A DOCTOR ON NIGHT-CALL

M. H. Nelson

It's a privilege to be a doctor ... ' 'How lucky you are to be a doctor ... ' It's a privilege to be a doctor, is it? Anyone who's a doctor is right out of luck, I thought. Anyone who's studying medicine should have his head examined.

You may think I want to change my job. Well, at the moment I do. As one of my friends says—even doctors have a few friends—it's all experience. Experience! I don't need such experience. I need a warm, comfortable, undisturbed bed all my own. I need it badly. I need all telephones to be thrown down the nearest well, that's what I need.

All these thoughts fly round my head as I drive my Mini through the foggy streets of East London at 3.45 a.m. on a December morning. I am a ministering angel in a Mini with a heavy coat and a tag of medicines. As I speed down Lea Bridge in the dark at this horrible morning hour, the swish of the mud against the windows, the heater first blowing hot then cold, my back aching from the car-seat made for a misshapen camel, the fog swirling about the empty petrol stations, I do not feel like a ministering angel. I wish I were on the beach in southern France. Call me a bad doctor if you like. Call me what you will. But don't call me at half past three on a December morning for an ear-ache that you have had for two weeks.

Of course, being a doctor isn't really all bad. We do have our moments. Occasionally people are ill, occasionally you can help, occasionally you get given a cup of tea and rock-hard cake at two o'clock in the morning—then you worry if you have done everything. But all too often 'everything' is a repetitious routine: look, listen, feel, tap. Tablets, injection, phone, ambulance, away to the next.

And then there is always the cool, warm voice of the girl on the switchboard of the emergency bed service who will get your patient into hospital for you—the pleasant voice that comes to you as you stand in the cold, dark, smelly, dirty telephone box somewhere in a dangerous section of town. Oh, it has its moments, this life does.