Read Online Doctor in Love by Richard Gordon - Free Book Online

their old corners, the mornings had the evasive chill prodromal of autumn, and the evenings stepped softly up the streets in mist. My resignation to an existence spent handling the small change of medicine had already turned into enthusiasm, and our partnership began to stride along successfully. To the patients, Dr Farquarson was the wise, conservative physician, though possibly rather outdated; I was the young, dashing doctor, though possibly rather dangerous. Life was busy, but it seemed uncomplicated. Until the morning I was called to see Mrs Tadwich.
    The address given by Miss Wildewinde turned out to be a flat over a sweetshop near the main street. I now always followed Dr Farquarson’s advice of trying to make the diagnosis before ringing the doorbell, and I stood on the mat deciding from the careless hang of the curtains and the grubby air of the paintwork that I was about to be confronted with an ageing widow with progressive myosis and rheumatoid arthritis. I felt an involuntary spasm of pity and prepared to do my best for her. Then the door was opened by a plump blonde in a pink negligeé.
    “Er – Mrs Tadwich?”
    “That’s right.”
    “I’m the doctor.”
    She gave a bright smile. “Come on in, do. I wasn’t expecting you so early in the morning,” she explained, deftly flicking a pair of drying nylons from a string in the untidy sitting-room.
    “I usually see my new patients first.”
    I followed her through the door beyond, and found myself in the bedroom.
    “Do you live here alone?” I asked.
    “Oh, yes. Mr Tadwich left,” she explained amiably. “There’s a divorce pending. Would you like me on the bed?”
    I began to feel alarmed. This was a situation never experienced in the ordered routine of hospital. At St Swithin’s we were strictly forbidden to examine any female patient lower than the clavicles without a nurse as a bedside chaperone, and I saw my career ending prematurely in the bleak chambers of the General Medical Council in London. But I decided that it would look foolish if I simply grabbed my bag and hurried out. Besides, I was under an equal moral obligation to examine her, and if I didn’t I might land just as ignominiously before the local Executive Committee to have my pay stopped like a naughty schoolboy’s pocket-money.
    “What’s the trouble?” I asked, hoping that it was some complaint wholly free of ethical dangers, like sinusitis or nits.
    “It’s my heart, Doctor.”
    My spirits fell lower. But there is fortunately one refuge for the nervous young practitioner – the cold professional manner. This is a psychological defence mechanism, which explains why so many newly qualified men appear brusque and unintelligible to their equally terrified patients. Assuming an air that went out with broughams and Gladstone bags in Harley Street, I gripped my lapels and declared, “The heart, madam? And what are the symptoms?”
    “Oh, no symptoms.” She lay back on the pillow, more at home in the situation than I was. “Just the palpitations sometimes, you know. I’ve got a problem heart.”
    “Indeed?”
    “Leastways, that’s what the specialist said. There’s a funny quiver you can feel in the middle of my chest, just here.”
    “No other manifestations of the condition, I presume?”
    “Oh, no. They said in hospital it doesn’t mean any harm. Don’t you want to examine me?” She slipped off her nightdress down to the waist.
    “An idiopathic condition, eh?” I said steadily. “Umm. Nothing to cause any alarm, then. And now,” I announced with dignity, “Let me palpate this vibration in the cardiac area.” I laid the flat of my hand sharply between her breasts, as though swatting a mosquito. Sticking strictly to clinical terms, I admitted loftily “I certainly feel a distinct thrill.”
    “Go on with you, Doctor,” she said, giving me a wink and a poke in the ribs. “We’re all human, aren’t we? How about coming round one evening for a