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.
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
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?'
'Well, you see, when I saw it had gone I was certain I hadn't brought it with me. You follow?'
'Quite,' said the sergeant.
Mr Cambridge disappeared after lunch to remove stomachs in another part of London, leaving Hatrick and myself to finish the list. As the consultant anaesthetist accompanied the surgeon, Hatrick pointedly told Grimsdyke that he would do the remaining minor operations under local. Grimsdyke took this as a slight, murmured something about, 'Any bloody fool with a sharp knife can be a surgeon,' and left the operating theatre in a huff. As the students had drifted away with the loss of their main attraction, and a milder staff nurse was substituted for the theatre Sister, the pair of us operated peacefully until nightfall. After the morning's exhibition I was then certain that I would never become a surgeon; but under Hatrick's gentle tuition I began to gain confidence.
'Always steady the blade of the scissors with your finger when you cut,' he murmured as I fumbled round the incision. 'Tuck them into the palm of your hand when you're not using them. Take the artery forceps with the
When we returned to the surgeon's room as the last case was wheeled away, we found Sergeant Flannagan waiting.
'Mr Cambridge has left the hospital,' I told him. 'Is there any message?'
'Yes. There is. We've found his car.'
'Oh, really? And where was it in the end?'
'Locked in his ruddy garage at home.'
14
Mr Cambridge had charge of two wards at St Swithin's-Fortitude for men and Constancy for women-where my, duties, though less exciting than in the operating theatre, were of more value to the hospital. Mr Cambridge himself skipped round the beds every Tuesday morning, his bedside manner consisting largely of poking a patient hard in the tummy and saying cheerfully, 'You'll be much better with it out.' Hatrick tidied up all the surgical odd jobs, and I was left in charge of the more domestic side of hospitalization. The patients were less concerned with the feats of surgery performed upon them under anaesthesia than the discovery that they were unable to sleep, their bowels wouldn't work, the fish for supper was cold, and there was a draught all day from the window opposite, all faults that I was expected to rectify. As I was obliged to make my rounds twice daily the patients saw far more of me than the other members of the surgical firm, and sometimes embarrassed me by imagining that I was the brilliant young doctor in charge. 'Which surgeon are you under?' I overheard one of them being asked in the X-ray- Department downstairs.
'Dr Gordon.'
