Richard Gordon - DOCTOR AT LARGE

My first morning on duty I waited in the quadrangle for Mr Cambridge's arrival, according to hospital tradition standing beneath the statue to its famous former surgeon, Sir Benjamin Bone.

'The Chief's getting late,' I said to the Registrar, a tall, thin, serious, but pleasant young man called Hatrick, who already had his F.R.C.S.

'There's nothing much you can do about it,' he said gloomily. 'The last time the old boy didn't turn up I found he'd gone on an American lecture tour.

We were due to begin operating at nine, but it was almost half-past when Mr Cambridge came cheerily through the main gates on foot.

'Ah, good morning, my dear Mr Er-er, and my dear Mr Ah-ah,' he greeted us. He could never remember the names of his assistants, and I was thankful that he had managed to recall mine twelve hours after the reunion dinner. 'Sorry I'm late. Got my notes?' I handed him three or four envelopes, addressed in his own barely legible handwriting. Whenever he thought of anything he ought to remember the next day, he wrote it on a card and immediately posted it to himself at St Swithin's. 'Let's see, we operate this morning, don't we?' he continued, as we marched towards the surgical block. 'There's a most interesting gastrocolic fistula I'd like you to inspect Mr Er-And of course you too, Mr Ah-'

There followed one of the most painful mornings since I qualified. As a medical student I had occasionally been ordered to scrub-up, dress in a sterile gown, and join the surgeon's assistants, but once at the operating table I only played dummy in the surgical quartet. Occasionally I would be given a retractor and told, 'Hang on to that, boy!' but usually I was edged away as the surgeon became more interested in the operation and spent most of the time watching nothing more illuminating than the buckle on the back of his braces. But as a house surgeon I was a necessary member of the surgical team, responsible for cutting the stitches, clipping off the bleeding points, and fixing the dressings. Conscious of this, I pulled on my rubber gloves with unusual determination, and split them from thumb to cuff.

'Nurse!' The sister's voice rang across the theatre. 'Another pair of gloves for Mr Gordon!'

A small nurse, muffled in her theatre clothes, darted across the floor and drew a white glove packet from the sterile drum with a pair of long forceps.

'Thank you,' I mumbled. I was now so flustered that I forgot to powder my damp hands with the small gauze bag of talc, and could hardly force them inside the rubber at all. I seemed to have two fingers jammed in the thumb space, while the end of the glove danced about like seaweed in a strong tide.

'A case of multipollices, isn't it?' murmured the small nurse.

This increased my agitation, and I pulled the glove in two.

'Nurse!' cried the theatre Sister, more loudly. 'Another pair of gloves for Mr Gordon.'

I pulled on the third pair intact, though there was a small empty space like the teat of a baby's bottle at the end of each finger. I anxiously made towards the table, pushing aside a surgical trolley in my way.

'That trolley is unsterile,' declared the theatre Sister, louder than ever. 'Nurse! A complete change of clothes for Mr Gordon!'

When I reached the patient the operation was almost over. Mr Cambridge merely murmured, 'Hello, Mr Er -ah-Will you take the second retractor from Mr Ah-er-?' I determined to do my best and recover from the bad start, but I cut the stitches the wrong length, let the retractors slip, jammed my fingers in the handles of artery clips, and dropped several small instruments on the floor. Mr Cambridge seemed to take no notice. I decided that he was not only the politest surgeon in the hospital, but one of the cleverest in allowing for the assistance of fumbling house surgeons when planning his operating technique.

My only consolation that morning was watching Grimsdyke out of the corner of my eye. He was having a worse time than I was. When I had asked him at breakfast how he felt about giving anaesthetics he had replied lightly, 'Doing dopes? There's nothing to it. It's all done by machines these days-none of the old rag-and-bottle business any more. Just like driving a car. You twiddle a knob here, twiddle a knob there, and you're away.'

'Possibly-but supposing you make the mixture too rich?

'Too much choke, you mean? He started to laugh, but said, 'Sorry, old lad. Didn't mean it at breakfast. Anyway, it's perfectly simple to a chap with a mechanical mind like myself.'

'I suppose you've read up all the stages of anaesthesia, and so on?'

'Old lad, as far as I'm concerned there are only three stages of anaesthesia awake, asleep, and dead.'

It was now clear that Grimsdyke knew nothing about the administration of anaesthesia whatever. He was sitting at the head of the table beside a large chromium-plated trolley thick with dials, and though only his eye and forehead were showing I had never seen him looking so worried since one of the pretty girls in the X-ray Department thought she was in the family way. Every now and then he hopefully turned a coloured tap, or buried under the sterile towels to look up Macintosh's _Essentials of Anaesthesia,_ which he had propped against the unconscious patient's nose. Grimsdyke had come to the theatre confident that he would be expected only to assist the consultant anaesthetist, a cheerful fat man with the best stock of rude stories in London: but the consultant had the habit of returning to the surgeon's room and solving _The Times_ crossword as soon as the patient was on the table, leaving his assistant at the controls.

Unlike most of the surgeons at St Swithin's, Mr Cambridge was considerate and polite to his anaesthetist. He made no remark about the grunts coming from beneath Grimsdyke's fingers, and an unexpected paroxysm of coughing from the patient left him unperturbed. Towards the end of the operation I was alarmed to feel something stir beneath the sterile towels. I glanced at Grimsdyke, but he had now given up the struggle and was leaning on the trolley with his eyes shut. To my horror the patient's arm came slowly into the air. 'Mr Anaesthetist,' said Mr Cambridge quietly, 'if the patient can keep awake during the operation, don't you think you might, too?'

When operating on other people's stomachs Mr Cambridge disregarded his own. As gastrectomy followed gastrectomy my fumbling became worse and I began to long for the release of lunch. After the fourth case the theatre Sister announced firmly as she handed me the dressing, 'We are stopping for an hour now, sir. It's two o'clock.'

'Two o'clock? Already? How the morning flies, Sister.'

'And there is a detective to see you.'

'Ah, yes. Which one this time?'

'Sergeant Flannagan.'

'Flannagan? Can't say I recall the name. What's he like?'

'Big and red-faced, sir,' said Hatrick.

'I know him very well. I'll be out directly. Just clean up the incision, will you Mr Ah-er-'

Mr Cambridge was well known to the Metropolitan Police because he was continually losing his car. As soon as he felt his feet as a surgeon he had bought the customary Bentley, but he either forgot where he had parked it, wondered if he had come out in it at all, or threw open the garage doors in the morning and found it wasn't there.

'This time I'm certain it's been stolen,' he explained to the policeman in the surgeon's room, as Hatrick, Grimsdyke, and I began tucking in to our cold congealed mutton stew. 'I came in by tube this morning, and I didn't have it out yesterday I don't think so, anyway. But the day before, Sergeant Um-um, I distinctly remember I had it parked outside my rooms in Harley Street. When I came out I'm absolutely certain it was gone.'

The sergeant coughed. 'But why didn't you inform the police at the time, sir?'