Читать книгу The Doctor Delivers - Janice Macdonald - Страница 2

Catherine Prentice looked him straight in the eye. “Don’t worry, it’s not for me. It’s for the hospital. We need you to be on the show Professional Match. All you have to do is answer a few questions and get in a plug for Western Memorial.”

“No, thanks.” Martin rose and walked round the desk, signaling—he hoped—that the matter was closed. “I don't watch TV. I'm really busy and—”

“And?”

“And to be honest…” He hesitated, then decided to let her have it. “I think this sort of thing…this puffery…is ridiculous. Empty-minded drivel. It has no place in medicine.”

“Other than that, though,” she said with a straight face, “you kind of like it?”

Martin resisted the urge to soften what he'd said with a joke or a crack; even to his own ears he'd sounded self-righteous. But he had more important concerns. “I don't have time for this.”

She turned to leave, then took a step back into the office. “Since you don't watch TV, you probably read a lot. I was just thinking there’s a character in Dickens’s A Christmas Carol you’d probably recognize.” A tight little smile, a flutter of her fingers and she was gone.