socialized Medicine: One Patient's Story
Toynbee, Polly
Socialized Medicine: One Patient’s Story by Polly Toynbee For years we’ve been appalled by the greed and indifference of American medicine, but because we’re also skeptical of the government’s...
...Away she went, the nurse taking her suitcase and we were left to wait...
...At least you’ll know soon...
...He’s so good...
...How soon can you do it...
...He smiled sheepishly...
...They rose to go, and were effusive in their thanks...
...I hadn’t intended to wake so early...
...The next thing I knew the voice said, ‘All right, breathe away,’ and I was already breathing...
...Thomas seems pretty sure,” said the other woman...
...The woman looked so shabby and down-trodden...
...AS the day wore on Meg was getting tired from the tension and anxiety, and the tireder she got, the more depressed she became...
...No, thank you, dear, I couldn’t,’’ said Mrs...
...Harris still didn’t come...
...But when it came to the big operations, you could pay out a fortune, and, perhaps, in a small private clinic get worse nursing care, even if you got better food...
...No, the doctors said it was just tonsillitis,” Mr...
...I’ll say good-bye to my breast.’ ” She was quiet for a moment and I couldn’t think of anything helpful to say, so I just listened...
...Couldn’t you give me some idea of a reason why it happened to me...
...I can’t stand to think about it...
...I clung to my notebook and pencil...
...they are isolated, elderly, immobile, and they desperately need an operation to get them on their feet again...
...It went on a long time...
...soothing, calming words “You’re all right dear, we’re just popping you onto this bed...
...She patted her hand, and for her comfort Meg was grateful...
...Yes,” he said...
...You won’t believe this but I knew someone had one off...
...I’m not tired or ill...
...Hello, Mrs...
...On examination she has a large craggy lump on the breast...
...Other groups of people were standing around talking...
...What We All Fear’ “Well, Mr...
...He held the breast firmly in one hand to stop it moving, and sliced with the other...
...Meg said when he’d gone, and that was all...
...It was about six o’clock, and the nurses had started to lay the table in one end of the ward for supper...
...Ordered Boredom There is rarely a spare moment in a hospital...
...Family history-she has a sister who had a breast removed 25 years ago and who is alive and well...
...Some of them prefer the work for itself...
...It had been as if she was trying to think of jolly things to say while leading someone to the scaffold...
...Oh God,” Meg said under her breath...
...I don’t feel like a grownup person here...
...We were standing by the door, well away from the patient...
...It’s always stuck in my mind...
...Not really...
...Oh, you’ve never been in the hospital before, except to have babies...
...Thomas had asked her before whether she would mind my following her stay in the hospital, and she had said at once that she would be delighted-“It’ll be something to take my mind off myself...
...Harris, and we all laughed with relief...
...I asked where Mrs...
...Don’t these lifts take a shocking time to come...
...Funny,” she said...
...The blood made nasty vein-like tracings on his cream rubber gloves...
...You’ll be third on the list tomorrow, probably at about eleven o’clock...
...Will you faint...
...And then I felt better too...
...The long corridor, lit by sky lights, from which lead all the theaters, should be a sterile zone, but isn’t...
...What’s he like...
...I’d rather have a funny name just now.’’ Bob looked awkward standing by the bed...
...The tears were falling again...
...Take these forms to the TCI desk...
...Tell them...
...She reached for a Kleenex and wiped it away...
...As I had put 50 pence, instead of my usual ten pence, in the tin to ward off danger, I hadn’t decided if that was a good or bad omen...
...But they are the things we’re stopped from paying...
...There was a kind of casualness, people coming and going, talking, sitting about, n e anesthetist is in charge of a patient during an operation...
...The strip of carpet down the middle makes the place seem warmer and a little less institutional...
...A nurse came up...
...It made her talk a lot...
...Reluctantly I came with them and stood a little behind the surgeon’s elbow...
...They know I’m here for something or other...
...Thomas was pretty certain of his diagnosis...
...A Large Firm Hillock A bright white arc light was beamed down on Meg’s breast...
...They are not going to die of their complaints, and many of them are not going to get much worse if they have to wait for treatment, but they are all of them in considerable pain...
...Meg un-buttoned her nightdress...
...But the knife stopped within a millimeter of the nipple...
...I thought I would faint at once if it even touched the nipple and half gasped...
...This one on my right though, she’s lovely...
...A tear overflowed and fell down her face...
...She’s had her breast off, just a week ago, but she looks as fit as anything- and ever so cheerful...
...I take the lump, and I run with it as fast as I can to the laboratory and they examine it...
...Would it be better to have gone private...
...I said she had...
...I think he was trying hard to look friendly and honest, but not to give her any false hopes that might have to be crushed...
...The room seemed small and I wished I was further back...
...I was surprised to be recognized by anyone in all that surgi...
...At ten o’clock exactly she was given her pre-med...
...I want to know why it’s happening, and why it’s happening to me...
...The old woman’s empty green pajama leg was flapping...
...I nodded trying to look as if it was routine to me too...
...The woman looked up into his face, tried to smile, but her lips quivered and the tears began to fall, down her cheeks one or two onto her bare breasts, and the student and I left the room...
...The sound of the snipping was as bad as the sight of the knife...
...Well...
...Two nurses helped to lift her onto his long trolley, on top of which was a stretcher...
...I can’t understand it...
...The queues and the waiting lists are quite appalling...
...I’d do anything in the whole world for her, you know, Polly,’’ he said...
...No doubt patients puzzle over the significance of those initials as being somehow relative to their case, perhaps containing the vital clue to the exact nature of their ailment...
...They say whether we have to go ahead or whether there’s nothing the matter...
...By this time I had identified with the Harrises so much that I disliked the feeling that I might get any confidences behind their backs, that doctors might tell me anything about her...
...Her head flopped back as they put her down...
...he left us on a long bench outside the ward on the second floor, and disappeared...
...He was a dark, heavy-set man...
...He kissed her and left, promising to be back that evening...
...They don’t take up SO much space lying down...
...We’ll have to admit her on Monday for operating on Tuesday...
...We were all wearing disposable face masks from a dispenser on the wall of the anesthetic room...
...They’ll be showing off to you, and they’ll make a specially nice job of it, won’t they...
...The two women left the room with their patients...
...No, I suppose you couldn’t.’’ “I wish we knew...
...Although the complaints about operating conditions were severe, clearly no one was coming to any harm as a result of them...
...Meg was wheeled through the doors into the adjoining operating theater, and we all followed her...
...Her younger son has cardio-vascular disease and is awaiting surgery...
...The doctors and nurses who were actually assisting at the operation all wore green gowns-the other onlookers (there were two student nurses, as well as the medical students, and one or two other nurses) were dressed as I was, in white...
...But, they’re still nice, although I’ve breast-fed two children...
...And then he wheeled her away...
...It’s lucky I bought myself a button nighty,” she said...
...Why are they prepared to sit outside doors in dingy corridors, clutching their appointment cards for mythical appointments, long past, with hardly a murmur of complaint...
...They were hot and scratchy...
...Harris refused, politely...
...Her jaw seemed to have fallen...
...They looked nervous, but not terrified...
...We do everything together, Meg and me...
...The London Hospital’s orthopedic department is completely swamped...
...He was carrying a small suitcase, which he put down under his chair discreetly...
...Would she get better doctors...
...1’11 call you when she’s ready...
...I said no, it would be tomor row...
...To be honest, it hardly hurts more than an appendix...
...The knife looked like a very small slanted razor blade in a holder...
...He felt around and snipped, slowly and steadily, pulling at a piece of flesh...
...He * Here’s what a doctor told the author about the advantages of private care compared to the National Health Service: “The food is better if you go privately, and you get a single room...
...Meg had cried a little and tried hard to sleep...
...Her body and face were bronzed from the recent heat-wave sun, except for her breasts, which were bright white and full and round...
...Me2 took out her handkerchief and blew h;r nose...
...Though you never can tell until you see what’s there.’’ Quite soon she was shown into the room by the nurse, and she was now composed, and managing to smile...
...He just assumed, passively, that everything in life was unfair...
...I sat next to them, and whispered to the one nearest, “Is there any particular specialty this morning...
...Harris under his arm...
...her face was only a little lined...
...I’m the one who looks after you for the operation...
...She looked up as we came in, and there were tears forming in her eyes...
...Getting it all free didn’t suit him...
...She had fuzzy, pale, mouse-colored hair, an old candlewick dressing gown, and pop eyes...
...Harris,” said Dr...
...Other women in the ward were terrified to find themselves still awake and thought they’d be operated on without anyone realizing they weren’t properly under, but they were too sleepy to open their eyes or call out...
...I wondered whether she had lost her nerve...
...Thomas liodded and ask,ed one or two supplementary questions, more to test the student’s knowledge than to ascertain important information about the case...
...What’s it like outside today...
...Oh, I wish it was over...
...The inside was less horrific than the cutting...
...When they’ve taken out the lump,” she said, “how many days after do they take the whole thing off if they have to...
...You notice it’s unexpectedly pale,” he said as he eased it out a bit more...
...Well, it’s better, we think, for you to have one operation, not two...
...The doctor rose from his chair as she sat down...
...TCI sounds technical and complicated like much that goes on in hospitals but turned out to mean only “To Come In...
...No, it’s not, not at all,’’ he said with a laugh...
...I feel terrible,” Bob said, a little later...
...Well, let’s go and see her,” he said rising from his chair...
...On the NHS you never know when a bed might suddenly be available...
...I didn’t know where to look...
...She looked physically smaller, as if she didn’t take up any space, or any thickness...
...In there sit groups of exhausted nurses, their white disposable mob caps covering their hair, and doctors in white Wellington boots, nasty things that make one feel they’ve been wading through a floor of blood and gore...
...You can come now, Mr...
...Shirley Temple says she was always bosomy, like you dear...
...Though Harris is a common name...
...I said it was grey, and not hot...
...We’re going to take a look at that lump, take it along to the laboratory, and wait until they give us an answer...
...All I could say was, “Well, it’s the waiting that’s worst...
...He gave a nod in my direction, and sank into a chair...
...It worried me that I looked exactly like a nurse or doctor...
...Really it’s to spare you having to go all through it a second time...
...Soon Bob came out and beckoned to me to come and see Meg...
...How are you...
...I doubt if she’ll remember any of this...
...she said...
...The helplessness of sitting and waiting and contributing nothing made him feel bad...
...After that we were on Christian-name terms...
...He was talking, still in an ordinary everyday voice-no hush or special reverence...
...Your husband’s outside isn’t he, Mrs...
...He seemed to want her to say something...
...Nor did she feel how clumsily and awkwardly she was handled...
...The nurse took me to her changing room where she found me a locker to put my clothes and gave me a gown, a white mob cap, and big white cloth over-shoes...
...He’s a wonder...
...Her patter was limited but its range led us exactly to the door of the ward...
...She was too much asleep to notice or mind her operating-gown flapping open...
...It was a one-in-a-thousand chance, but it went to his heart, and we’ve been waiting to hear when they’d operate...
...I didn’t want to see...
...This is the only place I found in the hospital where doctors and nurses would actually sit down and drink coffee together...
...she asked with a large smile...
...Would you like him to come in too, or would you rather not...
...There was a lot of coming and going...
...When I was young, me and my girl-friend used to wear really tight shirts...
...He was a stiff and somber young man, serious and unrelaxed, but it may have been my presence that made him nervous...
...Although he seemed to believe what I said, he would still rather have been able to pay, and to imagine that he could help his wife...
...01977 Polly Toynbee...
...They have become lumps of meat, patients, and they have discarded already their outside identities...
...He was a little comforted but still not quite believing...
...How can I tell him...
...Then the anesthetist laid her out, arranged for her right arm, on the side that was to be operated on, to be laid out on a plank sideways, and strapped down...
...It’s like dying...
...After they’ve taken out the lump, I wonder how many days it is before they go ahead and take the whole thing off, if they have to?’’ I didn’t know but said I thought it would be soon afterwards...
...It wasn’t their own skill that had made them so pleased, but the fact that they weren’t going to have to use it after all...
...He introduced himself...
...I asked if they knew what she’d come in for...
...You know my older son, Tom, well he’s at that age now, 16, where he sits about with his friends, and I hear them making jokes about my boobs...
...But there she was-transformed into a patient...
...Hospital visiting is dreadfully unsatisfactory, and the closer the relationship the more excruciating the occa-sion...
...That’s soon enough.’’ “Yes, doctor,” said Mr...
...Thomas came sweeping into the ward, with his small flotilla of juniors, students, and nurses...
...The woman was in her early sixties, with short, fairish dyed hair, glasses, and a smiling face...
...Or gaucheness, making light of what still shocks them greatly, but doing it with excruciating clumsiness...
...A whole wing of the hospital had been knocked down ready to house new operating theaters and wards, but the ax had fallen, and the government would not let them proceed with the plan...
...You’ll be fine in a moment...
...People walk in and out of it in their street clothes and shoes...
...Socialized Medicine: One Patient’s Story by Polly Toynbee For years we’ve been appalled by the greed and indifference of American medicine, but because we’re also skeptical of the government’s ability to handle things any better we’ve wondered whether a system of socialized medicine like England’s is really an improvement over what we have in this country...
...I began to listen...
...Mrs...
...When Meg came back from the x-ray department, she was more tense than before...
...She’s almost asleep,” she said when she came in...
...She got herself ready, straightened her nightdress, and gritted her teeth...
...Meg said with great passion...
...I didn’t know when Thomas would start...
...We went through the swing door into the theaters corridor...
...He looked surprised by her question and answered at once without realizing how much news he was breaking, “Oh, but we do it all at once, at the same operation...
...I left her for half an hour to go down to the canteen to get myself some lunch...
...Do doctors go about their duties with the same sense of responsibility that they have in a highly remunerative private system...
...Are you Mrs...
...She laughed, squeezed his hand, and said, “All the same, I think you should...
...They say the weather’s going to break soon, but I don’t see much sign of it...
...she said...
...She was about Meg’s age but looked older...
...She had a bath while everyone had breakfast...
...He smiled and whispered back, “Oh no, just the usual, lumps and bumps and things, mostly...
...I was there to select a patient to follow all the way through his or her hospital stay, and because choosing one was so difficult, I had decided to take the first person who was about to be admitted within the reasonably near future Polly Toynbee, a former editor of The Washington Monthly, is now a columnist for The Manchester Guardian...
...I wonder how soon they’ll do the next one, if she has to have it done?’’ I said I didn’t know...
...It’s ridiculous...
...Anyway you’d tell me what they were saying, wouldn’t you...
...She’s older of course, and she’s not married, so perhaps she doesn’t mind so much,” Meg said doubtfully...
...It’s all right...
...As they spoke he had been filling out her admission forms...
...The anesthetist pushed me forward and I stood by her head...
...He dealt with any number of these cases all the time, but he was not in the least off-hand or callous...
...I wished the day was over already...
...The ginger-bearded student departed with the case of a Mrs...
...I didn’t say that the streets were full of people selling flags for Cancer Research day...
...Well, perhaps your husband can help...
...We won’t bother to send it to the laboratory,” he was saying...
...She said she thought she did, and wished it was over...
...He showed a diagram he had sketched of her breast, showing the exact position of the lump, and also showing one or two shaded areas where there were slight hardnesses...
...I was surprised that it seemed much like many other rooms in the hospital, It didn’t have a special aura, a sense of drama, or of meticulous sterility...
...She was sitting at a table close by doing a jigsaw with two other women...
...The students spent a long time with their cases, and it was half an hour before the bearded one returned...
...You’ll find you’ll hardly notice tomorrow...
...e needs to know exactly when he will be admitted tu hospital so that he can make his plans around that date...
...We’ll be operating on you tomorrow...
...she’d said kindly...
...I’m glad I’ve got you here to talk to...
...To have been able to work and pay would have made him feel so much better...
...When I dressed, the nurse took me back to the common room, and we had some coffee...
...As he finally lifted the flabby pink lump from out of her breast, with a last snip, he was sure...
...Have they done it...
...She didn’t look worried any more...
...It may sound silly, but I’ve always been proud of them, my breasts...
...She was sitting in the pub one night and someone prodded her and the thing bust...
...She doesn’t seem a bit upset...
...I said I would, but was secretly determined not to hear anything myself...
...Harris,” said the anesthetist loudly...
...I tense my muscles and they usually have to more or less screw the needle in...
...I would have expected a moment of euphoria at the end of a difficult heart by-pass operation, a celebration of their own tremendous surgical prowess, but here was everyone being pleased because Meg didn’t have cancer...
...It does not appear to be attached to the skin or muscle...
...We’ll send it along later just as a final check, but I’m quite sure.’’ I turned quickly to the students, to be certain that I had understood what he was saying...
...Good luck, girl,” said another...
...The calm and uninvolved way in which the operation was carried out had led me to believe that they all regarded her as just number three on the list, just another probable mastectomy case...
...She’s a dear, looks after a lot of the others, goes about cheering people up...
...Thomas before he examined them himself...
...The clothes felt dirt-resistant...
...I could imagine it trickling as it rolled down the side of her body...
...The pleasure on their faces was a surprise and a delight...
...How do you feel this morning about watching my operation...
...Some 20 minutes later the nurse returned...
...Can you hear me...
...The room was like a sleeping-car compartment on a train, except with no window...
...Harris asked, “How long will I have to stay in...
...Her mind’s all there-she reads all day, but she can’t hear, She smiles at everyone though...
...It Meant the Worst They agreed that it sounded almost certain that the woman had cancer...
...she said...
...Would she look like that dead...
...It’s just that all this couldn’t have come at a worse time.’’ The doctor gave a faint smile, the student beamed with embarrassment, and I looked at my shoes...
...Mrs...
...I couldn’t hear what he said, although I was close...
...He was grave and undramatic...
...We’re very close, never go anywhere on our own...
...Oh, I hope he doesn’t stare like that other doctor in out-patients...
...The young man cleared his throat nervously...
...But not asleep, not at all...
...She looked terrible...
...said the woman...
...I wasn’t sure how she would greet me...
...Only a small trickle rolled down her breast like a tear...
...I’m absolutely sure, just from looking at it...
...I just want to make one last check before the operation,” he said...
...Your outside identity falls away as you become a patient...
...I didn’t know when it would start...
...Very routine cases on Dr...
...The tension of the operating theater brought them together, and the rigid segregation was broken down...
...I asked if they were sure there would have to be a mastectomy...
...That’ll just be the first small one...
...Does she seem like a good one to you...
...You’ve got a lucky face, you’ll be OK...
...We’ll just get you undressed and pop you into bed...
...I could hear her gulping, and I could feel her shock...
...You’ll be back in the ward before you know it, just as if nothing at all had happened,” one said...
...I didn’t want to know what they thought of her...
...My youngest doesn’t know...
...Meg was sitting in her slot, in a crisp white flowered nightgown and a small bed jacket...
...What’s he mean...
...It was a complete surprise, quite unexpected...
...Harris...
...I said not yet, not for a little while...
...There was still no atmosphere of hush and tension, except inside me...
...Thomas had asked in out-patients-a double-check...
...When I came back through the ward a young doctor was there, standing by the Sister’s desk...
...Hams...
...Not just a pudding then...
...Mrs...
...I’ve brought her things in case you want her to stay in today...
...She would have preferred to have him there, she said later...
...Would you wait here, Mr...
...She was going through one of the most terrible times of her life, and I would have understood if she had decided she didn’t want me there after all...
...she asked...
...the doctor asked...
...She explained quietly to me, “This old lady next to me on my left, she’s a dear sweet thing, in terrible pain with leg ulcers and a stomach ulcer...
...When Meg had been prepared, the anesthetist sat down on a stool at her head, and there 11s stayed, watching her for the whole operation, with various machines beside him...
...Meg hadn’t taken in the difference between doctors and students and referred to him as “that young doctor who listened so nicely when I came for my first appointment...
...One of the nurses in this common room was expecting me...
...It’s just terrible luck...
...Now do you understand what’s going to happen tomorrow...
...I’d feel better if I could...
...She glanced at it and said, “Well, I’m glad they won’t think I’m the wrong person in the operating theater...
...He controls all the life-support mechanisms, watches the pulse and breathing, tells the surgeon what he can and can’t do...
...Well...
...Harris to have an x-ray...
...The weather scarcely permeates a hospital, nor does night and day...
...Harris, “Though I’m sure they must have guessed, I kept saying to Ian, he’s the eleven-year-old, ‘You know where your socks are,’ and, ‘I’ve put all your clean shirts and pants in the top drawer.’ So he must have thought, but he didn’t say anything...
...They are “lumps and bumps,” hernias and gastric ulcers, not housewives, grocers, welders, or clerks...
...I haven’t gone, I’m still here...
...Harris asked...
...I don’t thilik I’d have cried if he hadn’t stared at me so hard...
...I came to see you in the ward yesterday but you’d just popped along to x-ray...
...The door opened and the nurse ushered in Mr...
...I thought the rich always got better medical treatment...
...One of them stopped...
...I feel you know your way around a bit, you know what we’re supposed to do, I feel so lost...
...It wasn’t like cutting a cake or carving a joint so much as taking the peel off an orange...
...I didn’t tell the boys I had to come in until yesterday evening,” said Mrs...
...I expect you’ll be glad to get in the ward and put your feet up, after coming all that way this morning...
...She opened her eyes for a moment...
...He began to supervise the arranging of Meg on the operating table...
...Took longer than I’d expected...
...This your first...
...The only reason for going private was to be in a private room, to get better hotel conditions, but not better medical treatment...
...It felt different to his touch, not his eye...
...I was surprised and relieved that blood didn’t pour or spurt at once...
...The stitches are killing me...
...Have you come far...
...Is there anything else you’d like to ask...
...That’s why I walk like this...
...I wouldn’t mind if I spent the rest of my life paying it back...
...Nurses came along the ward all night, whispering, muffling giggles, and sometimes shining flashlights to see tpat the patients were all right...
...When the nurse had gone she said, “I want to keep off the hospital food as long as 1 can...
...As the porter pushed her down the corridor to the big elevator, she kept a tight grasp of the nurse’s hand...
...She fell very silent very soon and lay with her eyes shut...
...It’ll be come and gone before you know it...
...I was chatting away to her, but she’s stone deaf, can’t hear a thing...
...Bright Company It takes a determined recluse to avoid knowing everything about everyone in a short time in a ward...
...Hospitals are good at denying the reality of any life for their patients outside the institution...
...She looked back at him, wondering what she should say...
...Nudity often gives that effect...
...You don’t know me...
...Harris...
...The clerk was very good about it...
...I’m Quite Sure’ I don’t remember the words, but it dawned on me slowly what he was saying...
...It’s just one of those things...
...Meg murmured...
...He has a bad heart, from the time when he had tonsillitis five years ago...
...I wasn’t sure why her husband wasn’t allowed to go too...
...The Sister told me, as I passed her desk, that the doctor would be visiting Mrs...
...Every so often she kept finding new explanations for her lump, none of which convinced her at all...
...I haven’t any secrets from him, you know...
...We’ll take out the lump and send it to the laboratory...
...He sliced it open, and said it was white and pulpy, had liquid inside, was not a sinister dark grey...
...My eldest guessed what it was, but I don’t think he realizes I might come home with one breast missing...
...I haven’t told my boys...
...The skin was peeled back on each side of the cut, again like an orange...
...I did think I would, except they took her in here so soon...
...My youngest boy, he’s eleven, he’s waiting for heart surgery...
...Soon she was far away, and sometimes half muttered something, but her jaw wouldn’t open enough to let the words out...
...Come on,” said the male student...
...I longed to say, “I’m sure it’ll be all right...
...He’s so considerate to me all the time, so grown up...
...She always had chocolates with her and ate them all day long...
...Will you come with me...
...I just can’t open my eyes or mouth...
...But when she saw me she hurried over and sat down beside me...
...The computer is still a novelty at the hospital and is used in all the wards for the bed state, waiting lists, and admissions...
...Blood spurts out all over the place, very nasty...
...It wasn’t cancer, and she was going to be fine...
...You get some good rest for tomorrow...
...Don’t worry...
...The doors to the theaters swing open and shut into the corridor in the middle of operations...
...The anesthetist will pop in to have a word with you too...
...Mastectomies are the bloodiest of all operations, I always think,” he said gaily...
...I can quite understand why so many people are prepared to spend their last bit of life savings on paying for the operation to be done privately, rather than having to suffer for another three years...
...Meg almost had a tear in her eye but turned to me...
...He asked all over again almost all the questions the medical student and Dr...
...The doctor came back to his consulting room quite soon, leaving the woman in tears to be helped to get dressed by a nurse...
...Do British patients get top-quality, speedy care...
...Meg was just being wheeled into an ante-room adjoining one of the theaters...
...He felt lost, as if he didn’t have anything to do with her any more, as if she’d been taken away from him...
...Why are patients so patient...
...The talk had made us all tense...
...He started to give her an injection in the back of her hand...
...said the nurse...
...Everything was crisp and hard with starch...
...Put on...
...The man did most of the talking...
...Or perhaps not enough...
...A woman was lying on the examination couch, one arm up behind her head, the other lying across her naked breasts...
...Why am I waiting around here for them to do this terrible thing to me?’ I always feel like that about the dentist when I’m waiting...
...We’ll be operating on Mrs...
...While they were gone the doctor got through two routine cases...
...She handed across her box of chocolates...
...I felt it myself...
...She smiled at him bravely and held his hand tight...
...It seems to me,” he said, “that the things that are most important in life, health and the kids’ school, are things I’d like to pay for...
...It’s very restful sleep, with no dreams...
...Want one, love...
...I said not too good, but I thought I’d be all right...
...The Harrises made their nervous way through the procedures...
...Harris...
...she asked...
...I said it was...
...They don’t usually,” said the anesthetist...
...One of the students nudged the others, and I clenched my notebook so it suddenly crumpled...
...They said they didn’t think so, but then Mrs...
...Thomas’ list this morning,” she said...
...he ordered...
...It Mi& t Happen’ Meg looked pale, even under her tan...
...Or just a youthful desire t.0 shock...
...I did knock myself not long ago, could it have been that...
...Thomas came in to get himself a quick cup of coffee before starting on Meg...
...My oldest starts his 0 Levels on Monday, and it’ll be terrible not being there...
...The doctor was brief, and perhaps a little embarrassed by their warmth and gratitude...
...The surgeon slid his fingers inside and felt around...
...There were a lot of people standing around her, but at first it was impossible to tell which were porters or nurses or doctors...
...Harris,” she said...
...Thomas came in, dressed up in green...
...said a young woman, the coarsest, who always made rude jokes...
...Don’t expect to be asleep by the time they take you upstairs, because you won’t be...
...Meg smiled and asked, “What are you in for...
...There are always new machines and new equipment invented that a hospital or a particular department cannot afford...
...and to be published in the United States by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich in January...
...This didn’t seem to me a very tactful opener, but Meg was kind and felt sorry for her...
...the head and body didn’t seem to belong to one another...
...It only lasted a moment, a brief sigh of relief and pleasure...
...The East End is very bad, but it’s the same all over the county...
...I went after him into the ward, down a long passage with two rows of beds on the right, and into a long, brighter room at the end where two rows of beds faced each other...
...Never mind my being late...
...Perhaps,” she answered...
...Her skin was pale and sallow...
...Thank God I had Bob there to get me through all the formalities...
...This...
...You can’t see here...
...He began to take her history again from the beginning...
...I can’t find any indication of other swellings...
...I kept saying to myself, ‘This is ridiculous...
...I asked if she’d like me to go, if she’d rather sit with Bob on her own...
...For my benefit the doctor explained that at that age a large and “craggy” lump almost invariably meant the worst...
...Here we are, I’ll just pop in and tell Sister you’re here, just wait here on this bench, dear...
...I do bicycle a lot...
...she said...
...cal garb...
...He took it bp in a matter-offact sort of way...
...I whispered...
...She gone in then...
...They think it’s something in my insides...
...She was a handsome woman...
...A woman from across the room came shuffling over, sliding one old bedroom slipper after the other...
...A green sheet covered her, through which poked her right breast...
...she said...
...He was looking at me as if to say, ‘You know this is it, don’t you...
...Meg shook her head and said no, a little frostily, and the woman shuffled away...
...I said he seemed very nice, very serious...
...But I knew that Dr...
...You couldn’t have prevented it...
...There is a resting room for operating staff, with a constant supply of hot coffee...
...I couldn’t help seeing and I couldn’t help not seeing...
...I didn’t know where I was going or what I was doing...
...You don’t have the same sense of time...
...It takes my mind off things,” she said...
...Meg asked...
...Go on, off with you...
...She breast-fed both her children...
...I waved back...
...Most of us did...
...They were to see the new patients, take a lengthy case history from them, and write methodical and legible notes to read back to Dr...
...I had hoped that f would be placed behind some viewing panel, well away from the theater itself...
...Although young, probably in his midthirties, he had an aura of authority that stopped the medical students’ whispers with half a glance: The room was tall, with high ventilators leading out to the street...
...Perhaps when it came to it she would have changed her mind...
...I’m afraid you’ve missed your lunch, Mrs...
...The clerk called us over to the desk, and we sat down...
...Isn’t it warm today...
...I wanted to keep them all at a distance...
...voted Labor, but was not much of a socialist...
...He’ll help all he can,’’ and the thought of her husband brought more tears...
...Harris...
...Meg had slept reasonably well...
...She tried to smile and nodded...
...You know what we’re going to do, don’t you...
...She was another female patient, entering the discipline of a female ward, and she was not allowed to undress and get into bed with her husband present...
...My husband’s very good like that...
...She kept licking her lips as if her mouth was very dry...
...Two weeks ago she noticed a lump on her right breast...
...Oh, please ask him in,’’ she said with a look of great relief on her face...
...Do you think they’ll operate today...
...That when I come ’round I shan’t know if it’s there or not...
...Could you just slip your things off as we want to have another look at YOU,’’ he said, when the curtains around the bed had been drawn and the whole group was gathered round...
...She looked so like the others at first glance that I didn’t spot her at once when I came into the room...
...She was surprised to get yet another visit and yet another check...
...I explained that the best specialists were the same people who were consultants in the best hospitals, like this one, You paid your money to see the same man, get the same treatment, but in nicer surroundings...
...She was gone for a long time, there being a queue of people waiting for x-rays...
...Then they give us the thumbs up or thumbs down...
...Eleven o’clock is usually a peak time for the Admissions Office, but by chance it was empty when I came in, except for a reception clerk in front of her computer keyboard, silently tapping away...
...Her head nodded faintly...
...Harris...
...It didn’t help that her friends in the ward kept coming up to her to wish her good luck, to make jokes and offer odd pieces of advice, but she smi?ed kindly at them...
...Husbands didn’t count any more...
...It’s a question of what we find...
...Fifteen per cent of patients default at the last moment, sometimes even urgent cases like hers...
...Oh, I’m so glad you’re here...
...I felt sick and concentrated on appearing nonchalant...
...I say this so that you know where we stand...
...I didn’t know why she was in bed, I suppose for convenience, keeping everyone in their slot, so you know where they are...
...A young staff nurse kept talking to her kindly...
...Though maybe Tom knows...
...We’ll see you on Monday then, eleven o’clock...
...Harris is 46, married with two children...
...It was an ordinary Thursday morning in a busy clinic, one of the busiest, the general surgical...
...That’s you, Polly...
...Otherwise, for something that was an emergency, where the National Health would admit someone at once, as they had admitted Meg, there was nothing to be gained...
...Harris was, and the nurse said she was waiting in the corridor...
...I was in this big room and they fixed it all up...
...You know, I think I begin to feel funny already, a bit ill...
...Terminal Cancer I? Total Collapse Imminent...
...I’ll be all right in just a moment...
...You know I had a bath yesterday evening, and I wore my bra, because I was afraid to look in case the lump had got any bigger...
...I stood by the door, watching, too terrified to write anything down for the moment...
...I want to get up and go...
...Well,” he said when he finally finished, laying down his tools...
...The young doctor came over to Meg’s bed and discreetly drew the yellow curtains around it...
...A friendly face, someone I know-that really makes me feel better...
...If the answer is yes, we’ll have to take the breast off...
...You and I know what this means and you haven’t got long to live.’ ” I said he hadn’t meant that at all...
...I looked at it directly and watched the knife approach the nipple...
...I had a good breakfast...
...It is always difficult to assess medical complaints...
...She sniffed, tried to smile, and said a little hoarsely, “You mustn’t mind me...
...They are as old as the hospital itself, and universally considered inadequate, antiquated, and not sterile enough...
...Well, well, now you’ll be able to see how it compares to General Hospital and Angels on the telly, won’t you...
...Did she feel she was falling...
...I felt he was trying to tell me something terrible...
...He always goes everywhere with me...
...I bad misjudged them...
...She had already jumped the waiting list, so it would just be a waste of money...
...She led her away...
...Even the students were moved and pleased, even the student nurses, even the hardened operating theater Sister...
...It’ll be at about eleven...
...I wish I was having one of those...
...Don’t go,” she said and seemed to drift away again...
...I was only looking in glances and didn’t see exactly...
...He didn’t want to know...
...The waiting list at the monient is three years for a woman and one year for a man...
...Thomas tossed a set of notes to each of the students and told them to go and examine a patient each in one of the nearby examinatian rooms...
...They didn’t go small and flabby like some people’s...
...I was surprised...
...You’ll be very late...
...Most of the people in that room had never seen or heard of Meg Harris until she was wheeled into the theater, looking like a not-quitehuman thing that morning, and yet they had cared not just that a good job should be done, but they cared that her breast should be saved, and possibly her life...
...They laughed disbelievingly...
...This was partly because new operating theaters had been one of the casualties of cutbacks at The London...
...The porter helped to move her, together with a nurse...
...They’re still on the other case so they won’t be doing her for a while...
...It’s the waiting...
...he prompted somewhat brusquely...
...I said I hoped not, I didn’t faint easily...
...He stopped, and then said, “Well, she only just noticed it so it can’t have gone very far if it is cancer...
...Why Me...
...That’s just from lying down all the time...
...I almost wanted to make a run for it...
...We got chatting and I heard my one say to the other, ‘I’m lucky, I’ve got the one with the best boobs!’ and I was really pleased, because I know they are nice...
...You just get yourself better quickly and don’t worry about us.’ He’s so-good like that, isn’t he, Bob...
...In those days they gave you a falsie filled with sand-a sand bag sort of thing...
...It’s always done like that...
...I’ve put her on the list for coming in on Monday...
...Then and there...
...On the same floor, but outside the corridor, runs another long, rickety, wooden passage-way, called the “rabbit warren,” for the offices and changing rooms for the theaters...
...Don’t take on, pet,” said the nice lady in the next bed, who had had a mastectomy herself...
...What would I do...
...It’s bound to turn out to be something quite harmless, just a cyst...
...His wife, who was feeling much more relaxed after crying, began to talk...
...I keep looking back on the last few years and asking myself what can have caused it...
...I’m really bad about jabs,” she said...
...he said to her firmly...
...Harris, a tall goodlooking man also newly bronzed from the sun...
...I hardly dared look...
...She nodded, looking unconvinced...
...I’ve been reading Shirley Temple’s story in Woman’s Own,” she said, starting up the conversation...
...We waited quietly...
...Thomas stared at her hard in the eye and gave her a small smile...
...She felt shaky...
...The three medical students went past and waved gaily at me...
...It didn’t look any different from any other bits inside the breast-not a noticeably different round lump, as I had imagined...
...I hope she’ll be all right,” said the kindly woman next door, who had already had a mastectomy...
...Although it is excruciatingly boring, the boredom is ordered and varied, and the patients are kept busy for a good part of the day...
...I feel weak when I get out of bed...
...He got to his feet and went off into the ward to see her, while I waited...
...I told her they all knew she wasn’t asleep...
...The older one stopped his ears and refused to listen...
...I couldn’t find anywhere else to look...
...I pretend not to notice, but sometimes he says things like, ‘Mum, run and get me this or that,’ and I know he just wants to see me running, to see them wobble.’’ She poured herself out some orange juice from the top of the bedside table...
...There were three jovial-looking medical students there, one man and two women...
...The room was full of unsterile things, like patients’ notes and doctors’ pens, the trolley the patient was taken in on, and countless other things that caught my eye...
...Well, sort of nervous...
...Like White Ants When the nurse and I had finished our coffee, she led me away, down the passage towards the theaters...
...I shan’t be seeing you tomorrow, until afterwards...
...The infection rate was as low as any other large and important hospital’s, but even to a layman the theaters did look a bit rugged, primitive, and Victorian- far more oldfashioned than other parts of the hospital...
...The older one, Tom, he hides his feelings...
...He said that hernias and breast lumps were much the commonest...
...It’s a funny thing about anesthetics...
...He dropped it into a silver dish and it was left to one side to be sent to the laboratory later...
...Cracks in the ceilings, walls, and floors give rise to scares about the possibility of infection...
...The bones on her forehead stood out, and she looked older and different, almost unrecognizable...
...I hoped she was too sleepy to know where she was...
...But let’s not think about it for the moment...
...Spilled sand all over the floor and her tit went flat as flat...
...As new theaters had been expected for so long, not many resources had been spared for modernizing the old ones...
...This was good information...
...But I was surprised how much Meg had got to know about many of the other patients in the short time it had taken to get into bed...
...If we just remove the lump it’ll be about a week, but if we have to go ahead it’ll be two or three weeks...
...Soon another porter came along with a wheelchair to take Mrs...
...When that was over, the male medical student came frisking into the ward, with a rather too cheery, “Hello...
...I’ve never had an operation and I don’t like the thought of being put to sleep...
...You’ll be in Sophia Ward...
...She lay there in the little side room where the patient is given the final dose of anesthetic...
...I don’t know if our guide ever did any other job, but she appeared to be a professional chatterer, an official putter-at-ease...
...Another woman in a pink overall came out of a room and approached us...
...Of course I knew really that this was just what would happen when I went in there, 12 but you always hope, don’t you...
...Yes, there are a number of single rooms anyway on most wards, but you can’t be guaranteed one if you ’re on NHS...
...but she seemed before our eyes to sink further down into the bed and the pillow, looking quite flat, as if she was hardly there at all...
...I said she seemed like a very good one, rather stiffly...
...He was stern and foreign and she was rather abashed when he grabbed her dressing-gown off the bed and shoved it at her...
...It was like sitting beside someone who was dying, and I was tempted to shake her awake...
...Did I take too much exercise...
...A physiotherapist came past the end of the bed, helping a very old lady with a walking frame and the bottom part of one leg missing...
...I thought I’d probably have to be examined a lot in it, but not as much as this...
...She made a joke of it, but she was especially nervous...
...I don’t know, but I smiled back...
...But hospital segregation of the sexes was absolute...
...it curled up to her thighs as they moved her...
...Thomas leaned over Meg to show it to everyone and to explain how he knew it was harmless...
...We have it at twelve o’clock here...
...There’s some nice semolina and jam...
...I had no idea it would all be done at one operation...
...They’re very good ones...
...Hysterectomy,” said the woman...
...Don’t worry about a thing,” Meg gripped her hand tightly...
...What am I doing here sitting in bed as if I was dying already, and nothing the matter with me...
...I wonder if he’ll come back...
...I couldn’t think what to say to make him feel better...
...The television hospital programs give the impression that the room contains nothing that hasn’t been boiled, except people, and they have been thoroughly scrubbed with carbolic...
...The doctor spoke in a serious straightforward way...
...Amongst other things she said, “I’m really not asleep...
...Come nearer...
...They behaved exactly towards me as I expected...
...she asked...
...I feel like the first day at a new school...
...One of the main advantages of going privately is for the busy executive...
...I waited and Mrs...
...The fact that it was not attached was a good sign...
...When you arrive on Monday go to the Admissions first of all...
...You watch out for them young doctors, when they’ve got you all laid out and helpless...
...The building is old, but the inside of the ground floor has been done over in an attempt to make the place look new, with bright wood-paneled walls...
...It was a gray morning, misty and dull...
...Another Female Patient A nurse came out of the ward...
...At night only a handful of them are needed for emergencies...
...It is more exciting, there is less drudgery, and less contact with patients and their problems...
...It looked curiousfy splendid, a large firm round hillock all on its own, even defiant...
...I’m the runner...
...She said she found this doctor particularly frightening, perhaps because he was not in the least jolly or facetious, but rather serious...
...She wore a pink overall, like all administration staff, clerks in admissions, ward clerks, medical records clerks...
...If the student’s first examination was right, there was a reasonable chance that it had not spread yet, although it was a large lump...
...I heard a voice a long way away saying, ‘Deep breath!’ but I thought it came from another room and they weren’t talking to me...
...Hospitals don’t realize how much significance is poured into every small phrase...
...I don’t smoke much...
...Then everyone in the room, the surgeon too, was smiling and looking pleased...
...He had a habit of fixing patients with his eye, so as not to seem to be hiding anything...
...She tried to wipe them away quickly before anyone saw, but since we were all squashed together so very close to her, she hadn’t a chance of hiding it...
...I remembered psing one like that to cut cardboard at school, pressing it down and running it along the edge of a ruler to make a perfectly straight incision...
...said one of the women, breaking into an enormous smile...
...Perhaps they’ll find it’s just a muscle out of place,” Meg said...
...They were looking on the floor and didn’t know where all that sand came from...
...The rich don’t queue, and don’t mix with the hoi polloi, but they don’t live longer.* Bob Harris was no radical...
...She lay there unchanged...
...The kind old deaf lady on the other side beamed at her sympathetically...
...I sat by her bed and chatted to some of the other patients...
...We’re going to do what we call a biopsy...
...Well, that depends,” he answered...
...I looked across discreetly...
...That made me more worried...
...Paul Thomas gave a severe nod in my direction before reaching fop the first sheaf of case notes on his desk...
...The anesthetist came while I was away...
...If it’s yes, and they say go ahead, I come rushing back, and while you’re still asleep we take it off, to be sure it hasn’t spread anywhere else...
...Do you think I’m daft, talking like this...
...Harris...
...You’d better go now, love...
...He gave her a short blast of gas, and called her- “Mrs...
...It’s such a nice ward you’re going into, I’m sure you’ll like it...
...I think they probably did...
...She looked away, and tears were forming in her eyes again...
...Did they have time to be pleased or sad at the end of every operation every day...
...She had one boob off, you know...
...At least it doesn’t show...
...Didn’t she talk,” said Mr...
...Oh dear, I’m sure that x-ray won’t come out right and I’ll have to have it done again,” she said...
...Meg lay in bed trying to keep calm...
...The nurse led them away and directed them to the TCI desk...
...He didn’t go in for the “well, well, what-have-wehere...
...I saw him lift it and take it to her breast, and I stepped back without meaning to...
...I said that for something serious, there was nowhere better than a big teaching hospital...
...I’m sorry to have taken it so bad, doctor, but it really couldn’t have come at a worse time...
...That was a nasty hernia,” he said to the nurse beside me...
...To her surprise the injection didn’t hurt at all...
...She looked back at us for a moment, and was gone...
...Goodbye...
...The tea trolley came round and she had a cup of tea and a small plate of bread and jam...
...Harris in half an hour’s time...
...I’d sell everything and get it done private...
...You’ll get a pre-med, a jab to make you drowsy at about ten...
...I was leaning against the wall, holding tight to my notebook...
...I looked at my feet, I looked to one side and to the other, but always out of the comer of my eye I could see what was going on...
...If a woman was undressing, no man should be present...
...I feel awful,” she said...
...The doctor continued to fix her with his firm eye...
...The husband nodded, his wife looked towards him to see how he reacted...
...Is it insensitivity from lack of experience...
...For many of them, life has become a nightmare...
...One of the women said, “I don’t know, I’ve seen one or two that haven’t been too messy...
...She felt it was her fault that she had taken so long...
...I found him most reassuring and would have preferred his approach to many other doctors, but Meg was unnerved by him...
...Each morning ward clerks have to do the bed state, tapping out the names and bed numbers of all patients...
...We don’t know at all at the moment, but perhaps we will some day...
...She turned to Bob, who was especially embarrassed in the presence of nurses...
...Harris tomorrow, she’s third on the list,” he said.“I shall be coming to see her in a moment...
...I had a night of dreams of all the excuses that might turn up for my not attending the operation...
...They didn’t have to wait three years to have their varicose veins out, or to have a painful arthritic hip or knee replaced...
...It was part of the ritual, and it reminded me of a curious and unpleasant tribal wedding ceremony...
...It’s your breast, isn’t it...
...When I told him he said, ‘Don’t worry Mum, we’ll manage fine...
...Most of them do it because the hours are more regular...
...You can rest assured that it’s nothing you did...
...If it is what we all fear, she will have to have her breast removed, but we can’t tell at this stage...
...Well, my sister had the operation years ago, and she’s all right, so it’s not that I’m especially afraid or anything, but what a time it’s come at:’ “Was it rheumatic fever that your son had...
...Beyond its lack of a crushing financial burden on its patients, does the British National Health have any special strengths and weaknesses...
...I want a reason, that’s all,” she said finally...
...I remember once going out with her on our bicycles and meeting a couple of boys...
...Do you think it’ll come out...
...avuncular coziness of some doctors...
...He was a bit frightening but he just wanted to reassure her that nothing was being done behind her back...
...The students stood beside me...
...I’ve come to take you up to the ward...
...I wash’t sure whether I’d be allowed to take such unsterile things into the room, but the nurse smiled and said, “Of course,” when I asked her...
...How does she do it...
...Why am I in bed...
...She was holding a box of Milk Tray in her hand...
...When I did I was glad to find I could barely see...
...The hospital routine and moods 22 take the place of weather and time...
...Then, still holding the lump in his hand, Dr...
...When we’ve got the result of that we know whether we have to go ahead or not.’’ She said she understood, and he smiled and left her...
...The room was light and airy...
...The surgeon takes out the lump while you’re asleep...
...I thought I hadn’t understood...
...I hurried over to warn Meg...
...The press of people waiting outside the door were quite silent...
...We squeezed in...
...half sentences wafted in oddly from time to time...
...Harris...
...With a small pair of scissors he started to cut away at a piece of tissue...
...She asked me...
...Misty and Dull I woke at six the next morning, at the same time as Meg...
...He wanted her to know that he could be trusted and that he would tell her the truth...
...I said that for minor ailments, they did...
...I just lay there in that bath staring a myself, thinking, ‘This is it, I won’t look like this again...
...The students were only in their second week with this “firm” (a group of doctors under one consultant...
...We got up and followed the woman down the long main corridor...
...Above her head was a big Victorian skylight, and I saw her eyes 24 open and look up at it for a moment, a little perplexed...
...She had no idea of the hierarchy of doctors, and couldn’t follow who everyone was, or who was most important...
...There was just room for the couch and standing room for three or four...
...Her mouth was dry and she longed for a drink but wasn’t allowed one...
...Surgeons need good strong legs for all that standing, hours on end...
...Except of course at the operation, when you won’t be able to see me...
...He was like a mortuary attendant, there was no gleam of interest in his eyes...
...The first few patients were regulars, returning after operations for checkups...
...Perhaps he can break it to them gently...
...He doesn’t say much but he has sharp ears...
...The same three medical students drifted in, all gowned up, and they grinned at me...
...Thomas asked...
...Then they went out of the room...
...Then she came in, with her husband behind her carrying her small suitcase...
...It was brighter pink and white than I had expected, and not very much blood...
...He sat down on the bed and asked her how she was...
...The contrast between her tanned face and her white younglooking breasts with their taut skin and bright raspberry nipples gave me the odd sensation of looking at someone with their head stuck through one of those cardboard models seaside photographers use...
...She hadn’t seen him since that one visit to outpatients...
...Meg asked...
...Have you been in here before...
...This article is adapted from her book, Hospital, published in England by Hutchinson & Co...
...I do feel funny,” she said...
...Everyone seemed to be in a hurry, or exhausted, bustling in and out of the theaters like white ants...
...he said with surprising vehemence...
...I still didn’t know if I had understood, but I had...
...I’m wide awake,’’ she kept saying...
...Meg’s knuckles were white and her nails dug in, but the nurse smiled and said some more soothing things as she walked along beside her...
...The porter from the operating theaters came to take her away...
...The theater nurses work all day long in the theaters, and not at all in the wards...
...He began explaining to his young assistant, and the student nurses in front of him what he was doing...
...Thomas will be doing the operation, and he’ll probably be up to see you later...
...She was wearing a name-tag on her wrist, Margaret Gladys Harris and a long number...
...Will you follow me...
...A jolly young West Indian nurse came in...
...I could probably find you a salad and a pudding though, if you’re hungry...
...The words were a noise that didn’t rggister sense in my brain...
...Afterwards she said, “I was numb when I left that room...
...The student led the way down the corridor past the staring faces to a small cubicle of a room, and I followed on behind...
...By the way, do call me Meg,” she said...
...I remembered Meg saying she didn’t like the idea of being wheeled around the place and left waiting in passages with nobody paying any attention to her...
...Oh no, for goodness’ sake don’t go...
...I asked how sure he was that she had cancer, and he said, “Well, one always hopes, and I might be wrong, but I’m pretty certain...
...It was a great pink mass he was lifting and snipping out of the breast, almost as big as the palm of his hand...
...What follows is the story by a trusted friend of one patient’s experience in The London Hospital, and it answers those questions better than anything else we’ve seen...
...Thomas swung round in his chair...
...Inadequate and Antiquated Up on the third floor are the operating theaters...
...Thomas, “I’ve told your wife that I’m afraid she will have to come in to have that lump removed as soon as possible...
...They were really, genuinely very pleased and very happy...
...A passing moment of panic...
...YOU mean,” she said quietly, “you really mean that it might happen tomorrow...
...She seems so nervous, poor dear...
...Well, I’m very glad you’ll be there...
...Harris is just resting...
...She was at low ebb when Dr...
...Externally there had been all the characteristics of malignancy...
...I thought the doctor just might say, ‘Oh, that’s nothing, just a slight spot, or a boil or something.’ But I knew he wouldn’t, didn’t I?” Nervous, But Not Terrified The next Monday was hot, though the hospital was mercifully cool...
...I asked her...
...I said that catching it in time was what mattered...
...Harris said...
...She was of medium build, with dark, tightly curled hair...
...The Harrises looked a little abashed and afraid of him...
...Medical students rarely fail in their chilling jocularity...
Vol. 9 • November 1977 • No. 9
