Second opinion
HAVE patients these days no respect for doctors? I think not. My mobile phone was stolen from my office in the ward last week, and it must have been a patient who took it. There are a lot of light-fingered patients about who do not hesitate to take souvenirs of the hospital with them when they go. A little bit of what they fancy does them good.
For example, the very day before my phone was stolen, a patient was caught by a nurse walking off with one of the ward computers.
'Where are you going with that computer?' asked the nurse.
'To the toilet,' said the patient.
This is not quite so illogical a reply as might at first appear. Many an escape from our hospital by patients in the custody of the law has been made through the lavatory windows, though usually without the latest technology as an encumbrance. He dropped the computer and fled.
When I realised that my phone had been stolen, I called the police. We have a resident policeman in our hospital, a pleasant and upright young man who has never arrested anyone as far as I know. For the first time, he appeared on the ward wearing a bullet-proof vest; 'just as a trial run', as he put it, for shooting round here is on the increase. If the trend continues, we'll soon have underground shelters against our patients.
Well, I received a crime number, the sine qua non that enabled me to make my insurance claim. It goes without saying that the insurance company, having been perfectly happy to take my money for years, attempted to wriggle out of the contract, it being a moot point as to whether insurance companies or their customers are the more dishonest nowadays. Suffice it to say that between fraudulent claims and a reluctance to meet obligations there exists what Marxists used to call a dialectical relationship. Only by bullying and threatening did I carry the day.
It goes without saying that a week later I received through the post the offer of victim support. My name had been passed on by the police to the organisa tion that provides such emotional support 'in a very distressing time'. It is true, I was very attached to my phone.
I was offered 'the opportunity to talk through' (that is to say, relive and keep uppermost in my mind) my 'experience'. The word 'counselling' was implied, though not actually used. I also received a pamphlet explaining how I might be able to claim Incapacity Benefit, if no longer able to work.
I went home to my study, my retreat from the world and my consolation for it, and quite by chance picked up a book of essays by Charles Kingsley entitled Health and Education, happening upon the essay entitled 'Heroism': It is an open question whether the policeman is not demoralising us; and that in proportion as he does his duty well; whether the perfection of justice and safety, the complete 'preservation of body and goods', may not reduce the educated and comfortable classes into that lap-dog condition in which not conscience, but comfort, doth make cowards of us all.
Oh to be a lapdog, now that crime is here!
Theodore Dalrymple
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