Low life
Bedfellows
Jeffrey Bernard
Imust be mellowing a little. I can no longer dislike doctors as I used to. Perhaps, at last, I'm too old for them to play God in a white coat to. But for the rest, the Bosch and Brueghel patients, the boils and burst veins, the dentures in glasses, the stumps that twitch remembering old legs, the hideous humiliation of the sick — all is grotesque. Patients are, for the most part, pretty disgusting and sickness reveals the man of straw and not so much of the nobility I've read about for years.
To my left lies Major Saunders, 'clinging on to the 'Major' nearly 40 years after the event. He has circulatory problems and his purple toes are gnarled and twisted and you could probably pick them off his feet like plums from a tree. Without a batman and wife he is lost. A frightened man — I've watched him at meal times and I think he's actually frightened of meat. Opposite the Major there lies Mr Lawrence a post office worker minus one gall bladder. Yesterday, the tetchy Major asked Mr Lawrence where he lived and when he was told in St John's Wood, near Lord's, the Major said, 'Oh. Are you a member?' I am surrounded by spite. The fourth man who makes up our ward quartet is Mr Wright who has had a very nasty operation indeed. Sadly it has left him anally fixated. Every day he but- tonholes someone to recount to them the story of his greatest and most satisfactory movement ever. The memory of that one moment is all he has left. If only the medical wards weren't full I wouldn't have to endure these surgical cases.
But the amputees are both jolly men even though, as they're fond of telling me, they do happen to be grim warnings to any diabetic. Mr Thompson has one leg and Mr Davies none. Thompson says his gangrene was the result of 50 cigarettes a day which closed up his veins. A doctor overhearing this said, 'It's no use telling Mr Bernard. What he closes up with 50 cigarettes he then opens with vodka.' Being alive is a constant source of irritation to the medical profes- sion. Or, at the very least, an okay liver function test proves that the patient isn't getting his just deserts.
But worse than this quartet are the ladies along the corridor. There is an ancient Glaswegian pug dog, and a tart with a rose- coloured silk dressing gown, dyed red hair and colossal sunglasses and they spend all day on the landing by the lifts — the only place we are allowed to smoke — talking to a Greek toad, poor woman, who is
waiting for her husband to die. They try to converse in mime, sign language or just by talking very slowly as though that will itself open° the mysteries of language. The tart con- stantly asks, 'What is the Greek for cancer?' and is told 'Athens. Very goor1; Very pretty.' And how is your husharw today?"Athens. Very good.' Then she starts crying again. What we have got here though are some fine tea ladies and bottle washers. The days of those old naval actions against the dread" ed Santisima Trinidad at St Stephens ,are over, thank God. Here we are looked age', by ladies from Manila and Singapore. Mere t junks bobbing harmlessly up and dovirl a their moorings in the kitchen. '1°,1/ wouldn't put the Middlesex into the Hospital Good Food Guide but it must g°,4 into the Hospital Good Physician an Surgeon Guide. My houseman, a sPect._ tacular Indian woman, is seething with , 1, confidence and that's always good in a at, tor. The only other people here with tn` same measure of it are the duo with onell between them. But then it's fait accornP and I suppose they haven't much alt id native but to be brave. The Major e°11 learn from them. He's at this moment toys ing with some macaroni cheese which Or,: bite him back. How did we win the war'
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