Free Chameleon by Ken McClure

their own way both sought to keep their patients in ignorance of their own bodies and determined to keep it that way in their own interests. Both peddled pills and potions and did so with a mystique cultivated to preserve their position in society. 'What will the penicillin do Doctor?' 'Fight the infection Mrs Brown.' But how many GPs knew what penicillin really did do? How many would know that it inhibited the final step in peptidoglycan cross linking in bacterial call wall synthesis? At a rough guess none out of a hundred. Jamieson knew because Jamieson wanted to know everything. But then, that was why he had been recommended to Sci-Med in the first place.
     
    'Shan't be a moment,' Jamieson said to Evans and ran upstairs to collect his briefcase. He paused in the room for a moment to adjust the bandage on his left hand which was threatening to come adrift. As he re-tied it he reflected on what he had learned at the meeting. 'Difficult' wasn't the word for a man like Thelwell. He was a twenty-four carat son of a bitch with no saving grace that he could determine.
    Carew was too weak to be effective as medical superintendent. He was all right for opening hospital fetes and talking to the ladies' luncheon club but no use against the steam-rollering of people like Thelwell. Crichton seemed to be a good man but, of course, as a pure administrator, he could not involve himself in matters medical. Phillip Morton seemed all right from what little he had said and Jamieson did not envy him his job under Thelwell. Richardson too, seemed a good man. Jamieson admired the way he had kept his temper under extreme provocation from Thelwell but was forced to wonder whether or not it was a case of real self control or perhaps a lack of stomach for a fight due to advancing years. Clive Evans seemed competent, loyal to Richardson and keen to help in any way he could. What was more, he was waiting downstairs.
     
    Jamieson followed Evans along a narrow lane between signs pointing to the skin clinic in one direction and the hospital laundry in the other. He was hoping for a modern microbiology department but when Evans took a left turn down some stone steps he feared the worst and was duly rewarded. The Microbiology Department at Kerr Memorial was located on the ground floor and in the basement of one of the oldest buildings in the hospital.
    'Dr Richardson's office is just along here,' said Evans, still leading the way. A girl technician at Specimen Reception looked up as Jamieson passed and smiled. Jamieson smiled back. Smiles were important when you were on your own. They were reassuring, like the sight of a navigational buoy to a mariner in strange oceans.
    Jamieson felt claustrophobia closing in on him as they progressed along a long corridor between rows of small laboratories, each scarcely big enough to warrant the term, 'room'. They were correctly, little more than cubicles. The corridor narrowed in places to almost less that the width of a human body where lack of space had forced refrigerators and other large items of equipment out into the hallway.
    Although Richardson's room was bigger and had a large window, Jamieson could see that it would never receive enough daylight to warrant turning off the artificial lighting. The building across the way was less that five feet away.
    'I've arranged for you to have a room downstairs,' said Richardson. 'It's not much I'm afraid but as you see we are a bit cramped.
    'I'm sure it will be fine,' said Jamieson.
    'If there's anything you need you only have to ask.'
    Clive Evans took off his jacket and donned a white lab coat. As he rolled back the cuffs of his shirt sleeves Jamieson again noticed the red burn marks on the back of his wrist and asked him about them.
    'Oh it's absolutely nothing,' insisted Evans, 'No problem at all.'
    'What happened?' asked Richardson.
    'Dr Evans burned himself while helping me escape electrocution yesterday,' Jamieson explained.
    'Really?' exclaimed Richardson,