A Doctor’s Charm

• kateshrewsday

A repost concerning one of my favourite professions.

Once upon a time, I was at Death’s door.

I’d lost pints of blood and was in the process of losing more. I’d had a bumpy ambulance ride from a cosy community hospital to the huge impersonal London satellite infirmary which had an operating theatre which could handle me.

They clattered me on one of those wheelie trolleys through the VIP door of the surgical wing, at an alarming rate. Some kindly Indian nurses were shouting at me shrilly to keep me in the land of the living.

And then a very nice young doctor sailed into the melee, and introduced himself. He had blue eyes, foppish blonde hair, a deeply capable air and that easy public school charm I have always fallen for.

Immediately I miraculously forgot i) that I was in my forties and he a spring chicken, ii) that I was wearing an unbecoming green surgical gown with absolutely nothing covering my bottom, and sporting a corpse-like pallor most unflattering and iii) that I was at Death’s door.

A scandalised Death propped his scythe against the wall to watch as, unbelievably, I began to flirt.

The good doctor graciously ignored the chalk-white emergency case bit of my plight and responded with a little gentle witty repartee.The nurses all tittered coquettishly. Clearly, I was not the only one under the dashing doctor’s spell.

I briefly considered continuing in kind; but my record so far was dismal, and even with a couple of pints doing a flat race round the old bod, speed of transfer was no replacement for sheer quantity. I was deplorably dull in my infirmity. Curses, I thought muddily.

Sometime during the next two hours, as Dr Gorgeous did his surgical stuff, Death shrugged his shoulders, disgusted, and trudged out of the doors to go and bother someone else. This doctor and his colleagues had ensured my family would see me tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.

What a dashing hero.

These doctors; it’s no wonder they fascinate us. They turn up in our hour of need, all capability and intellect. And yet when you prick them, do they not bleed?

Take  Dr Zhivago, Boris Pasternak’s lonely physician who is buffeted by the events of Russia in the first half of the twentieth century. A man of great principle, his ideals are in direct opposition to the brutal regime in mother Russia. And though he finds the love of his life, she is not destined to be his for eternity.

He shares the white corner with Dr John Seward, created by Bram Stoker to fall in love with a beautiful aristocrat who falls victim to the foul Nosfiratu.  He calls in another knight against the darkness, that slightly crackpot Dr Abraham Van Helsing, and between them they use their medical knowledge to battle and transfuse.

There is, of course, the dark side.

Born of parents who are not noble, Christopher Marlowe’s Dr Faustus makes his way in the world using his intellect. Every subject he studies, he has reached its conclusion. So he turns to magic, seeks out the necessary incantations, draws a magic circle and  makes a pact with Lucifer himself.

And who can forget Dr Julius No, Ian Fleming’s anti-hero, who has his finger in so many pies? His organisation harvests guano: another day job includes sabotaging American missile tests.

But his first love is the study of how the human body can withstand pain and stress. Mr Bond provides the perfect guinea pig.

All a little unsettling. Let’s end with a fatherly doctor.

Claude Debussy, it was, who wrote a study called ‘Doctor Gradus Ad Parnassum‘. It made fun of the technical studies his daughter Chou-chou would have had to labour at day after day.

‘Gradus ad Parnassum’, or ‘The Steps To Parnassus” was a set of formal studies for piano. And it borrows the name of Doctor to add mock pomp.

Hard work for little fingers. Debussy shows a profound, gentle exuberance towards his daughter which penetrates like an arrow-head to the core of the soul. It is intricate, sweeping, working on every level to charm the soul.

Much, Reader, as that charming surgeon who sent Death packing, that night at the hospital.

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45 thoughts on “A Doctor’s Charm”

  4. I wasn’t quite at Death’s Door, though I’d been wishing I was, if that’d end the pain, when into my cubicle in the emergency room swept a dark-haired creature who made it all go away for a minute or two, before the drugs took over. They are indeed ‘heaven sent’ – these doctors 🙂

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  7. Great post. I’ve always been a fan of those guys in the medical profession. Forget a man in uniform, those guys in lab coats with stethoscopes ain’t so bad. 😉

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  8. There is something of the Gorgeous Guardian Angel about these capable bods. As long as she could communicate, my mother flirted with her neurologist…

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  9. So glad indeed that the young Doctor Gorgeous was successful in rescuing you from Doom and his dark and sinister friends, otherwise, what in the world would I do at 6 am every morning. 🙂

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  13. So glad you lived to write another day. My faves:

    * A scandalised Death propped his scythe against the wall to watch as, unbelievably, I began to flirt.

    * Sometime during the next two hours, as Dr Gorgeous did his surgical stuff, Death shrugged his shoulders, disgusted, and trudged out of the doors to go and bother someone else.

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  14. I love your Pratchett-like picture of a disgruntled Death deviated by doctors.
    When I came across that Debussy piece in one of my books I thought he had flipped his lid. Now all is clearer.

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  16. There’s nothing like a good one, is there Kate? Unfortunately, I have had my share of contact and must say that much of it has been far better because of the doc.

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  18. Laughing out loud here, Kate. I first read this blog on the phone without seeing the picture at the top!! Kind of changes everything, dunnit??!

    But seriously, love the blog which just goes to show how we are hard-wired to respond to overt dishiness and charm no matter *what* our condition! Long may that be the case!!

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  19. I’m very glad to read that this is a repost, Kate. You were certainly in need of a doctor during that difficult time period. Through the years I’ve known some good and some bad…doctors aren’t all schooled equally in the art of knowing people! I’m on a Bram Stoker kick right now, and I enjoyed that reference. I really enjoyed this post, Kate. Have a good weekend…refresh and push the re-set button! 🙂

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  20. I did have a laugh at this 🙂 The grim reaper forced to stand and watch as his prize is charmed away from his grasp! He can afford to gamble though, because his bets always win out in the end. And I’m sure he finds it fun to give us a scare every now and then.

    I can’t say that any Doctor has had the sort of effect you describe on me – though my current Lady doctor is rather good looking 😉

    I wonder if your choice of Jack Elam in doctor’s white coat is a Freudian admission of a crush on men with dodgy eyes – I bet you like Colombo too 😉

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