Richard Gordon - DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE

'Now!' He tapped the abdomen with his pencil as if knocking for admission. 'When we have cut through the skin what is the next structure we shall meet? Come on, you fellers. You've, done your anatomy more recently than I have…what's that? Yes, subcutaneous fat. Then, gentlemen, we first encounter the surgeon's worst enemy.' He glared at us all in turn. 'What?' he demanded in general. There was no reply. 'Blood!' he thundered.

At that point the patient restored his personality to the notice of his doctors by vomiting.

Surgery was Sir Lancelot's life and St. Swithin's was his home. He had given more of his time for nothing to the hospital than he ever used to make his fortune. He was president or vice-president of almost every students' club and supported the rugby team from the touchline in winter with the same roar he used on ignorant dressers in the theatre. During the war he slept every night at the hospital in the bombing, and operated on casualties in an improvised theatre in the basement as long as they came in. A team of students lived in as well and he used to play cards with them or share a pint of beer, actions which at first caused as much dismay as if he had arrived to operate in his underpants. One night St. Swithin's was hit while he was operating. The theatre rocked, the lights went out, and part of the ceiling fell in. But Sir Lancelot simply swore and went on-bombs to him were just another irritation in surgery, like fumbling assistants and blunt knives, and he treated them all the same way.

The only time Sir Lancelot became at all subdued was when he talked of his retirement. It hung over him all the time I was on his firm. The prospect of losing his two days a week at St. Swithin's depressed him, though he was cheered by remembering that the hospital would immediately acknowledge him as an emeritus consultant and perhaps call him in for cases of supreme difficulty. His connection with St. Swithin's would therefore not be completely broken; he could go on meeting the students at their clubs, and as for surgery he could continue that in private.

One day, shortly after I left his firm, he disappeared. He said good-bye to no one. He left his work to his assistant and wrote a note to the Chairman of the Governors simply stating he would not be in again. The hospital radiologist explained it later with an X-ray film. Sir Lancelot had a cancer in his stomach and had gone off to his cottage in Sussex to die. He refused to have an operation.

The Nurses' Home at St. Swithin's was known, with a fair degree of accuracy, as the Virgins' Retreat. Virginity and nursing certainly seem to go together, and the Matron of St. Swithin's put her Ursulian duties first. Her regulations for the nurses' conduct suggested she was convinced they went through their waking and sleeping life at the hospital in unremitting danger of rape. It is true that a student or two occasionally entertained sinful thoughts towards one of her charges; like any other bunch of young men they were romantic souls, and the fact that young ladies took off their clothes for them in the wards did not deter them from trying for the same result in their lodgings. But, taking the nurses as a whole, their Matron's book of rules was nothing more than a blatant piece of flattery.

Intercourse between the nurses and students had to be but social to attract the Matron's displeasure. If a nurse was seen talking to a student in the hospital, apart from a brief necessary exchange of medical matters in the ward, she was dismissed unquestioned. For her to meet a student in her off duty time-to go to the pictures or a concert, for instance-was automatically reckoned, if discovered, as the equivalent of a week-end in Brighton. And if a nurse was found in the students' quarters or a man of any sort discovered in the Nurses' Home it was an event apparently unmeasurable in terms of human horror.

In order to reduce the possibility of these alarming situations overtaking the nurse the opportunities she could present for them were heavily reduced. All first-year nurses had to be in by ten every night. The senior girls were allowed out once a week until eleven,' and staff nurses were permitted in comparison a life of uninhibited lechery by being able to claim two weekly passes until twelve.

Nurses, when in the hospital, were authoritatively stripped of their sexual characteristics as far as was possible without operative interference. Make-up of any sort was looked upon by the ward sisters as the prerogative of women of the streets, and hair was supposed to be tightly tucked inside a starched uniform cap designed to be worn just over the eyebrows. The nurse's figure was de-contoured beneath uniform made out of a material similar to sailcloth, and the skirt was raised only far enough from the floor to let the poor girl walk without breaking her neck.

These regulations were naturally broken, as efficiently and as subtly as the lock on a medieval chastity belt. There were plenty of quiet corners about the hospital where a date could be arranged between student and nurse, and the couple had the whole of London to meet in. A thin, skilful brush with a lipstick could bring even from Sister Virtue nothing worse than suspicion and powder was almost invisible. As the cap had to be folded out of a linen square, with a little practice a girl could reduce it sufficiently in size so that it stuck attractively on the back of her head. As for the uniform, a nurse with any feelings of femininity in her veins immediately took her new outfit to a dressmaker to be shortened.

Shyness and the restrictions surrounding the nurses' social contacts kept me clear of my helpmeets in the ward, apart from the small amount of professional chat I dared to exchange with them. At the same time, the nurses took very little notice of me. With the senior students it was different: for them was the favour of a quick smile behind Sister's back, or a giggle in the sluice-room when no one was in earshot. The house-surgeons, who were doctors and therefore safe matrimonial investments, got cups of coffee when Sister was off duty and had their socks mended; and the registrar could quicken wildly any heart behind a starched apron bodice with a brief smile.

During my stay on Sir Lancelot's firm I began to gain a little confidence in myself in defiance of my surroundings. There was one nurse on the ward who seemed different from the rest. She was a slight little probationer downtrodden by the ward staff as heavily as I, which immediately spun a fine strand of sympathy between us. I felt sorry for her; and I thought, when I was being competently reduced to nothingness by Sister for using Sir Lancelot's special soap at the washbasin, that she was silently commiserating with me.

She was a snub-nosed brunette with grey eyes and a small mouth which she kept firmly closed in the ward. Her experience of St. Swithin's was even less than mine, for she had arrived at the hospital only a fortnight previously. It was aximatic that any nurse who could stand the first six weeks would last the whole course and I was interested to watch her lips growing tighter and tighter as this critical period wore on, while she was discovering it was far less important to save a patient's life than to drop a plate of pudding, and to break a thermometer was a feminine crime just short of persistent shoplifting.

By glances, shy smiles, and putting myself in proximity to her in the ward as much as I dared, I managed to indicate my interest. One morning I was in the sluice-room halfheartedly performing the routine chemical tests on my patients' excreta when she came in and resignedly began to clean out the sink. Sister had sent her there obviously not knowing of my presence; the door shut us off from the ward; we were alone; so I took a chance.