‘All right.’ I knew it was game, set and match to him. ‘I will.’
It may not have needed a degree, but conducting an orderly surgery was much more complicated than I could have imagined.
Dimpsie took me the next morning to the house in the high street where my father had his practice. We arrived half an hour before the first appointment so I could find out where everything was. There was already a queue of four people waiting outside. I could hear the telephone ringing inside as Dimpsie tried each key in turn of a large bunch. When she found it, the rush to get inside almost knocked me off my crutches.
‘This is the appointments book,’ Dimpsie explained as I seated myself behind the desk. ‘Ten minutes each. Emergencies to be fitted into cancellations or at the end.’
‘How do I know if it’s an emergency?’
‘Well …’ My mother made eyes at me and lowered her voice. She had her back to the four early birds who had already taken their seats and were picking over the pile of tattered magazines on the table as though they were desirable worms. ‘You’ve got to use your judgement. If it’s someone very young or very old, better be on the safe side and fit them in anyway. Otherwise ask a few questions. Use a little psychology.’
‘I don’t think I know any.’
‘Here’s where you make the list of house calls.’ She indicated a pad already covered with incomprehensible messages in her own flamboyant writing with its Greek ‘e’s and circles over the ‘i’s instead of dots. ‘Remember Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays are hospital afternoons. Dr Chatterji takes surgery on those evenings.’
‘Dr Chatterji?’
‘Dr Nichols retired last year. Poor fellow, none of the patients would see him. They insisted on waiting until Tom was free.’ Dimpsie sounded gratified by this mark of confidence in my father’s proficiency, but actually Dr Nichols had been blind, deaf and on two sticks when I had last met him four years ago. ‘They won’t see Dr Chatterji either. It’s very embarrassing.’
‘Is he blind, deaf and lame too?’
‘No, he’s young and healthy. It’s a communication problem. And I have to admit people round here are absurdly prejudiced against anyone … you know, different. He’s Indian. Poor chap, he finds the English winter awfully trying. The patients complain that they can’t understand anything he says and they’re convinced he’s going to prescribe snake juice instead of antibiotics. But no one else wanted to come all the way up here so your father had to take him.’ Dimpsie looked harassed. ‘See if you can persuade some of them to see Dr Chatterji. I’m afraid he must feel awfully rejected.’
‘I’ll do what I can.’
‘Anyway, this cabinet has the medical records. You have to find the relevant folders and put them on Tom’s desk before each surgery begins. They’re alphabetical. More or less.’
Less proved to be the case. We hunted through every drawer for Mrs Wagstaffe’s notes, she being the first patient, and found them among the Bs. Mrs Copthorne’s were in the S’s and Mr Darwin’s were in the downstairs lavatory.
‘Sorry,’ said Dimpsie, returning with them in her hand. ‘I remember now I was sorting the notes yesterday afternoon, trying to get ahead, and then I dashed to the loo.’
The telephone had been ringing nonstop while we hunted, and already I was feeling hot and flustered. Dimpsie picked up the receiver. ‘Surgery,’ she said crisply, then, ‘Oh hello, Brenda. How are you? I was meaning to ring you. Must be telepathy … how are the peg-bags getting on? We ought to have, say half a dozen … oh, I think the patchwork … they seem to be the most popular.’
Brenda replied at length and wittily, judging by Dimpsie’s peals of laughter, while I slowly built up a pile of folders. I imagined small children, who had accidentally run shards of glass into their necks, bleeding to death while the peg-bag question was resolved. Old ladies with heart attacks lying beside the telephone, their lives ebbing away, just able to tap in the doctor’s number with a feeble forefinger only to hear the engaged signal. Just as I discovered the file for the last patient on the list, which had slipped down behind the cabinet, my father came in.
‘I’ve been trying to ring in for ten minutes,’ he said angrily.
I handed him the heap of folders while Dimpsie, looking guilty, put the receiver back on its rest. Immediately it shrilled with what seemed to me bloodcurdling urgency.
‘Deal with that,’ he snapped at me, ‘then ring the nurse on duty and tell her to go to this address.’ He put a slip of paper down in front of me. ‘It’s an oh-two. I’ve put in a morphine pump, tell her. She’ll see what else needs to be done.’ He picked up the armful of files. ‘Coffee on my desk in five minutes with the first patient.’
He went into his consulting room.
‘I think the nurses’ roster is in this drawer.’ Dimpsie burrowed, making a terrible mess.
‘Could this be it?’ I pointed to a torn scrap of paper lying by the telephone entitled Duty Nurse Tel Nos. ‘It says,’ I tried to make sense of the several crossings out, ‘Tuesday – Rita Bunker.’
I rang Nurse Bunker, explained that I was the new receptionist and that Dr Savage had asked me to give her a message.
She was evidently still eating breakfast. There was a terrific crunching on the line that sounded like toast. ‘He didn’t say he’d got a new girl. Just as well, though. Between you and me, dear, you couldn’t find a kinder heart than Mrs Savage’s but she’s not much of an organizer to say the least and she has to quench her thirst a bit too often if you know what I mean—’
‘This is Dr Savage’s daughter speaking,’ I said hastily.
‘Ooh! Sorry if I’ve spoken out of turn. You should have said.’
‘Yes, I know. Never mind.’
‘What’s the message then?’
‘You’re to go to a Mrs Hatch, 15, Melton Lane. It’s a case with a number – oh-two, I think.’
Nurse Bunker laughed. ‘That’s it, dear. O-T-W-O. Doctor’s code. It means “On The Way Out”. The poor old thing isn’t going to be with us much longer. I’d better get over there. Ta ta, dear.’
‘Ta ta,’ I said without thinking and got a surprised look from my mother.
The telephone rang the minute I put it down.
‘’Tis wor Jack,’ said a female voice. ‘He’s got the skittors like Niagara Falls. And there’s blood pouring out of his ears. He’s very bad.’
I was alarmed by this description. ‘Perhaps you ought to take him straight to hospital.’
‘He don’t hold with hospitals, pet. He wouldna gan if he was at death’s door. Which he may well be.’
‘In that case I’d better put you down for a house call. Could I have the patient’s full name, please?’
‘Cyril John Chandler,’ said the voice. I wrote it down on the appropriate list. ‘But Doctor needn’t trouble himself to come out. If he’ll just sign a sickie, Jack’ll fetch it up from the surgery this afternoon.’
‘But won’t he be too ill? Surely he ought to be seen before then?’
Dimpsie glanced at my note, then took the receiver from me. ‘Is that Mrs Chandler? I’m afraid Dr Savage won’t give Mr Chandler another sick note unless he comes to the surgery for a thorough check-up.’ She put the receiver down. ‘Jack Chandler