As a young woman she had been too naïve to see evil in others. The young, Mma Ramotswe thought, believe the best of people, or don’t imagine that people they know, people of their own age, can be cruel or worthless. And then they find out, and they see what people can do, how selfish they can be, how ruthless in their dealings. The discovery can be a painful one, as it was for her, but it is one that has to be made. Of course it did not mean that one had to retreat into cynicism; of course it did not mean that. Mma Ramotswe had learned to be realistic about people, but this did not mean that one could not see some good in most people, however much that might be obscured by the bad. If one persisted, if one gave people a chance to show their better nature, and—and this was important—if one was prepared to forgive, then people could show a remarkable ability to change their ways. Except for Note Mokoti, of course. He would never change, even though she had forgiven him, that final time, when he had come to see her and asked her for money and had shown that his heart, in spite of everything, was as hard as ever.
Boitelo was looking at her. Mma Ramotswe thought that the nurse must be wondering what she was thinking. She would have no idea that the woman before her, the traditionally built detective with her cup of rapidly cooling bush tea before her, was dreaming about human nature and forgiveness and matters of that sort.
“I’m sorry, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Sometimes my mind wanders. Something you said made my mind wander. Now it is back. Now it is listening to you again.”
“One of the things that I didn’t do,” continued Boitelo, “was to take the blood pressure of patients. All nurses can do that. There is an instrument which you wind round the patient’s arm and then you pump a bulb. You will have had your blood pressure taken, Mma? You will know what I am talking about.”
Mma Ramotswe did. Her blood pressure had been taken and had caused her doctor to say something to her about trying to keep her weight down. She had tried for a short time, and somehow had failed. It was difficult. Sometimes doctors did not know how difficult it was. Traditionally built doctors did, of course, but not those young thin doctors, who had no feeling for tradition.
“My blood pressure was a bit high,” said Mma Ramotswe.
“Then you should lose weight,” said Boitelo. “You should go on a diet, Mma Ramotswe. That is what I have to say to many of the ladies who come to the clinic. Many of them are … are the same shape as you. Go on a diet and reduce your salt intake. No biltong or other things with lots of salt in them.”
Mma Ramotswe thought that she heard Mma Makutsi snigger at this, but she did not look in her assistant’s direction. She had never been told before by a client to go on a diet, and she wondered what Clovis Andersen would make of such a situation. He was always stressing the need to be courteous to the client—indeed, there was a whole chapter on the subject inThe Principles of Private Detection —but it said nothing, she thought, on the subject of clients who told one to go on a diet.
“I will think about that, Mma,” she said politely. “Thank you for the advice. But let us get back to this thing that you found out. What has it got to do with blood pressure?”
“Well,” said Boitelo, “I was rather surprised that I was never asked to take the patients’ blood pressure. The doctor always did that, and he kept the sphygmomanometer in his room, in a desk drawer. I saw him using it if I came into the room to give him something, but he never let me use it. I thought that maybe it was because he liked pumping up the instrument—you know how men are sometimes a bit like boys in that way—and I did not think too much about it after that. But then one day I used the instrument myself, and that was when I had a big surprise.
“It was a Friday, I think, not that that matters, Mma. But it was because it was a Friday that the doctor was not in the clinic at the time. On Fridays he likes to meet some of his friends for lunch at the President Hotel, and sometimes he is not back until after three o’clock. There are some other Ugandan doctors who work here, and he likes to meet with them. Their lunch sometimes goes on a bit long.
“I never make an appointment for a patient between two and three on a Friday afternoon, to give him time to get back from the hotel. Well, on that Friday the patient for the three o’clock appointment arrived early. It was a man from the Ministry of Water Affairs, a nice man who goes to the church round the corner from my place. I have seen him on Sundays, walking with his wife and their young son to church. Their dog follows them and sits outside the church until the service is over. It is a very faithful dog, that one.
“This man had half an hour to wait, and he started talking to me. He told me that he was worried about his blood pressure and that he had been trying hard to get it down, but the doctor said that it was still too high. The doctor’s door was open while this man was saying this, and I saw the sphyg on his desk. So I thought that there would be no harm in my taking his blood pressure, just out of interest, and just to keep up my skills. So I said to the patient that I would do this, and he rolled up the sleeve on his right arm.
“I inflated the band around the arm and looked at the mercury. The pressure was normal in every respect. So I did it again, and I was about to say to the patient that everything was fine. But I stopped and thought, and I realised that if I did this, then he would say to the doctor that I had taken the reading and that it was now normal. I was worried that this would make the doctor cross with me for doing something to a patient without his permission. So I muttered something about not being able to understand these figures and I replaced the instrument before the doctor came back.
“Now, Mma, that was not a busy afternoon and I was able to catch up on the filing of the patient records. Every so often I go through the files just to check up that all the records are in the right order. The doctor gets very cross if he cannot have the records on his desk when a patient comes in to see him. Well, I was sorting out the records and I came across the record of the man who had come for the three o’clock appointment. And I noticed that the latest entry was about the consultation that this man had just had.”
Boitelo paused. Mma Ramotswe was sitting quite still, as was Mma Makutsi. The nurse had a simple, direct way of talking, and the two women had been caught up in her narrative.
“I see,” said Mma Ramotswe. “The record. Yes. Please go on, Mma. This is a very interesting story.”
Boitelo looked down at her hands. “The doctor had taken his blood pressure and had entered the reading. It was very high.”
Mma Ramotswe frowned. “Does blood pressure go up and down?”
The nurse shrugged. “It can do. If you are very excited your blood pressure can go right up, but it doesn’t seem very likely, does it?”
Mma Makutsi now intervened. “Perhaps there was something wrong with the instrument. Things go wrong, you know, with these complicated machines.”
Boitelo half-turned to stare at Mma Makutsi. “These instruments are very simple,” she said quietly. “They are not complicated machines.”