Doctor in Clover

I must admit this made me feel pretty pleased. The old uncle's full of homely advice about wool next to the skin and so on, but after all those years among the hookworm and beriberi he's as out of date in medical practice as a Gladstone bag. I could see they were delighted at an up-to-date chap like myself with all the latest from hospital.

'Then what's the trouble?' I asked.

'We fear a broken hip, doctor,' announced Amanda Nutbeam. 'That's serious, I believe?'

'Could be. Very.'

'Our aunt died after a broken hip,' murmured Percy.

'It all depends on the constitution of the patient,' I told them, remembering my orthopaedic lectures.

'Please let me impress upon you, Doctor,' said Amanda, 'that his Lordship is very delicate.'

'Very delicate indeed,' added her husband.

'This way, Doctor, if you please.'

I went upstairs feeling pretty curious. I'd already decided it was the old story-poor old Lord Nutbeam was potty, and the family were making themselves thoroughly miserable keeping it quiet, instead of getting him decently certified and sending him baskets of fruit every Friday. I was therefore a bit startled when my clinical examination provided a couple of eye-openers.

In the first place, far from being dotty, Lord Nutbeam had an IQ in the professorial class.

'I fell from the library ladder, Doctor,' he explained from his bed. 'Appropriately enough, as I was reaching for my first edition of _Reli gio Medici._ You are familiar with the work? Perhaps you have also read Dr William Harvey's _De Motu Cordis_ in the original Latin? I should much like to discuss it with a medical man.'

Not wishing to chat about all those books I'm going to read whenever I get a spare moment, I put my stethoscope in my ears.

Then I got my second surprise. From the conversation downstairs I'd gathered Lord Nutbeam's grip on life was as secure as on a wet conger eel, but I quickly discovered-fractures apart-he was as hale and hearty as I was.

'I am very delicate, Doctor,' he kept on insisting, though he looked a spry old boy with his little white moustache. 'I neither smoke nor drink and live on soft foods. Ever since I had the fever at the age of twenty-one my dear brother and his wife have been devoted to my welfare.'

'Don't worry,' I told him. 'We'll soon have this little matter cleared up, and you'll be able to go on reading just where you left off.'

A few minutes later I again faced the ambulant members of the Nutbeam family in the hall, and announced in suitably sepulchral tones that his Lordship had indeed fractured the neck of the right femur.

'Ha!' muttered Percy Nutbeam, 'Auntie!'

'Then it is serious, Doctor?'

'But please let me reassure you.' I possibly gripped my lapels: 'Once we get anyone as chirpy as Lord Nutbeam into hospital and the hands of a decent orthopaedic surgeon, we'll have him on his feet again in no time. Meanwhile, I have administered a sedative and the fracture isn't very painful. I guarantee he'll stand up to everything wonderfully.'

I was then rather jolted to hear Amanda Nutbeam ask, 'Doctor, don't you think it would be far, far kinder just to do nothing?'

'A very eminent specialist left our aunt to pass peacefully away,' added Percy.

'But dash it!' I exclaimed. 'How old was your aunt?'

'Ninety-two.'

Lord Nutbeam was fifty, the age when most men are telling their secretaries they're in the prime of life.

'Look here, this is quite a different case-'

'His Lordship is so delicate, life is merely a burden to him,' persisted Amanda.

'Been delicate for years, Doctor. Even in the nursery he was always being sick.'

'Surely, Doctor, it would be a happy release?'

'He will have no more troubles among the angels,' ended Percy Nutbeam, looking at the chandelier.

Now, I may not be the most erudite of medical practitioners, but many years' patronage of the sport of kings has left me pretty sharp at spotting something fishy. So I eyed this couple pretty sternly and said, 'If I don't get Lord Nutbeam into hospital this very night, it'll be-why, gross professional misconduct, to say the least.'

'You can hardly get him there without his consent,' replied Amanda sharply.

She gave me a smile as unfriendly as one of Sir Lancelot Spratt's laparotomy incisions.

'And Lord Nutbeam would never consent to anything whatever without consulting us first,' said Percy.

'Now just a minute-'

'You are very young, Doctor,' Amanda continued. 'I can assure you his Lordship would be much happier passing away peacefully in his own home, rather than being mutilated among strangers.'

'Our aunt,' added Percy, 'was very contented right to the end.'

'Here, I say-'

'I think your consultation is over, Doctor. The butler will show you to the door.'

9

I was so furious I couldn't enjoy my salmon. But I managed to cram down the strawberries and a bottle of the uncle's Liebfraumilch, then I paced the room and smoked a couple of his cigars. I looked up Watson-Jones' _Fractures and Joint Injuries,_ and I found a copy of Hadfield's _Law and Ethics for Doctors,_ but though this is pretty hot on such things as Relations with the Clergy and Opening a Vein after Death, it's a bit short on handling murderous relatives. I wondered what the devil to do. I thought of telephoning another doctor, but felt this would produce only an action for slander. Finally I decided (a) if old Nutbeam continued to lie flat on his back he would undoubtedly perish; (b) you can't press-gang people into hospital; and (c) some pretty nasty questions were going to be asked at the inquest.

Apart from medical ethics, the thought of the beastly brother and wife itching to get their fingers on Lord Nutbeam's cash and title fairly made my blood boil. Particularly as I now realized my welcome to Nutbeam Hall didn't come from heartfelt appreciation of my clinical abilities, but because they thought I had more chance of knocking his Lordship off than my uncle had. After sitting down with a drop of the uncle's special liqueur brandy, I made my decision. My only course, as a doctor and gentleman, was to return to Nutbeam Hall forthwith and give all concerned a jolly good piece of my mind.

Five minutes later I arrived again at the front gates, turning a few choice phrases over in my thoughts, when I noticed a ruddy great Rolls parked outside. I was wondering if the Nutbeams had simply preferred to bypass me and summon a specialist off their own bat, when the front door opened to admit a severe-looking bird of consultoid aspect, wearing striped trousers and carrying a briefcase.

'Good evening, sir,' I said.

'Good evening,' he replied, got into his Rolls, and drove off.

I'd hardly time to sort this out when the door flew open again and Mrs Nutbeam fell on me like her long-lost baby.

'Doctor, Doctor! Thank God you've come back! You must get his Lordship into hospital at once.'

'This very instant,' cried Percy, panting up behind.

'With the very best specialist available.'

'Regardless of expense.'

'Everything humanly possible must be done for him.'

'The telephone is just inside the hall, Doctor.'

'Now just a minute.' I found this rather confusing. 'A couple of hours ago you told me-'

'Please disregard whatever I said a couple of hours ago,' returned Amanda Nutbeam, 'I was too upset by my dear brother-in-law's accident to think properly.'

'We both were, Doctor. We were quite beside ourselves.'

Deciding there was no point in asking a lot of silly questions, I telephoned an eminent bone-basher in Gloucester who'd done a neat job on a patient who went through a threshing machine. Shortly afterwards I was gratified to see Lord Nutbeam departing tucked-up in an ambulance, particularly as the original Grimsdyke diagnosis had been confirmed.

Like any GP pushing his patient into hospital these days, I didn't see his Lordship again for a fortnight. I was meanwhile kept agreeably busy remedying the rustics, and though the uncle didn't even send a postcard, Miles telephoned a couple of times, but he was too concerned over Sir Lancelot's car park to ask how I was getting on. Then one Saturday I decided to drive over to Gloucester to watch an afternoon's cricket, and looked into the Jenner Memorial Hospital to see Lord Nutbeam during the tea interval.