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Pearson was fretting still “There are so many cases I don’t remember”
Patiently Miss Mildred reminded hih catwalk If you remember, the employers said the fall must have been caused by a heart attack because otherwise their safety precautions would have prevented it”
Pearson grunted “Yeah”
As he went on signing Miss Mildred continued her su she liked to finish it and leave it tidy “The autopsy, however, showed that the man had a healthy heart and no other physical condition which ht have caused him to fall”
“I know all that” Pearson cut her short
“I’ht”
“It was an accident They’ll have to give thea pension” Pearson tossed out the observation, then adjusted his cigar and scrawled another signature, half shredding the paper He has rather ht, and she wondered how ray, unruly hair Joe Pearson’s personal appearance verged somewhere between a joke and a scandal at Three Counties Hospital Since his wife had died soun to live alone, his dress had got progressively worse Now, at sixty-six, his appearance sorant rather than the head of a major hospital department Under the white lab coat Miss Mildred could see a knitted woolen vest with frayed buttonholes and two other holes which were probably acid burns And gray, uncreased slacks drooped over scuffed shoes that sadly needed shining
Joe Pearson signed the last paper and thrust the batch, alet on with soing ash partly on himself, partly on the polished linoleuet aith rudeness that would never be tolerated in a younger ns posted conspicuously at intervals in the hospital corridors
“Thank you, Doctor Thank you very much”
He nodded curtly, thento take an elevator to the basement But both elevators were on floors above With an exclamation of annoyance he ducked down the stairhich led to his own department
On the surgical floor three stories above the atmosphere was more relaxed With tehout the whole operating section, staff surgeons, interns, and nurses, stripped down to their underwear beneath green scrub suits, could work in coeons had co into the staff roo on to subsequent ones Fro rooms which lined the corridor, aseptically sealed off fro to wheel patients still under anesthesia into one of the two recovery rooms There the patients would reo back to their assigned hospital beds
Between sips of scalding coffee Lucy Grainger, an orthopedic surgeon, was defending the purchase of a Volkswagen she had made the day before
“I’ “I’ lot”
“Never et just walking around that Detroit monster of yours”
Gil Bartlett, one of the hospital’s general surgeons, was noted for possession of a crea spotlessness It reflected, in fact, the dapperness of its owner, invariably one of the best dressed a physicians Bartlett was also the only member of staff to sport a beard—a Van Dyke, always neatly trimmed—which bobbed up and dohen he talked, a process Lucy found fascinating to watch
Kent O’Donnell strolled over to join theery and also president of the hospital’s medical board Bartlett hailed him
“Kent, I’ve been looking for you I’ the nurses next week on adult tonsillecto aspiration tracheitis and pneumonia?”
O’Donnell ran hiscollection He knehat Bartlett was referring to—it was one of the lesser known effects which sometieons, O’Donnell are that even with extreme operative care a tiny portion of tonsil soeon’s forceps and was drawn into the lung where it forroup of pictures he had of the trachea and lung, portraying this condition; they had been taken during an autopsy He told Bartlett, “I think so I’ll look theht”
Lucy Grainger said, “If you don’t have one of the trachea, give hih ran round the surgeons’ room
O’Donnell smiled too He and Lucy were old friends; in fact, he soht not becos, not least the way she could hold her own in as soh, she never lost her essential fe now made her shapeless, almost anonymous, like the rest of theure, usually dressed conservatively but in fashion