Richard Gordon: SURGEON AT ARMS

'Bluey Jardine, isn't it?' began the visitor affably. 'The Australian? I've heard a lot about you. Sorry to make your acquaintance in these particular circumstances.'

The patient looked suspicious. Whenever anyone new appeared in the room, it seemed to mean something unpleasant was going to happen.

'My name's Trevose,' the civilian went on. 'I'm a surgeon who specializes in your sort of trouble. I suppose you know well enough you were pretty badly burnt?'

'Am I going to live?'

'Yes, of course you are. But it'll take a good deal of treatment getting you into shape. We're going to see rather a lot of each other in the immediate future, I'm afraid.' Graham took a bundle of case-notes from the sister. 'You weren't wearing goggles and gloves?'

'I don't reckon so.'

'A sadly common omission,' murmured Graham. With sterile forceps and a kidney-bowl he began picking away the dressings. Another case of 'airman's burn'. If only these chaps would keep their gloves and goggles on, he thought, they'd have at least some sort of protection in the cockpit. The first-aid station had smeared tannic acid jelly all over the raw surfaces, of course. Damnable stuff! Why couldn't the muttonheads at the top issue orders banning it? It would take weeks for him to pick the dried tannic acid crust away, before he could even think about skin-grafting. The hands were terrible. The face was a pretty bad mess too, but that didn't matter so much. A face was a decoration, but you needed hands to live.

'Right, Sister,' Graham decided. 'I'll have this one.' He turned to the man in bed. 'Would you like a change of scene? This hospital, however excellent otherwise, hasn't the facilities for the sort of surgery you need. I run a little show nearer London where we can look after you properly.'

Bluey hesitated and said, 'I reckon I'm in the hands of you quacks now, aren't I?'

'Good. I'll send a car for you tomorrow morning. Do you like ice-cream?'

'I don't mind it.'

'Vanilla or strawberry? I'm afraid there's no chocolate.'

'Vanilla will do me.' Bluey was mystified. Bits of him were burnt to cinders, and they talked about ice-cream. This doctor, whoever he was, seemed an odd bloke.

'We'll be feeding you it till you're sick,' Graham told him cheerfully. 'See you later.'

In the corridor the sister chided Graham with more severity than usual, 'But Mr Trevose! You did say you wouldn't kidnap any more patients.'

'This officer will be my last-honestly.'

'It does make life so difficult for us, you know.'

'Of course I do. But leaving Bluey here will make life very much more difficult for him. Should the powers that be object-'

'But they will object, Mr Trevose.'

Graham grinned. 'Just say I behaved in such an overbearing and arrogant manner you had no alternative but to give in. Say I threatened physical violence if you like. With my reputation they'll believe you.' He patted her amiably on the arm. 'Don't worry, Sister, I'll see there's no trouble. I'll take full responsibility. It's really quite easy. I'm one of the few people at the moment who don't have to give a twopenny damn for the grandest air-marshals, generals, admirals, or anyone.'

She hesitated. She had quite taken to Graham, who had set himself to be resolutely charming towards her. 'You do behave badly sometimes, you know,' she told him gently.

'I behave badly frequently. But it's a change doing so on someone else's behalf instead of my own.'

The following morning Bluey Jardine arrived at Smithers Botham in Graham's second-hand Morris, driven by a green-uniformed W.V.S. worker, with most of him hidden by a tartan rug. It was then October 1940, and the population had found more to worry about than whether to wear their shirt-tails outside their trousers at night. But it had been a lovely summer. The cherry trees had flowered charmingly over the little Gothic mortuary, the patients were kept awake by owls serenading to the crickets' violins, the tomatoes ripened wonderfully along the sunny walls of the main operating theatres (nourished by the unused offerings of patriotic blood-donors). It was difficult at Smithers Botham to believe the Germans might leap from the seas or the skies any moment. The litter of old iron gathered from surrounding fields to make room for growing food was put back again to frustrate enemy gliders. At the portico, the words 'Smithers Botham' were painted from the blue-and-gold notice to baffle Nazi parachutists dropping on the lawn, doubtless dressed as nuns. The chapel clock was hushed, chimes being classified with sirens, whistles, and football-rattles as the portents of varying sorts of doom. The L.D.V. crawled enthusiastically on their stomachs everywhere, carrying shotguns and threatening with much ferocity anyone moving after dark they disliked the look or sound of.

The vast main wards of Smithers Botham remained almost empty. People heard so often on the B.B.C. of 'hospitals and churches' being hit by bombing all over southern England that these seemed highly dangerous places to find yourself in (whether there was a comparable decline in churchgoing no one bothered to find out). The reluctance of these civilians to present themselves for long-awaited treatment Graham found a godsend. After Dunkirk, the annex had been alarmingly overcrowded. If he wanted to throw up more huts, he was told they were 'unavailable'-an infuriatingly handy expression of rebuff. If he wanted more beds, he knew where to look. With the amiable connivance of Mr O'Rory, the Blackfriars gynaecologist working at Smithers Botham, Graham sent Tudor Beverley and his houseman to shift some unoccupied ones from O'Rory's wards. When the traffic was interrupted angrily by Captain Pile in the middle of the lawn, Graham drove to Maiden Cross and bought camp beds in the sports' shop. Captain Pile appeared in the annex to object wrathfully, but even he could hardly evict the sleeping patients.

'It's most irregular, Mr. Trevose. You can't just increase the number of beds in the hospital like that.'

'But the men would be terribly uncomfortable on the floor,' Graham pointed out mildly.

Captain Pile went redder than ever. He was having a bad war. His command was admittedly complete over the military patients at Smithers Botham, who on his approach were expected, with the difficulty of saluting smartly from the pillow, to stiffen themselves under the sheets as though they were corpses already. But the civilian doctors from Blackfriars took no notice of him at all. It was most frustrating. The senior ones made clear that the possessors of Fellowships from the grand Royal Colleges could hardly be bossed by a mere Licentiate of the less exacting Society of Apothecaries. The younger ones defaced his signed notices, often quite obscenely, predictably named him 'The Haemorrhoid', and made up rude songs about him which they sang outside his office window. And Trevose he found more maddening than the rest put together.

'If I may say so, your wards give me a great deal of unnecessary trouble,' he continued warmly to Graham. 'You make absolutely no attempt to maintain proper discipline in this annex. Why, you're actually mixing officers with other ranks!'

'Surely this is hardly the moment to insist on the niceties of military etiquette, Captain Pile?'

'But it is _against regulations!_ What have you done with those board partitions? I had them sent specially to divide up the wards, officers one side, men the other.'

'I'm keeping them handy. They'll be essential if we get anyone from the women's Services. Though I suppose it would be all right bedding them down among the men, as long as the ladies weren't officers?'

Captain Pile decided to ignore the question. You could never be quite sure with a man like Trevose if he were being serious. 'And what about all this ice-cream? I gather you're getting it from some merchant in Maiden Cross. I must insist the practice stops forthwith. You must know it's quite out of order for anyone except the catering officer to have foodstuffs sent to the hospital?'