The Good Doctor I.P. Part One

The Good Doctor? I.P. Part One

Louise tut-tutted when she went to her locker and found she had no uniform to wear. When I say uniform I use the term loosely as it was just a blue tabard that was worn over her usual clothes. However, she knew she would be in trouble if she went into the A & E department without it, particularly as she had already had a warning about her punctuality and she couldn’t afford to lose this job. She’d only been a cleaner in this hospital for three months and only in A & E for three weeks and she quite liked the hustle and bustle of this particular department.

She liked to talk to the patients too though they didn’t always respond but she had a forgiving nature and made allowances for the fact that some were comatose and others were in the throes of some sort of agony and she accepted that the recently dead would naturally be a bit reticent. Still she treated them all the same because she prided herself on making no distinctions.

No matter what state the patients were in she would twitter away to them hoping they would appreciate her lively chit chat as she told them all about how she got up to sing on karaoke night in the pub and how the song ‘I will survive’ had been well received.

Anyway, coming back to her present predicament Louise was trying to figure out how she could work her shift without her uniform as it was expressly forbidden to go into A & E without the proper clothing. Then, glancing about she saw a white coat hanging up and she thought that would be better than nothing so she put it on but then quickly took it off again because she noticed it had a blank name badge attached.

Well, always being up for a giggle she wrote in her best printed handwriting Doctor Louise Napper and then she slipped into the Lab coat before making her way to A & E where she pushed open the doors expecting to be greeted with raucous laughter from the other cleaner that worked in the department and whom she was to relieve but to her amazement the Staff Nurse on duty came forward and quickly introduced herself as Staff Nurse Gold.

“Oh, thank goodness you’ve arrived!” said the Staff Nurse “I take it you’re the new agency doctor we’ve been expecting?”

“Um…er…yes, that’s right,” said Louise as she thought about how she could get out of the situation. Then she thought I’ll just have to go along with it for now so she said,

“I hope you’re not too busy though because I’ve only just qualified and this is my first placement so I am, not surprisingly, a bit nervous.”

Well, in the circumstances, what else could Louise do? Once the nurse had acknowledged her as the doctor the girl knew she would lose her job if she then said she had only put on the white coat as a joke. Jokes like that didn’t go down well in A & E. They were a pretty humourless bunch at the best of times.

“No, you should be all right because we’re not that busy at the moment it’s a quiet time, though it might be the quiet before the storm.”

“Oh, I do hope not.”

“Well, I’d better bring you up to speed on where we are at the moment. Fortunately, we’ve only got three in; Cubicle one is a suspected Appendectomy, Cubicle two is a case of V & D and in cubicle three we’ve got a little boy who has pushed a pearl into his ear. Who would you like to start with?”

“Um, er…I think the boy.”

“Right, this way.”

Louise followed the Staff Nurse to Cubicle three and as the Staff Nurse pushed her way through the curtains that were drawn round the bed Louise couldn’t help but remark

“I can see you’ve got a good cleaner in this department. You want to make sure you hang on to her. Good cleaners are hard to find. You’ve no idea how many times I find dust on the lockers and more often than not curtain screens that need a thorough wash. Yes, I should certainly make sure you look after the cleaner who works in this department.”

“Actually, we have a new cleaner but as yet I haven’t met her. Now then, doctor, this is Sebastian and he has done a very silly thing and I wonder if you could take a look?”

“Yes, certainly if you would be so good as to get me one of those ear thingies I seem to have left mine somewhere.”

The Staff Nurse went in search of what Louise described as an ear thingy and brought one back and passed it to Louise.

“Aah ha! Now let me see what’s in this here ear. Aah, yes. I’ll just take a look in the other ear to confirm my diagnosis. Yes, just as I thought. What your son is suffering from” said Louise, “is a pearl, probably from a necklace, that has been pushed into his own ear and in my opinion this is a cry for help.”

“A cry for help!” said Staff Nurse Gold, “whatever gives you that idea?”

“I should have thought it was obvious. The boy likes earrings and this is the nearest he could come up with.”

“So what treatment are you going to give?”

“None!”

“None?”

“None! What I am going to suggest is that Mother takes Sebastian to the nearest jewellers and gets the boy a proper set of pearl earrings as it seems obvious to me that the boy has an interest in art and has probably seen the painting ‘Girl With a Pearl Earring’ somewhere and is doing his best to emulate her.”

“This is the strangest treatment of a patient I’ve ever seen in twenty years of nursing.”

Louise looked across at the boy’s mother and said,

“Are you happy with what I have suggested as I feel surgery is a step too far for one so young when a jeweller will not only supply a very nice set of earrings at very little expense but he will probably, also, as part of the service, get out the pearl that is deeply embedded in the boy’s ear without causing him any discomfort.”

Sebastian's mother seemed very pleased with this suggestion and she smiled in agreement.

“Yes, I thought you would be happy with my suggestion. Jewellers have the right equipment you see and although this is a big teaching hospital we just don’t have the resources to cater for incidents like this.” Okay Staff onto the next one if you please.” With that Louise strode out of the cubicle and waited for the Staff Nurse to lead her onto the next patient in Cubicle two.

Louise once again looked at the curtains screening the bed and ran her fingers along the bedside locker and looked approvingly at her hands when she saw there was no dust on them.

“You really do have an exceptional cleaner in this department. You are most fortunate and I should do everything in your power to hold on to her. Now then, is this the V & D?”

Louise took one look at the woman vomiting in what looked like a cardboard hat and said,

“Yes, I can see what the trouble is here this lady needs to be transferred as a matter of some urgency.

TO BE CONTINUED