Richard Gordon - DOCTOR AT LARGE
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- Название:DOCTOR AT LARGE
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My night rounds had so far been dull, because the nurse on Fortitude was a newly-promoted girl who breathlessly read me the ward report with one timid eye on the door for the visit of the surgical night sister; on Constancy, the night nurse was a thin, spectacled woman with a faint moustache, who in the half-light reminded me of Groucho Marx. One night I came up the empty corridor after seeing Nurse Plumtree into the Nurses' Home as usual, and found Nurse Macpherson frying bacon and eggs and smoking a cigarette in the small kitchen next to the ward.
'What on earth are you doing here?' I asked in surprise.
'Why, hello, there! For three months I'm to be Queen of the Night, tra-la! Didn't Plumtree tell you?'
I shook my head.
'How about some eggs and bacon? Or would you prefer'-she opened a box on the diet trolley-'some egg custard and pureed spinach?'
'As a matter of fact I could do with a bite. As usual, they gave us a rotten supper in the Residency. You know, that brawn stuff the patients won't eat.'
She nodded. 'How well I do! It would pass unnoticed in a pathology exam with "Draw, Label, and Identify this Tissue" stuck on it. There's a bottle of beer in the comforts cupboard,' she went on, breaking a couple more eggs. 'Help yourself and pour me a glass.'
'Aren't you worried about the night sister?' I asked, hesitating.
'What, old Muggsy Munson? She's got her feet up in the Sister's room with a nice cup of tea reading the _Washerwoman's Weekly,_ I'll bet. She comes round as regularly as the hands of a clock.'
I sat down at the ward table, wondering why a nurse smoking in uniform always presented such a curiously abandoned appearance. Then I remembered that I had just kissed my girl-friend good night. 'How are the patients, Nurse?' I asked, trying to re-establish our professional relationship.
'Please, please, don't talk about them out of the ward, I beg.' She forked bacon from the pan. 'I cannot talk shop with my meals. The Nurses' Home is ghastly-it's mastoids with the mince, mumps with the macaroni, membranes with the mash. That's one of the things I've got against Plumtree-' She bit her lip. 'I shouldn't have said that, I suppose?'
'Not said it?' I tried to sound as indifferent as possible.
'Why?,
'Well-everyone knows that you and Plumtree-I mean, she's a very good sort at heart.'
'She certainly strikes me as being a decent sort of girl, I must say.'
'Oh, yes, very nice. Such a pity about her acne.'
'Acne?' I recalled that Nurse Plumtree's face was occasionally marred by a small square of sticking-plaster.
'Yes, all over her back. But of course-' She giggled. 'You wouldn't know about that, would you? But she's a nice placid person.'
'I happen to dislike chattering women,' I said, a little stiffly.
'She's no chatterbox. Why, sometimes she sits for hours and hours without saying anything, just looking into the middle distance.'
'I find her quite an interesting companion, anyway,' I insisted.
'So do we in the Home, these days. The things she tells us about you! My, my! I want to blush sometimes. Did you really go as far as that on the Inner Circle the other night?'
'Good God, did she tell you that?' _
'That's only half of it. How many eggs?'
I ate my bacon and eggs in silence. I was disillusioned. I had thought Nurse Plumtree above the common feminine habit of describing an evening out in the spirit of a boastful Grenadier in a pub after Waterloo.
When I met her the following evening I was more careful in my conversation and behaviour. This did not seem to disturb her, but as we came home I had to admit that her silences seemed longer and longer, and now extended from Piccadilly Circus to Russell Square on the Tube; and as she turned to allow me to kiss her good night I was sure I saw incipient acne all over her cheeks.
'I suppose you know Macpherson's on nights?' she said.
I murmured that I had noticed her while dashing through the ward on my night round.
'I'm asking the office to get her moved,' Nurse Plumtree went on. 'She's incompetent. Do you know that this morning she gave the high-protein diets to the low-proteins? And she mixed up the extra vitamins with the salt-deficients?'
'Oh, really? It doesn't seem to have done them much harm, anyway?'
She twisted the top button of my overcoat: 'Richard, I've got an evening tomorrow. Will you come to dinner at home?'
'Home?' I was startled. I had never thought of Nurse Plumtree having any home except the one provided by St Swithin's.
'It's only down in Mitcham. Mummy and Daddy would love to see you.' I hesitated. 'Please, Richard.'
I thought quickly. Dining with the parents would certainly be a trial. I could see it-gruff father, who I believed was a retired colonel, and sharp-eyed mother, both suspicious of my intentions towards their daughter. Still, Nurse Plumtree had been a kind companion to me, and I owed her some repayment-besides, I was running short of money, and it would mean a free meal.
'All right, ' I said. 'I'll meet you at the usual place at six, if I can get away.'
The clock struck then, and she disappeared through the closing doors of the Nurses' Home.
'How's Plumtree?' Nurse Macpherson asked cheerfully, as I arrived in the ward kitchen two minutes later.
'Oh, all right.' I sat on the edge of the table, lit a cigarette, and swung my legs.
'You don't sound very enthusiastic about it, I must say.'
'Oh, don't I?'
She put down a bowl of eggs she was beating and went on, 'Be a darling and lend me a cigarette. I left mine in the Home.'
She came across to me as I pulled a packet from my jacket pocket. When I lit her cigarette with the end of mine she gripped my hand tightly and said, 'You know what's wrong with Plumtree, don't you? She's undersexed.'
For a moment I looked at her. Nurse Plumtree was pale and dark, Nurse Macpherson red-headed and freckled. Nurse Plumtree always looked faintly ill, and Nurse Macpherson always buoyantly healthy, with a stride recalling a moor on a frosty morning and arms suggesting the tennis racket and the hockey stick. Nurse Plumtree was introverted and Nurse Macpherson extroverted, and if one was undersexed then the other was certainly oversexed. Before I realized what I was doing, I had kissed her.
'Ummm,' she said, nestling into my arms. 'Not quite the Nightingale spirit, but give me more.'
'What about the ward?' I gasped.
'The pro's looking after it.'
I kissed her again.
'But the night sister?'
'Not due for hours. Besides, I've got my cap on. That's the important thing. If they found a nurse stark naked with her cap on, it would still be respectable.'
It was late as I walked slowly up the stairs of the Residents' Quarters. I felt smugly sheikish. I now had two girl friends: one for companionship and comfort during the day, and one for excitement at night. As long as I could keep them reasonably separated and do without too much sleep, I was in for an interesting time.
16
The second disturbance to my romance with Nurse Plumtree was the dinner at home.
'Mummy and Daddy are very sweet really,' she said as I drove Haemorrhagic Hilda down to Mitcham.
'I'm sure they are.'
'Forgive Daddy if he's a little crotchety sometimes. He's been rather like that since he retired from the Army. And Mummy's arthritis sometimes upsets her in weather like this. But I'm sure you'll like them very much. Just be yourself,' she advised me.
The Plumtrees lived in a small house called 'Blenheim' that stood in a neat garden containing a row of yews shaped into horses' heads, with a miniature brass cannon by the steps and a notice on the door saying CIVIL DEFENCE-CHIEF WARDEN. She rang the bell, which had the effect of a bomb going off in a zoo. Immediately there was an outburst of barking, caterwauling and human shouting from inside, and I waited nervously on the mat wondering if it was a pair of lions who were scratching hungrily for me inside the door.
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