Doctor at Large

Just a quick one, then,' I said.

'My name's Kitty,' she told me, opening the door. 'I've only got a very tiny flat, but make yourself at home. Razzy does.'

The flat would have taken my Bayswater room a dozen times, and was furnished with an amiable extravagance that must have taken Razzy's fancy. Kitty immediately threw open the window, took a deep breath, and trilled, 'Spring, spring, spring! Isn't it lovely? Don't you adore the spring? With the primroses and the cowslips and the bluebells and things? I swore I'd have a window-box this year. What'll you have to drink, darling?'

'I've started on brandy this afternoon already, I'm afraid. So I suppose I'd better go on, if you've got any.

'Sure, my pet. Brandy it is. The place is stiff with it.'

She brought from the cupboard two tumblers, and a bottle with a plain label bearing only a crown and the date 1904.

'Here, steady on,' I called, as she half-filled both glasses. 'I'm sure that stuff's supposed to be drunk by the thimbleful.'

'Here's to life,' she said, taking a large drink. 'That's better!' Then she sat on the sofa beside me. 'Tell me about yourself.'

'There's not much to tell.' I licked my lips, savouring the brandy. 'I'm Dr Potter-Phipps's temporary assistant, that's all.'

'You're very young to be a doctor.'

'As a matter of fact-and it must prove something, because I wouldn't tell it to everybody-I haven't been a doctor very long.'

'I could tell you hadn't much practical experience the moment I fell into your arms in your flat.'

'Oh, dear! And I thought I was being such a commanding figure.'

She laughed.

'By the way,' I said modestly. 'I'm sorry I clocked you one.'

'And I'm sorry I clocked you one, too, Doctor darling.'

We both laughed and had some more brandy. After a while, everything seemed to become very cosy.

'It must be wonderful being a doctor,' she said dreamily. 'Curing people who are stricken.'

'There isn't all that much curing in it. And fortunately most of the people arriving on our doormat aren't very stricken.'

'But it's lovely to have someone to sympathize with you and hold your hand and tell you you're wonderful even if you're not really ill. That's where Razzy's so marvellous. Have you noticed his eyes?' She threw back her head. 'Hypnotic! Cruelly hypnotic.'

'I'm afraid I can't reach those heights, but I can certainly sympathize with you and-' I held her hand-'tell you you're wonderful.'

'You're sweet,' she said, getting up. 'I'm going to change.'

I helped myself to another half-tumbler of her brandy, which had the effect of producing a pleasant conscious detachment from the world, like addiction to morphia. I recognized cheerfully that I was getting myself into a dangerous situation. My conduct was certainly becoming infamous in a professional respect, for Kitty's entering our waiting-room and smashing the furniture- on my head had placed us henceforward in a professional relationship. What should I do about it? I felt in my wallet for the B.M.A. booklet on Ethics, and turning over the pages found a great deal of sound advice on the size of doctor's door-plates, fee-splitting, and association with the clergy, but nothing on the tantalizing frontier between professional and social obligations where I was now dancing. A faint, fresh breeze rustled the curtains and a bird started singing on the window-ledge. And what the hell! I thought. It's spring. I put the book away and drank some more brandy.

Kitty came back wearing a nйgligй.

'How's it going?' she asked cheerfully.

'I'm responding to treatment. Have some more of your brandy. Liquor should be quaffed, not sipped.'

'Here's to life, Doctor darling.'

'Here's to you, patient pet.'

We drank with linked arms. With a sigh, she stretched herself on the sofa. She held out her arms and smiled.

'Doctor darling,' she murmured invitingly.

I licked my lips. There was a terrible risk making love to a patient…But, damn it! Alone with a beautiful woman. Wasn't it worth it? Was I a man or a mouse? Anyway, I couldn't possibly disappoint her…

'Come to me,' she breathed.

How lovely she looked! But how much more lovely she would look lying there without any clothes on at all…

I jumped up. 'Get me a taxi!' I shouted. 'Quick!' And what, I wondered, would I now say to the Minister of Inland Development.

11

When I dashed into the flat I found a note neatly pinned to the examination couch:

_Dear Doctor

I fear that some dire emergency has called you away. I fully realize the trials of a doctor's life, and that some poor soul is in a worse state than me. However, lying on your couch seems to have relieved the discomfort, and as I am so anxious to get away this afternoon I will go round the corner to an osteopath recommended by the Minister of Works. With thanks for your attention. Yrs, George Beecham_

I had lost Razzy a patient, but my personal honour, and probably my professional life, were saved by the politician. I hoped he would become Prime Minister, and since that afternoon I have always read his speeches in the newspapers.

I did not tell Razzy the full story until the day that I was leaving the practice.

'Really?' he said mildly. 'Poor Kitty! I wonder what on earth you did to her psychology, bolting like that. I really must go round and see her soon.'

'And another thing,' I said gazing at the carpet, 'there aren't any Himalayas. As far as I'm concerned, I mean. I wasn't going to let on about it, but-well, you've been so good to me, Razzy, I hadn't the heart not to confess I've worked here under false pretences.'

'But I'm glad, dear boy. Terribly glad. Frightfully uncomfortable it must be, in all that snow and ice. So what other plans have you?'

'I thought I'd stay on in, London for a bit and work for my Fellowship. Thanks to you, I've got a few quid in the bank to pay the rent, and I might be able to make a little by standing-in for doctors at week-ends. You see', I told him solemnly, 'I'm still determined to become a surgeon.'

'And good luck to you, dear boy,' he added indulgently, as though I were a schoolboy saying I wanted to be an engine-driver. 'I've always found surgery fascinating. Completely fascinating. Let me know if there's ever anything I can do for you. Would you like a bonus? The secretary will fix it up-you know I loathe discussing money.'

We shook hands, and I stepped from out of the glossy picture of fashionable medicine for ever.

I now had saved enough to pay off my hundred-pound debt to Wilson, Willowick, and Wellbeloved, and to maintain a modest medical-student standard of living until the Primary Fellowship examination of the Royal College of Surgeons in six weeks' time. I kept my room in Bayswater, took copies of Gray's Anatomy and Starling's Physiology from Lewis's medical lending library, borrowed a box of bones from a friend at St Swithin's, and continued my surgical career.

The Fellowship, like all British post-graduate examinations, is run on the Grand National principle, except that the highest fence is placed immediately in front of the tapes. Before you can enter for the Final exam you have first to pass the Primary in anatomy and physiology, subjects which are learnt in the second year of medical school and forgotten in the fourth. I had now to reopen the pages I had sweated over on coffee-drenched nights five years ago, unpleasantly aware that such traditional aides-memoire for the student as:

_The lingual nerve_ _Took a swerve_ _Around the Hyoglossus-_ _'Well I'm mucked!'_ _Said Wharton's duct,_ _'The blighter's double-crossed us!'_ were inadequate for the Fellowship examiners, who wanted to know the exact seventy-four relations of the lingual nerve and what it did in the monkey, dog, and rabbit as well.

I worked at my books fairly happily, for three months in Razzy's practice had given me the feeling of being a man of the world who could deal with dukes, manage cabinet ministers, and chum along with beautiful women, and could therefore confidently approach such prosaic individuals as the Fellowship examiners. This was my first mistake.