The Proper Procedure and Other Stories

by Theodore Dalrymple

  ‘You’ll have to sign a receipt,’ she said, waving a piece of paper at her.

  Miss Budd said something about not having her glasses with her, which irritated the nurse because she thought it was an attempt at an excuse to avoid signing.

  ‘You’ll just have to do the best you can,’ she said, leading, or more like pulling, Miss Budd to the edge of the desk and guiding her hand, into which she had put a pen, on to the receipt. Miss Budd made a weak, spidery mark.

  ‘Good,’ said the nurse. ‘And now perhaps we can get on and get you to bed.’

  Miss Budd made a quick recovery, thanks to some little blue pills which she had little choice but to take. When asked about the poisoned gas and the neighbours’ insults, she laughed nervously and said they had stopped now; perhaps the neighbours had thought better of what they were doing.

  The doctor tried to get her to say that there never had been any poison gas or insults, but Miss Budd remained silent.

  ‘Well,’ said the doctor cheerily, ‘the main thing is that they’ve stopped.’ He told her that she would be going home soon, and she was pleased. Winicott Ward was not very nice.

  The very next day, about half past five in the evening, when it was dark outside, a nurse – this one with a rose tattooed on her neck – came to Miss Budd’s bed, where she was resting, with a smile on her face.

  ‘Good news, Lil,’ she said. ‘You’re going home now.’

  Since Miss Budd had never wanted to come in the first place, she was not overjoyed; the nurse was disappointed at her lack of gratitude. All Miss Budd said was:

  ‘How am I going to get there?’

  ‘Transport’s all arranged and on its way,’ said the nurse. ‘It’ll be here in a quarter of an hour.’

  ‘Couldn’t I go tomorrow?’ said Miss Budd. ‘It’s dark.’

  ‘We need the bed,’ said the nurse with asperity, as if Miss Budd were intent on denying treatment to the newcomer for whom the bed was needed. ‘Besides, we can’t cancel the transport now. It’s on its way. You’ll have to change out of your hospital clothes.’

  The nurse fetched Miss Budd’s clothes, which had been cleaned but not pressed.

  ‘Quick,’ she said. ‘We haven’t much time.’

  Miss Budd changed her clothes under the eye of the nurse, who feared both deliberate error and delay. A telephone sounded and the nurse went to answer it. She returned after a few moments, putting her head round the door.

  ‘Transport’s here,’ she said.

  ‘Quick,’ said another nurse who had joined her. ‘We don’t want to keep it waiting, or it’ll go.’ She came in and cupped her hand round Miss Budd’s elbow to ease her out of the room.

  ‘What about my money?’ asked Miss Budd, trying to stop in her tracks.

  ‘What money?’ said the nurse, applying a little more pressure to her elbow and pushing her forward. Did the old woman actually expect to be paid to go home? The more you did for people, the more they expected.

  ‘The money what I had when I come in here,’ said Miss Budd.

  ‘I don’t know anything about that,’ said the nurse. ‘I wasn’t on duty then.’

  ‘Only I came in with a lot of money,’ said Miss Budd. ‘The nurse took it off me and said she sent it to the office because of thieves. I want it back before I go.’

  ‘It’s too late now,’ said the nurse. ‘You should’ve mentioned it before. The office is closed now.’

  ‘What can I do, then?’ asked Miss Budd. ‘I want my money.’

  ‘Well, you won’t need it tonight, will you Lilly? I mean, you’re not going to a night-club, I don’t suppose. You can come back tomorrow and get it when the office opens.’

  ‘I don’t know where the office is,’ said Miss Budd.

  Where did she think it was? The far side of the moon? The hospital was a small one.

  ‘Downstairs, of course,’ said the nurse, now seriously worried about the transport. Sometimes it wouldn’t wait, and then there would be a real problem. There would be more patients on the ward than beds to put them in. The nurse applied even more pressure to Miss Budd’s elbow to hurry her along.

  Miss Budd returned to the hospital the following morning. The Administrator’s Office was not easy to find, for though the hospital was small, it was big enough for it to have a warren of corridors on the ground floor, dark with closed office doors. Mostly the corridors were deserted; when someone emerged from an office, he was so obviously intent on his own business that Miss Budd dared not obtrude. For his part, the person in the corridor assumed that Miss Budd was merely a patient that had wandered from one of the wards, and it was the duty of the ward staff to retrieve her: not his. Office staff could not interfere in clinical matters, if for no other reason than that they were not insured to do so.

  By dint of wandering for several minutes, however, Miss Budd eventually found a door that was open. The office inside was surprisingly light; it had a window practically the height of the wall, which alterations to the old fabric of the building had not blocked off. Seated at a desk was the Personal Assistant to the Administrator. Miss Budd entered timidly, not so much knocking on the open door as scraping it very slightly.

  ‘I’ve come for my money,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know who you are,’ said the Personal Assistant. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Lilly Budd.’

  ‘I mean, what ward are you from?’ Not that she really expected an answer, because when old people go wandering they know neither where they’re going, nor where they’ve come from, not even where they were. It had been a mistake to give difficult names to the wards such as Aubrey Lewis or Mayer-Gross, because they confused the confused even further. Why not just Ward One, Two and so forth? When she had asked the Administrator, however, he said that numbers sounded impersonal. Better the name of famous psychiatrists of old.

  ‘I’ve come for the money what I brought with me when I come in here,’ said Miss Budd.

  ‘You’re allowed only five pounds in your possession while you’re a patient,’ said the Personal Assistant. ‘Hospital rules.’

  ‘I’m not in the hospital no more,’ said Miss Budd. ‘I been sent home.’

  ‘So why didn’t you take your money with you when you went?’

  ‘It was too late. They sent it down to the office.’

  ‘Oh,’ said the Personal Assistant, stretching out her exclamation as if into the distance. The light of recognition came into her eyes. ‘You’re not the patient who came into the hospital with more than two thousand pounds in a plastic bag, are you?’

  ‘Yes, I’m Lilly Budd.’

  ‘Ha! ha! ha!’ laughed the Personal Assistant. Her mirth had a slight ring of exasperation in it. ‘Did you think we weren’t going to feed you, then?’

  ‘Only they said that I should ask the Administrator to get it back,’ said Miss Budd.

  The Personal Assistant was a little put out that Miss Budd had not even noticed her little sally; that’s what it was, of course, to have a one-track mind, or no sense of humour. Perhaps it was a lack of sense of humour that led to people having to come into hospitals such as this.

  ‘Do you have an appointment to see him?’ asked the Personal Assistant.

  ‘No, I never,’ said Miss Budd.

  The Personal Assistant frowned. Really, people were the limit. They expected to be attended to the moment they felt like it. They concluded that, just because they had nothing much to do, and therefore no schedule, no one else had much to do and no schedule. They probably thought that hospitals ran themselves.

  ‘I’ll give you one then,’ said the Personal Assistant, as if conferring a valuable benefit upon Miss Budd. ‘Unfortunately, he’s away next week. He’s at Headquarters for a strategic planning meeting. I’m sure you’ll appreciate just how important that is, our whole future depends on it. But you can come the week after. I don’t suppose it matters to you which day of the week?’

  Miss Budd did not look like, nor was sh
e, the kind of person with a busy schedule.

  ‘How about Wednesday, then?’ said the Personal Assistant. ‘At eleven forty-five. Is that all right for you?

  Miss Budd opened her mouth but no sound came out.

  ‘Good, that’s all right then,’ said the Personal Assistant. ‘It’s fixed. I’ll write it down for you so you won’t forget.’

  She handed Miss Budd a slip of paper.

  Miss Budd must have misunderstood, because she went to the hospital on the following Wednesday instead of Wednesday the week following. The Personal Assistant was rather put out, irritated, by this confusion, because she had done everything possible to avoid it arising. She could hardly have made herself clearer. It was as if what she had said about the Strategic Planning Meeting – the SPM – had gone in one of Miss Budd’s ears and come straight out of the other. It was not that they – the SPMs – took place often, not more than two or three times a year. This time they were even discussing the closure of the hospital because it was uneconomic. There was obviously a crisis on and this woman couldn’t even remember which Wednesday she was supposed to come.

  So Miss Budd, after what amounted to a scolding, came back the following Wednesday. She arrived half an hour early and waited in the entrance hall to the hospital, where there was somewhere to sit down. She watched the minute hand of the clock on the wall jerk forward towards her appointed time.

  ‘Ah, Miss Budd,’ said the Personal Assistant when she saw her as she appeared outside the door to her room. ‘Bad news, I’m afraid. The Administrator’s been called away. These things are unavoidable, though I agree it’s a nuisance, even for me. It’s all a matter of finance these days, that’s all they’re worried about.’

  Miss Budd seemed uncomprehending about this situation.

  ‘I’ve come about my money,’ she said.

  ‘But I’ve told you, the Administrator’s away. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do, just to help you. I’ll bring forward your next appointment with him to this Friday. How’s that? I’ll make sure he squeezes you in, though he’s very busy on Fridays. Sometimes you just have to be firm with him.’

  Miss Budd arrived on Friday morning. The Personal Assistant told her the Administrator was running a little late this morning, but that he would definitely see her today.

  ‘You could go to the patients’ canteen and have a cup of tea,’ she said. ‘He’ll be back in half an hour.’

  Instead of going to the canteen, Miss Budd hovered round the corner, out of sight. The Administrator was as good as the Personal Assistant’s word, however. Suddenly he burst from his office through a door into her room. He was a tall man with slicked back hair and a tan despite the less than sunny weather.

  ‘Ah, Miss Budd, Miss Budd,’ he said. ‘We meet at last. Do come in.’

  And he guided her into his room like the head-waiter of an expensive restaurant guiding a celebrity to his table. His progress across the floor seemed frictionless.

  ‘Please sit down,’ he said.

  Miss Budd sat down in a steel-framed chair, cold to the touch, with a leather seat slung across that swayed with any movement and made her feel a little sick. The room was large, with heavy silk curtains, and on the large desk in front of her was apparatus whose purpose or function she could not guess.

  ‘Before we begin,’ said the Administrator, sitting on the opposite side of the desk, ‘there are just one or two formalities we have to go through. I suppose you’ve brought some ID with you?’

  ‘ID?’ said Miss Budd vacantly. ‘What’s that? I’ve come for my money.’

  ‘Identification,’ said the Administrator. ‘So that we know that you are who you say you are.’

  ‘I’m Lilly Budd,’ said Miss Budd.

  ‘Yes,’ said the Administrator, laughing pleasantly, ‘you and I know that, but not everyone might. We have to be able to prove it. Due diligence and all that, especially these days.’

  ‘Jew who?’ said Miss Budd.

  ‘We have to be careful, Miss Budd. Someone could impersonate you. Pretend to be Miss Budd who wasn’t.’

  ‘But I’m Lilly Budd, I always been Lilly Budd, ever since I was born.’

  ‘Yes, I know you have,’ said the Administrator. ‘But let’s suppose someone came in here claiming to be Lilly Budd who wasn’t, and then we just handed the money over, we wouldn’t have a leg to stand on, would we? What would you say then?’

  Miss Budd was silent and the Administrator took it that she was appalled at the thought which had never occurred to her before.

  ‘And let’s face it, Miss Budd, two thousand pounds is a lot of money to hand out to the wrong person. It’s not tuppence ha’penny, is it? No. If we lost your money, you’d hold us responsible, wouldn’t you, and rightly so. So we have to be careful, as I’m sure you’d be the first to agree.’

  Still Miss Budd was silent.

  ‘So you see, we need proof of your identity before we can proceed.’

  ‘What’s that?’ said Miss Budd.

  ‘Proof of identity?’ repeated the Administrator, half-disbelieving. Were there still people like this in the world? ‘You know, something like a passport or a driving licence.’

  Again Miss Budd was silent. Abroad meant nothing to her, and she was more likely to be run over by a car than to drive one.

  ‘Or a gas bill,’ said the Administrator, descending to Miss Budd’s level. ‘Even a rent book. Normally we ask for two documents, but in your case I think one will do. There,’ he said, getting up from his chair on the other side of the desk, and coming round to Miss Budd’s side, ‘just pop along with a gas bill and we’ll soon have everything sorted out.’

  To his surprise, Miss Budd did not get up. Instead she remained seated as if fixed to the chair.

  ‘I just came for the money what I brought when I come in hospital,’ she said.

  The Administrator often wished he was in charge of a hospital in an area with a more intelligent population.

  ‘Didn’t my P.A. tell you to bring some I.D. with you?’ he asked.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Miss Budd.

  ‘P.A.? Personal Assistant.’ Miss Budd looked bemused. ‘Used to be secretary,’ said the Administrator, raising his voice to overcome Miss Budd’s evident slight loss of hearing (but not loud enough for the Personal Assistant to hear, he hoped). ‘Writing letters, answering the phone, that kind of thing. Anyway, didn’t she tell you?’

  ‘No she never,’ said Miss Budd.

  The face of the Administrator darkened a little. He flung open the door from his to the Personal Assistant’s room.

  ‘Miss Budd says you didn’t tell her to bring any I.D. with her,’ said the Administrator, with anger in his voice.

  ‘I think I did,’ said the Personal Assistant. ‘Perhaps I didn’t. I thought it was obvious.’

  There was no mistaking the instructions this time, however, and Miss Budd returned two days later with her gas bill and her pension book, as well as a letter addressed to her, admittedly a few years old, from her second cousin Robert, with who she had since lost touch and who might even have died.

  ‘That seems to be in order,’ said the Administrator when he looked them over, remarking to himself on Robert’s bad spelling and leaving open the possibility that some defect might be found in this evidence a little later. Oddly enough, he had had to be reminded by the Personal Assistant as to who Miss Budd was.

  ‘Can I have my money now, then?’ asked Miss Budd.

  ‘Hold your horses, Miss Budd, hold your horses,’ he said, laughing mirthlessly. ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day.’

  ‘Only I’d like it now,’ she said.

  Surely she couldn’t actually need it now, thought the Administrator. You only had to look at her to know that she was a hoarder rather than a spender: probably she never threw anything out, and he wouldn’t be surprised (if he went to her home) to discover that she kept even piles of old newspapers.

  ‘There’s something I have to tell you, Miss Budd,’ sa
id the Administrator. ‘We don’t have your money in our possession at the moment. The fact is that when you came to hospital with so much cash – and I remind you that it was not at our instigation that you did so – you put us in a bit of a quandary.’

  ‘A what?’ said Miss Budd.

  ‘A quandary.’ Seeing Miss Budd’s blank face, the Administrator realised that the problem was not her hearing but her comprehension. ‘A quandary,’ he repeated, ‘a dilemma.’

  ‘What’s that?’ said Miss Budd.

  ‘A dilemma?’ The Administrator was quite busy enough without having to be a walking dictionary to the ignorant aged as well. ‘It’s a choice between two alternatives neither of which is quite right,’ he said.

  The Administrator drew himself up to his full height. That wasn’t a bad definition, he thought, considering that it was off the cuff and he that had never given it a moment’s thought before. Miss Budd, however, was not visibly impressed: clearly, purely intellectual pleasures were not hers.

  ‘Where’s my money, then?’ she asked.

  ‘That’s precisely what I was going to tell you,’ said the Administrator. ‘You see, our office safe is a very small one. I’ve written to the Chief Executive to tell him that, in my opinion, we could do with a bigger one. Any novice could break into the one we have. But you know what it is, Miss Budd, in these times of financial retrenchment. I don’t need to tell you that all expenditure on non-essentials is the first thing to be cut at such a time. And I’m afraid that a larger safe, such as we could keep patients’ valuables in, safely as it were, falls into the category of non-essential.’

  Miss Budd said nothing.

  ‘Besides,’ said the Administrator, ‘there is the question of insurance. As I’m sure you know, this is a high crime area. That means that insurance on removable valuables – and there’s nothing more removable or valuable than cash, is there? – is prohibitively expensive. I’m sure that you appreciate that we couldn’t risk holding your cash without insurance, don’t you?’

  The Administrator waited for a reply, but Miss Budd said nothing.