Doctor in Clover by Richard Gordon

Author:Richard Gordon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Doctor in Clover
Publisher: House of Stratus
Published: 2012-12-27T05:00:00+00:00

13

The next Saturday Miles told Barefoot he was visiting his aunt in Sydenham, and took Nurse Crimpole to the pictures.

‘You really mustn’t work so hard,’ she murmured, as he held her hand afterwards outside the mortuary gate. ‘I shouldn’t like anything to happen to you.’

‘Perhaps I’ll cut down in the evenings a bit, Dulcie. The finals aren’t for a couple of years yet, anyway.’

‘And I’m sure you’re not getting nearly enough to eat.’

‘Mrs Capper’s a bit mean with the first-class proteins, I must say.’

‘Do look after yourself. Miles – won’t you?’ She looked into his eyes and stroked his lapel. ‘For my sake.’

Next week Miles told Barefoot he was visiting his uncle in Beckenham, and took Nurse Crimpole to the Palladium.

For once in his life old Miles found he couldn’t concentrate. Unlike myself, whose thoughts tend to wander from the books in the direction of Lord’s or Epsom, Miles could not control his brain like a prize fighter his muscles. But now Nurse Crimpole’s smile kept coming between him and such things as the electrocardiographic diagnosis of Fallot’s tetrology. No nurse had wasted her time on the poor chap before, with such grand people as housemen and registrars about in the ward, Come to think of it, no woman had wasted her time on him at all. I wish I’d known what was going on. I might have buttonholed the chap and offered some fatherly advice.

Miles decided the next Saturday to tell Barefoot he was visiting his nephew in Croydon, and take Nurse Crimpole to the Corner House. When he slipped into the ward sluice-room to issue the invitation, he was surprised to discover her chatting to his room-mate.

‘Just looking for my diabetic specimens,’ Miles said quickly.

‘They’ve been taken down to the path. lab., old man,’ Charlie Barefoot told him. ‘If you’re going that way, I’ll come along and collect my own. Bye-bye, Dulcie,’ he added to Nurse Crimpole. ‘See you on Saturday.’

‘Two o’clock outside the Nurses’ Home,’ she replied, and went on polishing her bedpans.

Miles felt he’d been given the electroconvulsive treatment he’d seen in the psychiatric department. It had never occurred to the idiot that Dulcie Crimpole could have eyes for anyone else – particularly, he felt angrily, a stodgy old bookworm like Charlie Barefoot.

‘Known Nurse Crimpole long?’ he asked in the pathology laboratory, his hand trembling as he unstoppered a bottle of Benedict’s reagent.

‘I’ve seen her about the ward, you know.’

Miles paused.

‘I didn’t go to my relatives those last week-ends,’ he scowled.

‘So she tells me.’

‘I think Dulcie’s a very nice girl.’

‘So do I,’ said Charlie Barefoot.

That evening, Miles glanced up sharply from his Muir’s Pathology and said, ‘Perhaps, Barefoot, you would have the kindness to return my pencil, when you’ve finished chewing it.’

‘This happens to be my own pencil, Grimsdyke. And I am not chewing it.’

‘I distinctly saw you chew it just now. Apart from ruining the pencil – my pencil – you ought to know that chewing pencils is a thoroughly unhygienic habit, leading to the transfer of Streptococcus viridans and large numbers of other oral pathogens.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.