Chapter 39 – Last Patient

Patients came back, enough to keep us busy, and to occupy my mind and distract me, and finally only one was left. He complained of lower back pain and as I examined the man, I noticed tenseness and he reported soreness in his lumbar region. But there was an odd bulge in his trousers. It was on his left side, below the umbilicus.

I prodded it and the man reached in and pulled out a cricket ball. "You have a cricket ball in your trousers?" I'd seen many strange things in and about Portwenn, Cornwell, but this was in the top ten or perhaps the ten worst actually. Not as bad as the giant invisible squirrel but it was right out there on the fringe.

"In my pants, doc. My truss for my hernia, it wore out," he explained. "So this cricket ball holds it in!"

"Well you can get a new one or even have your hernia surgically repaired! That cricket ball is putting strain on your back, hence the pain."

"Doc, you got your fancy London ways, but I got mine. Folks in Portwenn, we have ours."

"And most of them are mad!"

"So I'm one of the Bodmin ones, then?"

"Yes!"

"Well, that's the way it is. I got my ways, and they work." He tucked the battered cricket ball back inside his pants, sat up and straightened his shirt. "That it doc?"

"Yes."

My last patient, totally Bodmin but one all too typical of Portwenn residents, smiled with a gap-toothed grin and nodded. Then he strode to the door and through, into the waiting room. He gave a nod to Pauline and then he left.

I looked around an empty waiting room. "So that was the last patient."

"Yes, yes it was," replied Pauline.

I reluctantly said a little speech I thought of. "Pauline, we've worked together for a number of years and I just want to say… good luck." I held out my hand and Pauline took it and we shook briefly.

"So you're done then, doc?"

"Uhm, yes…"

"You want to say something else?" she asked bravely.

"Well just the… I appreciate the help you have given me." I'd thought a lot about what Al Large had said to me – how Pauline had supported me, guarded my back, kept me going. It was true. Without her…

Pauline let out a shaky breath. "Well, thank God, I thought you were going to say you were in love me or something."

"What?"

"Well, you know, all that bumbling around; all nervous."

"That's absurd!" I'm quite certain my eyes bulged as I shouted at her.

"Really? We've worked together a long time, and uhm, I've seen those little glances you gave me. You always asking me to work late, accidently brushing your hand against mine!"

"I DIDN'T!" Was the woman mad? She must be! My God I've been working with an insane woman! I became fearful that she'd follow me to London, along with Edith, and haunt the lobby of my flat.

Pauline bust out laughing. "Your face, you should have seen your face!" she giggled on but then her voice dropped and she got serious. "Are you sure you'll be fine in London, doc? I mean the whole blood thing. I won't be around to do it for you when you're hiding in the corner like a little girl…" Now her face was quite solemn and sincere.

I thought how much Pauline had grown, matured, become knowledgeable about an office, and not just the veterinary she had worked with before. If I had done one good thing here, then surely this must be it. "I'll be fine. Thank you, Pauline." Hiding in the corner? Was that what I did?

She looked as if she might say more, but she just smiled.

I spoke before the moment become maudlin. "Good bye."

Pauline Lamb left my surgery in a swirl of gaudy clothing, her ginger hair pulled back, and in all this time she had affected the eclectic dressing that was her trademark. I felt certain that Imperial College, and all of London for that matter, would have no one quite like Pauline Lamb.

But when she stepped over the threshold and closed the door behind her it mysteriously ceased to be my surgery. The cottage just became a house, an old building with creaking steps, leaky plumbing and dry rotted floor boards. The walls were still an odd shade of green, which I'd only kept as one coat of paint covered the old. It wasn't much different from when I arrived. But as I looked around it struck me that I no longer worked here. The building was empty and I had packing to finish.