The Patient
Patient
by Roger
Pattison
“It’s
over here, Mr. Lump-Hammer.” The sumo nurse
patted the operating table fondly with a tattooed
fist. The dozing pensioner on the table
scrutinised it, closely. Close scrutiny was
hardly voluntary as the fist grazed the wart on
the end of his nose.
“Looks
like this one’s in for an operation on a
squint,” said the nurse, squinting
microscopically at the cross-eyed patient
squinting at the tattooed onions on her wrist
which could easily have been the hairy genitalia
recently estranged from an Aberdeen Angus.
Mr. Lump-Hammer
turned towards the slap of the iron fist on the
operating table and fell over the trolley.
“Are you
sure you’re up to this job, Mr. Lump-Hammer?”
said the monumental nurse. “Brain surgery
does seem such a delicate business.” The
pensioner on the operating table nodded like a
road drill while Mr. Lump-Hammer first felt his
way across the floor for his pebble specs, and
then around the wall of the operating theatre,
his arrival at the patient being confirmed when
his outstretched hand poked him in the eye. This
effectively cured the patient’s squint to
the tune of total blindness. Mr. Lump-Hammer tip-toed
around the theatre while quietly busking what he
thought might be the tune of ‘Total
Blindness’ over the Tannoy’s background
of a subtle version of Lara’s Theme for
massed pipe band. The patient mumbled something
in counterpoint to the ensemble of Mr. Lump-Hammer
and his Massed Pipe Band.
“Did you
say something?” asked the nurse who was busy
with her own version of ‘Lara’s
Theme’ which sounded strangely like a replay
of the Aberdeen Angus being separated from its
livelihood.
“I said
‘I wish I were deaf’, madam.”
Mr. Lump-Hammer
straightened up and in so doing brained himself
on the shelf marked ‘Brain Surgery
Tools’; on reaching up he retrieved a jack-plane
from the shelf next to it marked
‘Maintenance’.
“Lucky
you went ‘private’ Mr...err” said
the nurse to the patient. “You could have
been waiting a long time for this treatment.”
The old man seemed unimpressed by his good
fortune as he watched Mr. Lump-Hammer in a shower
of sparks sharpening the jack-plane on the
grinder in the corner.
Blinded
pensioner who was hoping for a sudden attack of
deafness, sat up on the operating table.
“You said
I’d gone private? It’s the first I
heard about it. Are you sure you’ve done
this brain surgery thing before?”
“Well,
actually, we’re NHS managers. We’re
just making a few cuts on the side.”
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