'Oh, doctor, doctor…!' cried the mother.
'Don't get alarmed,' I said airily.
'It's coming, doctor!'
I scrubbed furiously. The mother groaned. Grandma shouted through the door she had more hot water. I shouted back at her to keep out. The cat, which had not been removed as ordered, jumped in the middle of the newspaper and started tearing at it with its claws.
Suddenly I became aware of a new note in the mother's cries-a higher, wailing, muffled squeal. I dropped the soap and tore back the bedclothes.
The baby was washed and tucked up in one of the drawers from the wardrobe, which did a turn of duty as a cot about once a year. The mother was delighted and said she had never had such a comfortable delivery. The spectators were readmitted, and cooed over the infant. There were cups of tea all round. I had the best one, with sugar in it. I felt the name of the medical profession never stood higher.
'Do you do a lot of babies, doctor?' asked the mother.
'Hundreds,' I said. 'Every day.'
'What's your name, doctor, if you don't mind?' she said.
I told her.
'I'll call 'im after you. I always call them after the doctor or the nurse, according.'
I beamed and bowed graciously. I was genuinely proud of the child. It was my first baby, born through my own skill and care. I had already forgotten in the flattering atmosphere that my single manoeuvre in effecting the delivery was pulling back the eiderdown.
Packing the instruments up, I climbed into my soggy duffle coat and, all smiles, withdrew. At the front door I found to my contentment that the snow had stopped and the roads shone attractively in the lamplight. I began to whistle as I walked away. At that moment the midwife turned the corner on her bicycle.
'Sorry, old chap,' she said, as she drew up. 'I was snowed under. Have you been in?'
'In! It's all over.'
'Did you have any trouble?' she asked dubiously.
'Trouble!' I said with contempt. 'Not a bit of it! It went splendidly.'
'I suppose you remembered to remove the afterbirth?'
'Of course.'
'Well, I might as well go home then. How much did it weigh?'.
'Nine pounds on the kitchen scales.'
'You students are terrible liars.'
I walked back to the hospital over the slush as if it were a thick pile carpet. The time was getting on. A hot bath, I thought, then a good breakfast…and a day's work already behind me. I glowed in anticipation as I suddenly became aware that I was extremely hungry.
At the hospital gate the porter jumped up from his seat.
''Urry up, sir,' he said, 'and you'll just make it.'
'What's all this?' I asked with alarm.
'Another case, sir. Been waiting two hours. The other gentlemen are out already.'
'But what about my breakfast?'
'Sorry, sir. Not allowed to go to meals if there's a case. Orders of the Dean.'
'Oh, hell!' I said. I took the grubby slip of paper bearing another address. 'So this is midwifery,' I added gloomily.
'That's right, sir,' said the porter cheerfully. 'It gets 'em all down in the end.'
10
Everyone working in hospital is so preoccupied with the day-to-day rush of minor crises that the approach of Christmas through the long, dark, bronchitic weeks of midwinter comes as a surprise. The holiday cuts brightly into hospital routine, like an unexpected ray of sunlight in an Inner Circle tunnel. At St. Swithin's there was, however, one prodromal sign of the approaching season-a brisk increase in attendance at the children's department.
Every year at Christmas the Governors gave a tea-party in the main hall of the hospital for a thousand or so of the local boys and girls. They were men not used to stinting their hospitality, and provided richly for the tastes of their guests. It was the sort of affair that could be adequately described only by Ernest Hemingway, Negley Farson, or some other writer with a gift of extracting a forceful attractiveness from descriptions of active animals feeding in large numbers.
The children began to collect outside the locked doors of the out-patient department soon after midday; by three the front of the hospital looked like an Odeon on Saturday morning. At four sharp the doors were opened by the porters and the mob were funnelled into the building-scratching, fighting, shouting, and screaming, their incidental distractions from the fists and elbows of their neighbours overwhelmed with the urgent common desire to get at the food. They rushed through the entrance lobby, stormed the broad, wooden-floored hall, and expended their momentum in a pile of sticky, white-glazed buns.
The buns were the foundation of the party, but there was a great deal more besides-a high Christmas cake flaming with candles, churns of strawberry ice-cream, jellies the colours of traffic lights, oranges with a tenacious aroma, and sweet tea in long enamelled jugs. The non-edible attractions included paper chains, crackers, funny hats, a tree ten feet high, and Father Christmas. It was the duty of the children's house-physician to play this part. The gown, whiskers, sack, and toys were provided by the Governors; all the doctor had to do was allow himself to be lowered in a fire-escape apparatus from the roof into the tight mob of children screaming below. This obligation he discharged with the feelings of a nervous martyr being dropped into the bear-pit.
It was inevitable that he should breathe heavily on his little patients a strong smell of mixed liquors, which never missed their sharp, experienced noses and gave rise to delighted comments:
'Coo! 'Ees bin boozing!'
'Smells like Dad on Saturday!'
'Give us a train, Mister!'
All this the house-physician had to endure with a set smile of determined benevolence.
The party was controlled, where possible, by the outpatient sister and a reinforced staff of nurses. Their starched caps and aprons melted in the afternoon with the ice-cream as they attempted to impose the principle of fair shares on a community demonstrating a vigorous capitalist spirit of grabbing what they could. The energy of the children diminished only if they had to retire to a corner to be sick; but the hospitality of St. Swithin's was unlimited, and it usually happened that several of the little guests were later asked to stay the night.
The reason that the annual tea-party afforded as sure an indication that Christmas was approaching as a polite postman lay in the rules for admission to the jamboree. The Governors had decided many years ago that as it was impossible to entertain every child in the district invitations should be sent only to those who had attended the hospital in the months of November and December. As all the children within several miles knew of the party and were perfectly familiar with the qualifications for entry the increase in juvenile morbidity after October 31st was always alarming. This had recently led an ingenuous new house-physician in the department to sit down and prepare for publication in the
The goings-on at Christmas-time were conducted with the excuse that the staff was obliged to entertain the patients, just as adults take themselves off to circuses and pantomimes on the pretext of amusing the children. The wards were decorated, the out-patient hall spanned with streamers, and on Christmas Day even the operating theatres were festooned. The hospital presented the grotesque appearance of a warship during Navy Week, when the guns and other sinister implements aboard are covered with happy bunting. Relatives, friends, visiting staff, old
