Steady Now Doctor (8 page)

Andy thought, “No,” he said. This was probably the first time since he was thirteen that he hadn't carried any.

“Well, it doesn't matter tonight,” said Diana, “but get equipped, if you're a good boy you might get some more.”

“Is this your first time?” queried Diana.

“Yes,” said Andy, blushing.

“Well,” she said, “your medical education will be enlarged tonight. Last rule,” she said, “everything that happens in this room stops at the door, we don't speak to each other outside. If I want to come to you I will knock five times, now let's get to bed.”

She stood up, slipped off her pants and got into bed.

Andy still found it difficult to believe what was happening and went to turn off the light before he undressed.

“Keep the light on,” she snapped, then lay on her elbow displaying her beautiful, perfectly shaped breasts, quizzically watching Andy fumbling as he took his clothes off. He walked to the bed very conscious of his erection, then climbed in with her.

She swarmed all over him, just the sensation of her skin contact nearly made him climax. He had barely entered her when he did. They lay together with Diana just fondling his penis, nothing much seemed to happen at first then in a few minutes he was rampant and plunged fully into her, ramming himself home as if he was trying to push her through the bed. Diana groaned, clenching her teeth on a piece of pillow, then with the same sort of good fortune Andy had had with his first lumbar puncture they climaxed together.

Andy felt as if the room was doing somersaults. He lay breathless, still inside her, it was only a few minutes before he started again.

Andy was now in control, it was Diana who broke the kissing rule, or rather the mouth rule. “You can do anything you like to me,” said Diana and Andy did.

After a while the confines of the single bed were too limiting so they put the mattress on the floor, covering themselves with a blanket, their sweaty bodies sliding over each other. There was no love or tenderness, no soft word, this was all pure lust, if there is such a thing as pure lust.

Diana cried pax first, she lay back exhausted. “1 can't manage any more,” she said.

“No, I want you again,” he said, mounting her now flaccid body and riding her until they both collapsed exhausted.

Diana could hardly pull her clothes on. “I think I've unleashed a demon,” she said, “but don't forget, when I leave this room, that's it, no contact, now put your head outside and see if there's a porter lurking.”

Andy looked out as requested and Diana literally dragged herself back to her room.

***

She used to appear about twice a week, usually on a Monday and a Thursday, at about 11.30 p.m. There would be five knocks, then she would come in and stay about two hours. There was never the same frenzy as the first night, and once, when Andy started to get emotional and called her “darling” she smacked his face. “It's not like that,” she said, “this has all to be on my terms or we pack it in.”

She had released a demon in Andy, he could think of nothing but her and her visits. Just to see her sent his blood racing, and he still had to walk past her stony faced. He flung himself into his work during the day.

He wondered where she went to at weekends and what she might be up to. He lay awake restless the nights she didn't come and was exhausted the nights she did come. Weekends off when Diana was away, Andy would go home to his father and Mrs Robinson, who was now ‘Auntie Rob'. They noticed a change in him. He would sleep practically all the weekend. “You are overdoing it at the hospital,” his father said, little knowing how right he was.

Andy failed his MB medicine, he was just too shagged-out when the exam came round to do himself justice.

David Hudson took him on one side. “Andy,” he said, “I don't have to be a brilliant diagnostician to know that there is something wrong, if I can help, ask me.”

“No, I'm OK, thanks,” said Andy, but they both knew he was lying.

Andy was insanely jealous when he saw Diana talking to any man, but daren't show it. He was ‘Good Old Andy' to the hospital junior staff, as he would volunteer for any work that was going, just to keep himself from going mad. He was the best lumbar puncturing houseman in the hospital, anyone with a difficult one to do called for him to do it.

He had meant to leave the hospital after his House Physician job, but stayed on and did a six-month House Surgeon job. He just could not leave with her about, she physically intoxicated him. Sometimes, when she came, he tried to talk to her, but she always shut him up with, “I haven't come here to talk,” so he never got a chance to know her, she deliberately kept him out.

He, of course, failed his degree in medicine the third time.

As his House Surgeon's job was finishing he applied for a mixed job as a Senior House Officer in eyes, skin, ENTs, orthopaedics, plastics and venereal diseases. Nobody had applied for this job before in living memory, it had just been filled for the occasional month by the odd locum, it was an impossible job, but it would keep Andy at the hospital near Diana.

He began to hate Diana. He made up his mind that the next time she came he would send her away, but, of course, he never did. Then she didn't appear for a week and he nearly went crazy. He almost went up to her in the hospital, but her eyes blazed at him and it cut him short.

In the last week of his House Surgeon's job, while assisting at an operation, the Surgeon, Mr Farrant said, “Have you got an invitation to the Dinner tonight, Andy?”

Andy, out of touch with all social events, said, “Which Dinner?”

“You know,” said Mr Farrant, “it's our Diana and her fiancé's goodbye dinner before they fly out to Australia on Friday.”

Andy almost let go of the retractor he was holding, the room seemed to spin round. “Who is her fiancé?” he eventually asked.

“You know,” said Mr Farrant, “that banker chap, he's not quite a Rothschild but something of that ilk.”

Mr Farrant wouldn't shut up about the dinner. It was in the main hospital restaurant, there was outside catering, and black tie. Was Andy sure he hadn't been invited?

“I remember now,” said Andy lying in his teeth, “I had to cancel, my father is ill.”

“Pity,” said Mr Farrant.

Fortunately this was the last operation of the day. Somehow Andy managed to get the patient back to the ward and he got back to his room and lay on his bed. He was in pain, he groaned, he just couldn't believe it, the bitch, the whore, he could kill her, yes, he really could kill her. He was almost out of his mind, he lay on his bed staring at the ceiling.

He must have lain there for about three hours, the room was in complete darkness. He was startled by his bedside telephone ringing.

“Are you in?” said a whispered voice that could have been the Casualty Sister.

Of course I'm in,” snarled Andy, “otherwise I wouldn't have answered.”

“Could you come to Casualty?” said the whispered voice in a sob, “there's a man down here with a knife at Staff Nurse's throat, please come.”

Andy was off his bed and down the stairs in a flash. He ran along the corridor to Casualty, snatching up a piece of lead piping from a pile of building material lying in the corridor as he ran. He burst through the Casualty doors and, as a coloured man in the room, a stiletto knife to the Staff Nurse's throat, turned, startled, Andy smashed the pipe at his arm breaking it and sending the knife flying. He went in again with the pipe, and smashed the man on the arm again to make sure. As he did so he was conscious, from the corner of his eye of a man coming up off a couch at him from the right, so he ducked and swung the pipe outwards, smashing the man in the face. As he ducked he felt a searing pain across the top of his scalp and blood began to pour down his face. He turned, and there was a third man with a type of short bayonet knife. As Andy turned he must have looked a fearful sight. He was snarling, blood pouring down his face. The man began to back off, Andy was suddenly cool. He walked towards the man slowly. “I'm going to have you, you bastard,” said Andy. Andy was conscious of nurses screaming, and police sirens in the distance.

The man ran into outpatients. Andy went in behind him, bolted the main door then went towards the cubicles where he knew the man must be hiding. He kicked in each cubicle door methodically until he found one that wouldn't open. He then began to smash the plywood door with his lead pipe. The man inside was screaming in terror. As Andy was smashing through he heard a noise behind him, and suddenly there was a police sergeant either side of him holding his arms. “Steady son,” said one, “we will take over now.”

There were police swarming all over the place. The two sergeants led Andy away, one of them taking the lead pipe. They took him to a curtained off part in Casualty. As he went in he noticed the two other men he had hit were still on the floor, both with police and nurses in attendance.

He lay down on the couch. There was so much blood coming down his face that he could hardly see. He could just make out the startled face of a dinner-jacketed Mr Farrant appear.

“You lost your temper a bit,” said one of the sergeants.

“Yes,” said Andy, “I hope I haven't hurt them too much.” He was suddenly cool, as if all the hate had been washed out of him.

“Don't worry,” said the sergeant, “you couldn't have hurt that lot enough, you've done our work for us, we've been after these three for a long time, they're pimps, illegal immigrants and as soon as they are patched up, they'll be off to Germany.”

“They don't look German,” said Andy.

“They're not,” said the sergeant, “I don't know their country of origin, but they came to England from Germany.”

“Is there anybody you'd like to see?” said the sergeant.

“Yes,” said Andy, “O'Sullivan.”

“I'm here, man,” said O'Sullivan, who had obviously been listening all the time. The sergeants left and O'Sullivan came in, “Jesus,” he said, looking at the bloody Andy, “I'm sure glad you're on our side. I came from home. I thought war had broken out.” He massaged Andy's shoulders, “Dr Reynolds tried to get in to see you, I told her, ‘No, man.'”

It dawned on Andy that there was nothing that went on in the hospital that O'Sullivan didn't know about. “By the way,” said O'Sullivan, “you owe me a bottle of whisky.”

“I'll make it two,” said Andy.

They cleaned Andy up. His injury was no more than a scalp wound, it was cleaned, sutured and they put him in an Observation Ward for the night, then sent him home on two weeks' leave.

Chapter 7

On The Treadmill

When Andy arrived home on leave, there was some explaining to do as he did not think that Auntie Rob and his father believed that he had just been attacked in Casualty. Fortunately, the incident did not get into the papers. At the time, in some areas near the hospital, there had been what had become known as ‘an accommodation war' going on. Either blacks or whites would buy, say, the remaining five years of a lease for an apartment in one of the big broken-down houses. They would then create so much trouble for the rest of the tenants in the house, that this would drive them out and they would then fill the whole building with relatives and friends, which could easily add up to about 100 people. It could be blacks doing this to whites or whites against blacks, blacks against blacks, or whites against whites. These mini riots occurred frequently, and the presence of so many police in Casualty was due to the fact that one of these riots had just been cleared up a couple of streets away from the hospital, when the call for help had come from Casualty.

The nurses in Casualty were so bemused by all the action that no one person had seen all Andy's actions. With him out of the way, and fresh dramas occurring almost nightly, what he did, was largely forgotten, although, until he left the hospital, there was always a vague story that he'd been a hero and was somebody not to meddle with.

For Andy the incident was a blessing. It purged him of all his pent up feeling about Diana. He wasn't sure if the last nine months had been taken from a romantic novel, certainly the last bit was
Boys' Own
. He no longer blamed her, she had made the situation clear from the beginning and he, of course, could always have said ‘no'. For the first time he had seen the power of physical relationships and the cost.

On his second day at home, two policemen called to see him. Did he want to press charges? “No,” said Andy.

“Good,” said the police, “that saves us a lot of paperwork, and this lot will be out of the country in two weeks. None of them know who you are, they think you are the wild man from Borneo, you certainly looked a bit frightening. It's surprising that a cut on your head caused so much blood.”

“It only takes the smallest of scalp wounds,” said Andy, “to make you look as if you've been mauled by a tiger.”

“How did you know how to tackle things?” said one of the police.

“Well, as a boy,” said Andy, “I always used to read the
Hotspur
, and there was a white man with a cricket bat and his native companion with two knives. One, or both of them, was called ‘Clicky Bar' and the two of them would take on 100 tribesmen at a time, and they never ever lost. I could really have done with a cricket bat.”

The policemen laughed, “Well sir, if you ever feel like joining the force we would be pleased to have you on our side, and we could guarantee you a cricket bat.”

After five days at home the time began to drag a bit and Auntie Rob and his father, who was almost retired, just doing the occasional consulting work, had just about used up all possible conversation, when Auntie Rob timidly suggested that her cottage in Instow in North Devon was not booked for a week or two and they were welcome to it.

Auntie Rob's cottage at Instow had been in her family for years. She was the last of the family, and for a long time had been going to sell it, then always, at the last minute, she changed her mind. She hadn't seen it for years, but the cottage was full of memories of her childhood. She had had a honeymoon there, and thought, suppose somebody nasty bought it and knocked it about. So each year she put it off and put it back in the hands of the agents for letting.

Andy and his father jumped at the idea. In the middle of their packing, Andy had the thought. “Dad,” he said, “do you think we ought to ask Auntie Rob if she'd like to come down with us?”

“We could ask her,” said his father, “I can't remember when she last went away.”

His father went round to see her and was back in five minutes. He said it was like breaking the news to someone that they'd won the pools. She was quite overcome. She was like a schoolgirl in her excitement, and, he said, with his face lighting up, “We won't have to cook.”

The cottage at Instow was a simple plain brick building with three bedrooms, kitchen, bathroom, lounge/dining room and a small garden, with a garage at the back, but heaven, the lounge/dining room opened onto a covered patio that faced the river estuary with Appledore on the other side. Without unpacking, Andy sank into a deck chair - this was peace. There were boats coming up and down the river, a large gravel digger, small boats with only one man in each who had gone down-river with the tide. Using a shovel, each filled his boat with a ton of gravel or sand and were now coming back up-river with the tide. There was a Scandinavian timber boat on its way up to Bideford, and just to spoil things, a landing craft from the Army Vehicle Waterproofing Station further down at Instow.

Instow is on the banks of the River Torridge. About a mile past the cottage, the Torridge meets the River Taw coming from Barnstaple, emptying into what is known as Bideford Bay if you live in Bideford, or Barnstaple Bay if you live in Barnstaple. The sun shone, and all was right with the world.

His father and Auntie Rob went off each day in the car and she showed him all the places she'd known in her younger days, Ilfracombe, Lynton, Lynmouth, Combe Martin, Woolacombe, Croyde Bay, Westward Ho! and Bideford.

It was enough for Andy to sit and watch the world go by. There was always something happening in the estuary, and for the first time he saw salmon seine-net fishing. Two men rowed out with one end of a net, whilst the other end was anchored on shore. The boat would do a circle to reach its fixed end, then, with about three men on each side, the net was dragged up the beach with flashes of silver as the fish were landed. Andy watched it all with binoculars, and wondered how long such a large volume of salmon would keep coming up the Torridge at the rate they were taking them out.

Most lunchtimes, by really summoning up all his strength, he managed to get down the road to the Marine Hotel for a pint of beer and a sandwich. They all loathed the thought of going back.

Two days before they were due to go, Andy went into Bideford and saw a friendly Dr Wake, who removed his stitches, Andy telling him how he had acquired his injury.

“Well,” said Dr Wake, with a twinkle in his eye as he took an off-work certificate out of a drawer, “another week down here would do you no harm young man.”

Andy was delighted, but he wondered how the others would feel. “That's marvellous,” squealed Auntie Rob, “I still want to show your father Clovelly and the Glass Works at Torrington - the cottage is free.”

His father looked at them both and smiled and said, “Only a week, I could stay here for a year.”

After supper Andy went down to the Marine Hotel and bought a bottle of sparkling wine which was the nearest to champagne he could afford. He came solemnly into the cottage, made the others sit down at the table with a glass in front of them, poured them a glass of sparkling wine and said, “I have an official announcement to make. “Auntie Rob, up to now, you have just been Auntie Rob from next door, from this night on and for evermore, you are our official, adopted aunt, and are now Auntie Rob proper. Let's raise our glasses and drink to it.” Auntie Rob put her glass down, then, with a handkerchief clasped to her face, rushed off to her bedroom in tears. “Gosh Dad, what have I done?” said Andy, “this is awful.”

His father laughed, “Don't you know, son, that women only cry when they are happy, you have made her the happiest woman in the West of England.”

The second week went all too quickly. Andy was fitter than he had been for a year. He had this dreadful mixed job to face when he got back, but in a way, it was a challenge. He was anxious to get back to medicine where he could work without the strain of his relationship with Diana.

It was time to go back to the hospital.

“Is there anything I can get you before you go?” said Andy's father.

Andy paused for a moment and then said, “There is something if you can, it's expensive, and it's for a debt and no questions asked please.”

“Come on,” said his father, “what is it, the Forth Bridge?”

“No,” said Andy, “two bottles of whisky.”

His father was just about to comment, checked himself, reached into his wallet and pulled out some notes. “Now,” he said, “go on, up to the off-licence, I hope you're not a secret drinker.”

His father drove him back to St Daniel's, and as the building came in sight Andy thought back to his last night there. How far would he have gone if he'd been able to break into the Out Patient cubicle before the police reached him, he would never know.

His room looked dingy and drab as ever and his heart sank a bit, but several of the other Housemen popped in to say hello. There was quite a gathering at nine o'clock for cocoa and lots of gossip, with everybody wanting to know exactly what had happened. Andy brushed them off by putting their questions back to them, and asking what had happened in the hospital while he'd been away.

Over the next few days Andy tried to sort out this new complicated job. He met the larger than life Mr Gotter, the orthopaedic surgeon. He had asked Mr Farrant's opinion of him and Mr Farrant had said, smiling, “Well, the rest of the staff think he's a refugee from a Cronin novel.”

Mr Gotter, overwhelmed by the fact that at last he'd got a Senior House Officer, said, “Don't forget I'll take up most of your time.”

As they were speaking, a drug house representative, who seemed to have twisted his neck, came up to see the surgeon.

“Ah,” said Mr Gotter, “what's the matter?”

“Oh, my neck's a bit stiff,” said the rep, and there in the middle of the corridor, in spite of the chap's protests, Mr Gotter manipulated him.

Mr Gotter was hated by the staff, although he was a hard worker. Andy could never make up his mind whether he was a good surgeon or not. Some things he did well, others he didn't. He never ever wrote a letter to a doctor about the patients he'd treated, and he never answered a letter written to him. Andy forlornly tried to get some sort of correspondence going, but as he had several other masters, it was impossible.

He approached the dermatologist, another of his consultants, who said he would always be welcomed at the clinic, but if he didn't know anything about skins, he wasn't much use to him.

He made the mistake of going to the venereal disease ward to meet the VD consultant. What he hadn't appreciated was that the VD part of his job was solely confined to young ladies who were convicts from Holloway Prison who had some form of this disease. He walked boldly into the ward and then ran for safety to the Sister's office as a dozen girls leapt from their beds to shout, “Look girls, a man.”

The lady venereologist came in and lifted the siege. She said, “It's amazing, it's the first time that my so-called Senior House Officer has ever appeared, but I'm happy to tell you I don't need you. I'll escort you to the door so that you are not assaulted.”

The eye consultant was an extremely nice man, Mr Seal, who said, “You have an impossible job, Andy, but if you've come to me, and if you're going into general practice, there are a few minor operations that I can teach you that will be very useful to you when you do get into general practice, as these are all done under local anaesthetic.”

The consultant he liked best was Dr Nuberg, the ear, nose and throat consultant. “It's great to have some help,'' he said to Andy, “and I'll be happy to teach you all you want to know.”

Dr Nuberg was not the only person who did ear, nose and throat surgery at the hospital. Various people came in and did tonsillectomy lists and dashed out again, and Andy had this continuing nightmare of children having post-operative tonsil bleeding. The man who always made himself available, and would come in, regardless of whose case it was, was Dr Nuberg. He made a point of teaching Andy whenever Andy could get to his clinics, looking down ears, up noses, down throats and in the theatre he was training him to take out tonsils.

The plastic surgeons were extremely high powered. A very large, pompous man, with a famous name, from Guys, and another man, a bit of a wag, who came from East Grinstead, was his assistant. What they were doing at St Daniel's Hospital Andy had no idea. All sorts of people used to turn up, and he was pretty sure they were seeing some private patients there and treating them.

He remembered one day when Maxwell, the junior of the two was holding an outpatients. In came a very well known actress to say she thought there was something wrong with her breast reduction operation. “Let's have a look,” said Dr Maxwell. This beautiful young woman took off her blouse and bra and the sight beneath was appalling. There were great scars on her breast, her right nipple was pointing towards her right arm and the left breast looked a bit tatty, but was far better than the right. “That's an absolutely fine, successful operation,” said Dr Maxwell, “we will have to do a bit more work, but I'm sure Mr Clarke will be delighted to hear how you are getting on when I tell him.”

When she'd gone Andy said, “Excuse me sir, am I losing my reason? I thought that looked like a disaster.”

“You're absolutely right,” said Dr Maxwell, “I daren't tell the girl that. You see, the trouble is, with any breast reduction, you never quite know how it's going to finish up. What you can't estimate is how much fat absorption there will be, and however good it looks, at the end of the operation, you keep your fingers crossed. Clarke is the expert on putting things right, and this girl will be all right, but she'll need another op.”

The case under them that was incredible and made Andy forgive them, whatever they were doing privately, was a patient called Edna Clarence, who had had cancer of the larynx which meant her larynx had been removed completely. She had a hole under her chin where saliva dripped, there was a tube going into her lungs and another into her stomach to feed her and there was a space between the chin and the top of her chest. These two plastic surgeons were patiently building an artificial larynx for her, so that in time she would be able to take food by mouth. This needed incredible skill and this lady, who was always cheerful and became a great favourite of Andy's, would be in a hospital for at least two years.