Free Doctor in Clover by Richard Gordon

on me like her long-lost baby.
    ‘Doctor, Doctor! Thank God you’ve come hack! You must get his Lordship into hospital at once.’
    “This very instant,’ cried Percy, panting up behind.
    ‘With the very best specialist available.’
    ‘Regardless of expense.’
    ‘Everything humanly possible must be done for him.’
    ‘The telephone is just inside the hall, Doctor.’
    ‘Now just a minute.’ I found this rather confusing. ‘A couple of hours ago you told me–’
    ‘Please disregard whatever I said a couple of hours ago,’ returned Amanda Nutbeam, ‘I was too upset by my dear brother-in-law’s accident to think properly.’
    ‘We both were, Doctor. We were quite beside ourselves.’
    Deciding there was no point in asking a lot of silly questions, I telephoned an eminent bone-basher in Gloucester who’d done a neat job on a patient who went through a threshing machine. Shortly afterwards I was gratified to see Lord Nutbeam departing tucked-up in an ambulance, particularly as the original Grimsdyke diagnosis had been confirmed.
    Like any GP pushing his patient into hospital these days, I didn’t see his Lordship again for a fortnight. I was meanwhile kept agreeably busy remedying the rustics, and though the uncle didn’t even send a postcard, Miles telephoned a couple of times, but he was too concerned over Sir Lancelot’s car park to ask how I was getting on. Then one Saturday I decided to drive over to Gloucester to watch an afternoon’s cricket, and looked into the Jenner Memorial Hospital to see Lord Nutbeam during the tea interval.
    I found his Lordship very perky in a private room with a Smith-Petersen pin holding his hip together, though we hadn’t much time for a quiet chat – modern orthopaedic wards are pretty active places, with all those nice girls from the physiotherapy department laying cool hands on fevered joints and making you kick your legs in the air as though you were about to turn out for the Arsenal. But the old boy seemed to be enjoying it all, and while a little red-headed staff nurse brushed his hair he started asking my views on the original works of Hippocrates.
    ‘You’ll soon be back among your books again,’ I said, not wishing to pursue the subject.
    ‘Indeed, Doctor, I believe my library is the only pleasure in my life. Except on Saturday nights, when I sometimes play the piano.’
    I was reflecting that this sort of existence would have me stone dead in a fortnight when we were interrupted by the surgeon himself, a big, red-faced, jolly Irishman. Most orthopods are, when you come to think of it, just as ophthalmologists look like dyspeptic watchmakers and bladder surgeons resemble prosperous commercial travellers.
    ‘He’s all yours now, m’boy,’ said the surgeon, as we left the room together after examining the patient. ‘His rehabilitation will go much smoother at home, and this sister-in-law seems agreeable enough to nurse him. Anyway, I’m off on Monday for a month’s fishing in County Mayo. How is he for cash, by the by?’
    ‘According to village gossip, crammed with it.’
    ‘Is he now?’ The orthopod seemed to brighten at the prospect of having his fishing on Lord Nutbeam’s hip. ‘Odd sort of feller, don’t you think? I couldn’t see him saying “Boo” to a newly hatched gosling. I’ll be sending you the usual letter about treatment. Meanwhile, tell him to confine his reading to the bottom shelf.’
    When a few mornings later they unloaded his Lordship at Nutbeam Hall and I pushed his new wheel-chair into the library, I felt pretty contented with myself. The whole episode had already increased my professional standing in Long Wotton no end. I’m far from saying the natives were hostile, but in the country they regard anyone who hasn’t lived among them for thirty years as a day tripper, and now there was plenty of glowing gossip to warm the ears of the old uncle on his return. If I could present him with a Lord Nutbeam skipping about the