Doctor in Love

by Richard Gordon

  “I’ve had it. A most nasty attack when I was six.”

  “It’s quite possible to get it twice, of course. And it’s usually much worse the second time. Or it might be mumps. You know what that leads to, don’t you?” He roared with laughter: fellow-doctors show as little sympathy for each other in trouble as fellow-golfers. “It’s a bit of a nuisance, because we’ve hardly got a spare bed in the ward. But I’ll pop along and see you when I’ve got a moment.”

  Hinxman appeared an hour or so later. He was a red-faced, curly-headed young man much given to tweeds and pipes, who always entered a room as though coming from a brisk tramp across open moors on a gusty day. I found his aggressive healthiness deeply depressing as I nervously watched his broad pink hands pummel my abdomen.

  “Deep breath, old man,” he commanded. He frowned.

  For the first time I realized how alarming a doctor sounds when he goes “M’m”.

  “Think I can get a touch of the spleen there,” he added.

  “Good Lord!” I jumped up. “It might be one of those horrible leukaemias.”

  “Yes, and it may be the chlorotic anaemia of young virgins. Don’t get excited about it. I haven’t felt a spleen for weeks, anyway, and I’m probably wrong. I’ll get old Pennyboy along when he looks into the hospital at six. Meanwhile, go to bed.”

  “Bed?” I protested. “But I don’t really want to go to bed. I hate lying down doing nothing.”

  “My dear chap, you must. The first thing any physician does is to put his victim to bed and tell him to keep quiet. It doesn’t do the patient the slightest harm, and it gives everyone time to think. Why, we’ve had some of our patients in bed for weeks upstairs while we’ve been thinking. We’re not like surgeons, you know – never happy unless they’re doing something violent.”

  Dr Pennyworth himself came to my room that evening, followed by Hinxman and his medical registrar. The hospital’s senior physician was a small, thin, pale man with two tufts of grey hair jutting over his ears, dressed in a black jacket and pin-striped trousers. He was so quiet and so modest that he seemed to enter the room like a ghost, without using the door. He stood by my bedside, softly wished me good evening, perched a pair of rimless pince-nez on his nose, and inspected me through them in silence.

  “Ever been in India?” he asked mysteriously.

  “No, sir.”

  “H’m.”

  After some moments’ thought gently took my hand and stood staring at my nails. This I recognized as the manner of a true physician: a surgeon would have burst into the room, pummelled me briskly, exclaimed “Does it hurt? Where? There? Don’t worry, old fellow, we’ll have it out!” and telephoned the operating theatre. Dr Pennyworth silently listened to my chest, scratched the soles of my feet, pulled down an eyelid, shook me by the hand, and after a whispered discussion with his assistants disappeared as softly as he came.

  As no one had told me what was wrong, I lay staring at the ceiling and speculating on the further possibility of malaria, cerebral abscess, and spirochoetsis ictero-haemorrhagic. I had almost given myself up for lost by the time Hinxman reappeared.

  “You’re to be warded, old man,” he announced cheerfully. “I’ve fixed everything up. Just slip on a dressing-gown and wander up to Honesty when you feel like it. Try not to breathe on too many people on the way, won’t you?”

  “But what have I got?”

  “Oh, didn’t we tell you? Look at your eyeballs.”

  “Good Lord!” I exclaimed, turning to the mirror. “Jaundice.”

  “Yes, you’d pass for a good-looking Chinaman anywhere. I’ll come and see you later. By the way, we’ll be needing a contribution for your own laboratory.”

  Collecting my toothbrush, I obediently left the residency for the main hospital block and made my way upstairs to Honesty Ward. I had rarely been ill before, and I had never been in a ward in a subjective capacity at all. I now approached the experience with the feeling of a judge mounting the steps to his own dock.

  “Well, well, fancy seeing you,” said the staff nurse, a motherly blonde I had once met at a hospital dance. “Sister’s off, so I’ve put you in the corner. You’re not terribly infectious, and we’ll have you on barrier nursing.”

  I got into the white iron bed, which was ready with hot-water bottle in knitted cover, red rubber sheet next to the mattress, back-rest, air-ring, and a small enamel bowl on the locker in case I wanted to put my teeth in it.

  “Sorry we can’t have you in a side-room,” she apologized. “But they’re both in use. One might be free in a few days,” she added significantly, “and you can move in then.”

  My first few days as a patient were delightful. My disease wasn’t serious – though I kept remembering the nasty phrase in one of my textbooks, “a small percentage of cases are fatal” – and it had the advantage that no treatment whatever was known to medical science. This left my days and nights undisturbed by having to swallow oversized pills or having to tolerate over-used needles. All I had to do was lie on my back and get better.

  But I soon realized that being ill in a modern hospital is far from a passive process. A few years ago it dawned on physicians that patients shouldn’t be allowed simply to rot in bed, but should be provided with daily exercise for both body and mind. This idea is now applied so enthusiastically and ward routine has become so strenuous that only people of a basically sound constitution can stand it.

  Our day, like the Army’s, started at six-thirty with a wash in tepid water, and continued almost without a break until lights-out at nine. Apart from the regular upheavals caused by bed making, meals, hot drinks, blanket baths, temperature-taking, visits by the doctors, and the distribution of “bottles”, there always seemed to be some hospital functionary waiting to see you. Each morning there appeared a blonde girl looking like a Wimbledon champion in a white overall, who came from the Physiotherapy Department to conduct a horizontal PT class. When we had flexed our knees and twiddled our toes in unison under the bedclothes, another girl arrived from the Occupational Therapy Unit with a basket of felt scraps for making pink bunnies. Afterwards came the hospital librarian to see if you felt like reading, the hospital dietitian to see if you felt like eating, and the hospital chaplain to see if you felt like death. Next appeared the man who brought the post, the boy who sold the newspapers, and several women with brooms who swept under the beds and carried on a loud conversation between themselves about everyone’s illnesses. If you still had time, you could explore the arid stretches of the morning and afternoon radio programmes through the headphones, or swap symptoms with your neighbour. There was a welcome period of enforced sleep after lunch, but this was generally disturbed by fifty students clattering in for a ward-round or one of the medical staff appearing to examine you to test some private theory. Later, those of us allowed up sat round the empty fireplace stroking the ward cat, smoking our pipes, and exchanging opinions in a tranquilly companionable atmosphere reminiscent of an old men’s home.

  It was in these circumstances that I first fell seriously in love.

  3

  She was the new night nurse on Honesty Ward. She was a pretty, pale girl, with large dark eyes and thick curly hair on which her official cap perched ridiculously, like the top of a vol-au-vent. She had a playful way of looking at you when she spoke, and the first words she addressed to me – “Would you like Horlicks or Ovaltine?” – sent odd sensations running up my spinal cord.

  I had then been in the ward five days, the time I later learned from other nurses at which young men confined to bed start becoming amorous. Physicians perhaps overlook that patients’ feelings towards sex, like their feelings towards beer and tobacco, are not automatically held in abeyance while enjoying the benefit of medical care in hospital. Seeing the same half a dozen young women regularly all day naturally concentrates the invalid’s thoughts on any one of them, which has led many a convalescence to run concurrently with a honeymoon. The patient’s state is probably exacerbated by the
nursing tradition of twice daily “doing the backs” – that is, massaging the lower spine with surgical spirit as a precaution against bedsores, which I understand is the method used to encourage recalcitrant bulls in the Argentine.

  It was clearly worth making the night nurse’s closer acquaintance. As soon as the ward was dark, the flowers had been removed, the day nurses had gratefully reached for their corridor capes, and sister had left for the modest evening pleasures of the sisters’ home, I felt for the dressing-gown in my locker and crept out of bed.

  She was in the small kitchen just outside the ward, starting to butter a large pile of bread for the patients’ breakfast.

  “Hello,” I said.

  She looked up. “Hello. But shouldn’t you be in bed?”

  “I just thought I’d like to establish social contact as well as our professional relationship.”

  Stretching her apron, she gave me a curtsy. “I am indeed honoured, kind sir, that a second-year houseman should take such trouble with a second-year nurse. Aren’t you terribly infectious?”

  “Not much at this stage. Anyway, I’ll be frightfully careful not to touch anything. I’m afraid that I’ve just forgotten your name, Nurse – ?”

  “Florence Nightingale.”

  I laughed, but catching her eye apologized quickly. “I’m terribly sorry. Of course, there could be a nurse called Florence Nightingale…I mean, really it’s quite a common name, though I suppose unusual…”

  “Oh, don’t worry. I’m quite used to it. My mother was desperately keen on the Red Cross. Hence the name. Hence the career. My friends call me Sally, by the way. But oughtn’t you really to stay in the ward?”

  “You’re not worried about the night sisters, are you? They won’t be on the prowl for hours yet.”

  “Ah, the night sisters! ‘How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags! What is’t you do? A deed without a name?’”

  “You must be the first nurse I’ve ever heard quote Shakespeare on duty,” I said in surprise.

  She went on buttering a piece of bread with a faintly aggressive air. “You housemen! You seem to think we confine our reading to Evelyn Pearce’s textbooks and the Engagement column in the Telegraph. Didn’t you see me when the Dramatic Society did As You Like It?”

  “No, I’m afraid I missed that one,” I confessed. But seeing a common interest in sight I continued warmly, “I was terribly keen on the Dramatic Society myself. When I was a student and had more time.”

  “I know. I saw your last appearance. It was the week I arrived as a new probationer, and I’ll never forget it.”

  This was perhaps unfortunate. My dramatic career at St Swithin’s had reached its climax with the hospital production of The Middle Watch, in which I was cast as the Commander. At the start of the second scene the Captain, played by Grimsdyke, was to be discovered alone in his cabin turning over the pages of The Field, until interrupted by a knock and the appearance of Tony Benskin as Ah Fong the Chinese servant. Unfortunately I had mistimed the length of the interval, and Tony and I were still drinking pints of beer in the King George when the curtain rose. There being no knock, Grimsdyke anxiously scanned the entire Field, throwing imploring glances into the wings. He then thumbed his way through the Illustrated London News, the Tatler, and the Sphere, and finished the Sketch and Punch before striding off the stage in a fury and bringing down the curtain, leaving the audience mystified for the rest of the evening at the significance of this short but powerful scene.

  “Are you sure you’re feeling quite well?” Sally Nightingale continued, interrupting her slicing and laying a hand softly on my cheek. “You certainly do seem a little warm.”

  I was just reflecting how much pleasanter this was than having a glass-and-mercury icicle tasting of Dettol rammed under your tongue, when the door opened and Hinxman walked in.

  “What are you doing here?” he said immediately.

  “Oh, hello, old man. Yes, I know I should be in bed by rights. But being in the trade I thought I could take a few liberties with ward routine.”

  “Routine? It’s nothing whatever to do with routine. It’s a matter of your treatment.”

  “Have you met our new night nurse?” I asked.

  “I know Nurse Nightingale very well. She was on day duty here until last week. Good evening, Sally.”

  “Good evening, Roger.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” I apologized. “I didn’t realize you’d met.”

  There was a silence, in which I felt that my professional adviser and colleague was behaving oddly. Hinxman was one of those enviably uncomplicated men who sing in their baths and never have hangovers or catch colds or feel draughts, and he had the most amiable personality in the whole resident staff quarters. We had previously enjoyed a friendship which ran to mutual loans of razor-blades and textbooks, but now he was breathing heavily and staring at me as though I were some particularly striking specimen in a bottle in the pathology museum.

  “Well, you’re the doctor.” I shrugged my shoulders, remembering that many young housemen appear weighty when first testing the delicate balance of the doctor-patient relationship. I decided to obey graciously, and said lightly to Sally Nightingale: “Good night, Nurse. I’ll get back to my little waterproofed cot. If I’m still awake, come and talk to me when Dr Hinxman’s gone.”

  The next morning the motherly staff nurse hooked my treatment board to the foot of my bed. “You’re on complete bed rest,” she announced.

  “Oh no!”

  “Yes, Mr Hinxman’s written you up for it.”

  “But what on earth for? I’m getting better. Why, I ought to be out of hospital completely in a few days.”

  “I really don’t know, I’m afraid. Ours is not to reason why, but to do what the houseman tells us.”

  My annoyance came less from the prospect of immobility than the threat it held – bedpans. These traditional features of the hospital scene, which defy the laws of geometry by possessing length and breadth but not depth, have never had, nor deserved, a word written in their favour. So far I had escaped them, but from now on I should have to catch the eye of the junior probationer like everyone else. I decided angrily to tackle Hinxman on his line of treatment as soon as he appeared.

  “Look here,” I complained. “I must say, this bed-rest business is about the limit. Why, I’m pretty well convalescent! Or have you just got me muddled up with someone else?”

  Hinxman stared at me in silence. His face was pinker than ever; his eyes were heavy and bloodshot; his hands were thrust deep into the pockets of his white coat, among the percussion hammers, tuning-forks, and other little diagnostic toys beloved by physicians.

  “You are at liberty to complain to the Chief about my treatment if you want to.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t want to go as far as that. After all, we’re both in the trade. I know doctors make rotten patients, but I’m prepared to do as I’m told. I just can’t see the point of it, that’s all.”

  Expression for a second played on his face like the top of a milk saucepan caught at the boil. Then he turned and strode down the ward, with the step of a man finding things too much for him.

  4

  Romances in hospital, like romances at sea, progress rapidly. This is probably because both patients and passengers have little else to occupy their thoughts between meals. I spent the following days lying strictly in bed trying to read Boswell’s Life of Johnson and thinking about Sally Nightingale, and the nights staying awake trying to snatch brief chats as she passed in the romantic twilight of the sleeping ward. Like the addict waiting for his daily dose of morphine, I found myself fretting as the evening dragged through its routine of supper, bedpans, and thermometers towards eight o’clock, when the tousled day staff went off duty and Sally reappeared in her fresh starched wrappings.

  “Would you care for a little barley water?” she asked as she came to my corner a few nights later. “I’ve just made some.”

  “Barley water? I’d love it, thanks.�
��

  It would have been all the same if she’d offered hemlock.

  “And how are you tonight, Richard?”

  “Immeasurably better for seeing you.”

  “Now, now!” She gave me a playful look. “Don’t you realize you should think of me purely as your nurse?”

  “But that’s impossible! Do you know, when I got this beastly disease I thought it was about the unluckiest thing that had happened to me for a long time. But the moment you walked into the ward, Sally… Well, I began to feel that it was the brightest event of my life.”

  She laughed as she gave my pillow a professional smoothing. “Pure delirium, doctor.”

  “I’m not at all febrile. Just you feel.”

  I had often heard the expression about laying cool hands on fevered brows but I had never until then experienced it. It was most satisfying.

  “Perhaps for the sake of us both I’d better fetch you an ice-bag.”

  Just at this moment I became aware that Hinxman, too, was standing at my bedside.

  “Hello,” I said in surprise. “Rather early with your night round this evening, aren’t you?”

  He made no reply. Instead, he stared hard and said, “Nurse Nightingale, I should like the night report, if you please.”

  “Of course, Dr Hinxman. If you wish.”

  Hinxman listened to the report sitting under the green-shaded lamp at Sister’s desk a few feet from my. bed, and afterwards he settled there to write up his notes. He was still working when at last I fell asleep. The next morning I found myself prescribed three-hourly injections of Vitamin C and a diet of soya flour soup.

  This rivalry naturally acted as a supercharger to my increasingly powerful feelings about Sally Nightingale. To lose her to such a passionless pachyderm as Hinxman struck me as not only a personal tragedy but a shocking waste. But I was miserably conscious of my present disadvantages in wooing her. I was static, and Hinxman was menacingly mobile; and though I was entitled to enjoy her company all night, Hinxman now stood sentry at Sister’s desk until I joined in the snores of the rest of the ward.