Читать книгу Doctor Hudson's Secret Journal - Lloyd C. Douglas - Страница 9

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THAT operation on Natalie Randolph's fractured skull marked the beginning of my specialization in brain surgery, and because of its importance in determining the nature of my professional activities, I feel that the events which immediately preceded it should be recorded here. If you prefer to consider them as coincidental rather than causative, you are quite at liberty to make that deduction. In my own opinion, my investment in Tim Watson and the success of my operation on Natalie Randolph were integrally related.

On Wednesdays and Saturdays, that summer, I was on duty in the Out-Patient Department of our Free Clinic. This assignment was extremely distasteful. Ailing indigence, bathed and fumigated and in bed, clad in a sterilized hospital gown, was one thing; sick poverty, on its feet—with black fingernails, greasy clothes, a musty smell, and a hangdog air—was offensive to me. I was not a snob. I was born poor and brought up in a home where the most rigid economies were practiced. The first new suit of clothes I ever owned (it cost sixteen dollars) was purchased when I entered high school. But—all the same—I thoroughly detested those long, hot, midsummer afternoons in the dingy Free Clinic, and I am afraid I made very little effort to disguise my aversion to the dull and dirty patients who grimly applied for its benefits.

For the most part, it was a thankless task. Not many of them co-operated with us. They wouldn't take their medicine according to directions; complained that their treatment did them no good; the majority of them were surly, stupid, and stubborn. Many of the men stank of cheap liquor and tried to wheedle you out of a half-dollar to buy more.

Perhaps if there had been only a few patients to deal with, during an afternoon, one might have been more disposed to analyse their disgusting infirmities with more sympathy and listen to their assorted misfortunes with more interest; but they came too thick and fast for painstaking attention. In my own defence I must insist that it wasn't their poverty that exasperated me, for God knows I was having a struggle to make both ends meet, myself. My salary was small, and it was difficult to economize. Little Joyce required the attention of a full-time practical nurse, who served also as my housekeeper. Those were difficult days, and I was in a position to be sympathetic with any man whose pockets were empty.

But I hated that clinic. Our elders and betters on the hospital staff pretended to believe that it was good practice for us young fellows; but it wasn't. It was the worst training imaginable, tending to make a doctor cold- blooded and careless.

One afternoon in latter August, within a few minutes of the closing hour, a young chap was shown into my cramped cubicle with his left hand bound in a dirty rag. He was about eighteen, six feet tall, lean as a bean-pole. He had a good head, thatched with a tousled mop of the reddest hair I had ever seen. His eyes were blue and edged with premature crow's-feet which gave them a defiant hardness. If it hadn't been for the pair of boyish dimples in his tanned cheeks, he would have looked decidedly tough. He was bareheaded and badly sunburned; wore a soiled gray suit that wasn't big enough for his rangy frame, a blue shirt with a rumpled collar, and a pair of cheap and dusty sneakers.

I pointed indifferently to the other chair. He sat down and began unwrapping the hand.

"Pretty bandage," I remarked. "What was it, originally, a shirt-tail?"

He drew a sardonic grin, dropped the rag on the floor, and extended his injured hand. It was badly swollen and there were deep abrasions across the knuckles.

"Looks as if it's broken," I guessed.

"Yeah," he agreed, "right there: those two metacarpals."

"Know your bones, eh?" I glanced up and met his eyes.

"What's that called?" I revolved a finger-tip lightly on his wrist.

"Sesamoid."

"Would you say that was a bone?"

"Umm—well—it's partly cartilage."

"Want to tell me how you got hurt—and when? This hand has been neglected. It's in bad shape."

"Last night. The freight was pulling out of the yards and picking up speed faster than I thought. I missed my hold, and fell on my hand."

"You must have had something in your hand, or you would have met the gravel with your palm down."

He liked my deduction and his eyes lighted a little.

"That's right," he said. "Handful of chocolate bars."

"You swiped them," I announced casually.

He nodded and asked me how I knew. And I told him he must have been very hungry to have hung on to the candy when he might have broken his fall more safely with his open hand.

"And if you had had the money to buy the chocolate bars," I continued, "you would have bought a hot dog or a hamburger instead."

"I didn't have time to think which was the safest way to land."

"That's true," I agreed. "When you are very hungry, your stomach does your thinking for you. Are you hungry now?"

He nodded, adding, "But if you're going to set this hand, I'll need a little ether, won't I?"

"What do you know about such things?" I inquired.

He grinned.

"My father was a doctor," he said, "and I've read a lot of his books." He made a self-deprecatory little gesture. "About the only books I ever did read. I hated school."

Having confided that much, he responded to my encouragement and told me some more. His name was Watson. His father had died when he was ten. His mother had married again. The stepfather had resented his presence in their home. After a while, his mother—unable to defend him without a constant battle—began to take sides with her husband, in the interest of peace.

"But I don't blame her," the boy went on. "I wasn't very easy to get along with. I played hooky pretty often. And once I operated on a cat. I got licked almost to death for that."

"How about the cat?" I couldn't help asking.

"He got well. I didn't hurt him. Doped him with chloroform."

"You'll have to tell me about the operation when we've finished with yours," I said, rising. "Come on. I'll fix you up. What's your first name, Watson?"

"Timothy. Tim."

"All right, Tim. Follow me. No—don't put that rag on again. You're in enough trouble without that."

As I led him into the operating chamber, he was interested in everything but his injury. I think he would have been willing to undergo an amputation rather than miss the experience of seeing our preparations to reduce his fractures and clean up his cuts. The last thing he said before the anaesthetist put the cone over his lean face was, "Gee—it must be great to be a doctor!"

They renovated him and put him to bed. I was under no obligation to look at him again that evening; but I went over to the hospital about nine. He was awake—and smiled.

"How does it feel, Tim?" I inquired.

"About the way it ought to, I think."

"In the morning you may have some ham and eggs for breakfast."

"And then—I'll be discharged?" he asked, a bit anxiously.

"No—I think we will keep you here for a few days; make sure those scratches heal safely. You hadn't any other plans, had you?"

Tim chuckled.

"Plans!" he echoed. "Hell—no."

I surprised myself by saying, "Well—maybe we can make some. Well see. I'll drop in again in the morning."

He reached out his good hand and I took it. At the door, I paused to say, "Good night." But his face was turned away, and he did not reply.