trust the Goodman Lemons of this world?’ he went on. ‘He’d have turned that patient out of the hospital untreated, because of his own prejudice and ignorance. I know more about HIV, dammit, than he seems to! But he’s been exposed now — partly of course through his own stupidity rather than journalists’ rows, but let that be for the moment — but would you say we ought to trust the likes of him?’

  ‘Heavens no! His sort need watching a lot. And there are one or two others at Old East I’m not too sure about!’ And she slid a wicked little sideways grin at Kate and laughed. ‘You too, Kate? But we’ve got an Ethics Committee to keep an eye on ’em — we muddle through well enough —’

  ‘It’s because muddling through isn’t good enough when it comes to people’s lives, Miss Buckland, that journalists like us do what we do. I know you were furious when Jimmy ran that story this morning, but you must admit that taking it all round it’s done you no harm, has it?’

  ‘I suppose not,’ Fay said, and then shook her head as she caught sight of the clock. ‘Oh, heavens, I’ve wasted enough time on all this. Is it all right if I go? I’m operating at eight o’clock tomorrow morning and I really can’t sit around here getting my head in a fug — see you at Old East, Kate — ’bye all —’ And she was gone in a little flurry of shed scarves and gloves, her rumpled hair bouncing on her neck with the speed of her movements as she pushed her way out of the crowded room.

  ‘Is she always like that?’ Jimmy Rhoda said, amused. He had been standing behind Angus McSorley and now bobbed out of his shadow to grin at Kate. ‘I thought we had a few nutters hanging round Fleet Street but Shadwell seems to have its share.’

  In spite of her new willingness to accede to the suggestion that there was some virtue in Jimmy Rhoda, Kate could not warm to him and she said a little dampeningly, ‘Miss Buckland is a very fine surgeon and a superb clinician. Her concern for her patients is beyond criticism.’

  ‘I’m sure of that. You’ve only got to be with her five minutes to know that she drips with integrity — but is she always in such a tangle and a flap?’

  ‘Most of the time,’ Kate admitted and Oliver grinned.

  ‘Old East is full of the strangest characters, Jimmy,’ he said. ‘If you take this investigation of yours any further you’ll find out. It’s a haven for nutters one way and another —’

  ‘Investigate further?’ Kate said quickly and looked from one to the other. ‘For heaven’s sake, haven’t we had enough? What else can there be to write about? The ingrowing toenails clinic on Fridays perhaps? I’ve been told there’s a somewhat outrageous chiropodist there —’

  ‘Don’t be so scratchy, Kate!’ Oliver said. ‘There’s plenty there yet. I’ve still got my series to finish on the cuts — you’ve got a demo camped out there virtually permanently, and —’

  ‘And you’ve got the Junior Minister for Health among the suffering multitudes as well,’ Jimmy said. ‘Old Saffron. Could be worth doing a bit of poking around there to find out if there’s any naughtiness going on —’

  ‘What sort of naughtiness?’ Kate demanded. ‘How could there be? Just because he’s a Minister doesn’t mean he’ll be ill-treated as a patient —’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of ill-treatment,’ Jimmy said smoothly. ‘I’m just wondering whether the reverse is the case. He’s sitting there, has been for ages, a much-vaunted NHS patient in an NHS ward, but what special privileges does he get? Is he just in an ordinary bed or does he get a nice little side ward all to himself? Does he get the same food as everyone else? The same sort of care? Or does he get the VIP bit to make sure he gets the equivalent of private care, while the DHSS gets the good publicity about having its junior chappie being one of the great unwashed and nobly sitting it out in an NHS dump? Oh, there’s plenty I could deal with there for the Globe, my dear Kate! And I rather think I will, you know. Too good an opportunity to miss. Especially as I’ve got a nice little girlfriend there with as sharp a nose for news as any Fleet Street hackette. You’ll be hearing from me —’ And he tipped his hand to his forehead and slapped Angus and Oliver on the back and turned to go.

  ‘I’ll see you two villains around, no doubt. Keep in touch, Angus. One good story deserves another — you scratch my back and I’ll scratch whichever bit of your anatomy you care to offer. Night all —’ And he went, leaving Kate to stare after him with her forehead a little wrinkled.

  ‘Will he do all that, Oliver?’ she asked after a moment. Oliver, who had been talking to Angus, looked over his shoulder briefly.

  ‘Mm? Oh, I rather think so. You can’t stop Jimmy when he’s got a story in his nose. Your original damned bloodhound, that’s what he is. Listen Angus, I do have a couple of ideas you might like to consider.’

  They moved away from her, heads together, and she filled another glass of wine and stood there sipping it thoughtfully. Around her the room still hummed with activity; in the far corner she could see J.J. Gerrard surrounded by a number of people and apparently holding forth at some length. He caught her glance and lifted one hand and bowed slightly and she smiled back, albeit briefly. She hadn’t liked the man at all, but she had to admire his skill. He had stage-managed the strange debate between herself and an absent Lemon with great skill, making it seem like a deliberate and well-chosen method of developing the argument, instead of what it was, a makeshift way of dealing with the matter in the absence of one of the main protagonists.

  And he had indeed been on her side; he had made it crystal clear to his audience in the studio and, she imagined, the wider television audience as well, that far from behaving badly in the matte
r of Gerald Slattery, Kate had been brave and resourceful, doing exactly what was right for the patient, and caring for him before her own welfare. ‘Whether it is right,’ Gerrard had said smoothly, ‘to treat possible sources of infection of this dreadful plague in ordinary hospitals among innocent people, is a question we will have to address seriously soon, if not on this occasion. But in the meantime,’ he had finished triumphantly, ‘the patient in question is well and has been cured of his life-threatening condition and no one has been hurt.’ And he had led the applause for, ‘Miss Kate Sayers, ladies and gentlemen, a great example of the loving and superb tradition of British medicine at its best.’

  And Kate, revolted by the awful emotive language he had used — ‘plague’, she had thought with deep distaste when he had said it, the man’s a fool; and when he’d gone on about ‘innocent victims’ she could have shouted at him, but had bitten her tongue — but at the same time deeply grateful that Gerald Slattery’s name had not been mentioned, had escaped from the studio, giddy with relief that her ordeal was over. She had sat then in the hospitality room and watched the monitor screen as Fay Buckland had spiritedly defended her own stance in the matter of the late abortion she had performed, and also had castigated the selling of babies to the infertile, and had wanted to cheer aloud. She had been so very much herself, so unstilted, so passionate, that Kate had been even more convinced that her own efforts had been puerile. But, she had told herself pragmatically, it was over now. So what did it matter? And she could not deny the programme had been helpful to her. Goodman Lemon could do her no further harm now, of this she was almost certain.

  Altogether it had been a vintage piece of Probe programming, and now, Kate thought as she watched its anchorman preening among his admirers in his corner, now it’s all over and forgotten and people will put the cat out and put the kettle on for their bedtime cuppas and forget all about it. What a silly fuss over so little. And yet over so much —