Welcome to this blog page, you’ve come to the right place! Here’s how it works:


Every Friday I’m going to post a new chapter of my novel, featuring the adventures of Dr Sean Ferguson. I’d be really glad if you read the stuff and let me know what you think.


This first story is as long as a short novel – it’s got 54 chapters (so we’ll be e-talking to each other for a year) and I hope it’ll make you laugh (as well as keep you interested).


Here we go, the story is called….


JUST A LITTLE PRICK WITH A NEEDLE


A NOVEL

BY

DR ROBERT BUCKMAN



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Thursday

      CHAPTER FIVE:

      IT SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME

(FRIDAY JANUARY 3rd)

My temporary job at St. Helen’s may seem to you like a pretty dumb career move on my part – and, in retrospect, perhaps it was – but it did seem like a smart decision at the time.

I don’t think I’m unique or even unusual in this behaviour – i.e. in going along with something that seems to be a brainwave, but which later turns out to be not a rolling wave of brain activity, as much as a tsunami.

I think almost all of us suffer from this syndrome at some time in our lives: we get a sudden flash of inspiration, and only later realize the potential downside by which time it is too late to abort the plan. Just like the man who (it is said) invented a liquid acid so corrosive that it could dissolve any known substance (a brainwave), and then couldn’t find anything to keep it in (a tsunami).

I first became aware of this syndrome – let’s call it the ‘It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time’ (ISLAGIATT) syndrome - when I was about twelve years old. I heard a man on the radio tell the story of how he was a collector of antique cars, and how he had spent a long time painstakingly restoring a 1930s Rolls Royce.

After a complete mechanical make-over and test-drive, he had then spent a further six months painting and chroming it, and then decided to finish the final clean-up by vacuum-cleaning the gas tank (brainwave). He said that, as he thrust the nozzle of the humming domestic vacuum-cleaner into the gas tank, he suddenly had a vision of the last drops of gasoline in the tank being sucked up into the vacuum-cleaner’s electric motor, where sparks would cause a huge fire. He was right: they were, they did and there was. Worse still, not only did his car and garage catch fire, but the garage was attached to his house which also burned to the ground (tsunami).

He said that he was going to start all over again, and restore to perfection a vintage Chevrolet, but this time he wouldn’t use a vacuum-cleaner to clean the gas tank. I think he said that this time he was going to use a blow-torch. I guess he’d learned his lesson.

Another example of the same phenomenon cropped up in a report I had read a couple of weeks previously about a brainwave that an Italian couple had had about their wedding. The idea was this: after the actual ceremony, the bride’s bouquet would be immediately transferred to a single-engine light airplane and flown up over the bridesmaids, to be released and then caught by The Next Lucky Girl.

Nice idea, eh? And so much more restful than having to go to all the effort of throwing it over your shoulder.

Sadly, the brainwave had some unexpected consequences. When the pilot released the bouquet, it was immediately sucked back into the engine which stalled instantly, causing the pilot to make an emergency crash-landing in a nearby field. Tsunami.

No-one was hurt but it was not recorded whether The Next Lucky Girl was quick enough to catch the engine as it fell. Though maybe that wouldn’t have been such a good idea after all.

The terrible thing about these moments is that in retrospect you simply can’t remember why it had ever seemed like a great idea.

Why was New Coke ever thought to be an improvement? Why did Decca turn down the Beatles? What was it about Monica Lewinsky that once seemed so alluring? Why did the script for Waterworld ever seem like box-office gold? What qualities did Sarah Palin ever have that the Republicans thought they needed?

Well, my decision to work at St Helen’s was a bit like that.

In my case, the ISLAGIATT decision actually had its beginnings over six months previously. It had started back in England during the previous winter when I was impressed by the example of a doctor colleague of mine, Sidney Thompson, one of those whiz kids who spent most of his time telling everybody how good he was at whizzing.

Sidney and I were both Medical Residents at St Gulliver’s, a teaching hospital in North London. Both of us wanted to be cardiologists (and medical Sherlocks as well, actually) but Sidney was quicker off the mark than me and he realized that, in order to really get ahead of the crowd, an aspiring British physician needs a special degree called a BTA which stands for ‘Been To America”.

Sidney was absolutely certain that if you could get your BTA you would instantly and greatly increase your local value upon your return. And he was (and is) right. He went ahead and applied to be a clinical Fellow in the cardiology training programme at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston, and, guess what, he got in. He bragged about it endlessly and kept saying that all prophets are without honour in their own land, so they should go and spend some time in someone else’s land and then pick up as much honour as they want when they get back. That was the idea, anyway.

So, I followed Sidney’s example: motivated by a complex mixture of altruism (comprising perhaps five percent of my motivation), a desire for academic excellence (three per cent) and major personal envy and jealousy (ninety two percent). Thus motivated, I applied to the Texas Heart Institute in Houston and they were kind enough to say (roughly) ‘any friend of Sidney’s is a friend of ours’. Early that January they offered me a Fellowship in their world-class cardiology training programme for three years starting July 1st.

I’d already passed the relevant international exams for clinical practice in the U.S. and I had the certificates to prove it, so all I needed to do now was to apply for my Texas medical license. This usually takes about six months to be processed, I was told. So, by the end of January, I was feeling pretty relaxed and On Top Of Things. So far, so good.

Which is when the waste material hit the fan.

My problem was simply that my Texas medical license actually came through in early April – three months earlier than expected – and I was stupid enough to tell the Texas Heart Institute that I was ahead of the game.

Whereupon they immediately e-mailed me back and asked whether I would help them out please, pretty please, by working on their behalf as a temporary E.R. physician in one of the smaller hospitals linked to their Institute and to the Baylor Hospital: a place called St Helen’s, in a part of Houston called the Downtown Core. Which sounded very grand. As indeed a bit of it was. And a lot of it wasn’t. Anyway, hey, it was just for the months of May and June, so how bad could that be? Furthermore, Sidney Thompson e-told me that he was going to be on a two month exchange course away from Houston in Stanford during that time, so even if it I made a dog’s breakfast of my time as a locum, at least Sidney wouldn’t find out about it. (I was wrong on both counts unfortunately – I did, and he did.)

I must say that I was a little bothered by the name of the hospital, St Helen’s. I can’t remember (although I’m sure they told me) whether the erupting volcano was named after the hospital, or whether the hospital was named after the erupting volcano. Either way, both entities represented a slight hazard to human life in the vicinity, as we shall see.

But at that moment, I didn’t let the name put me off. At that instant, I was so elated with the way things seemed to be going, that I immediately said yes, hoping to garner a large number of brownie points with my willingness and enthusiasm.

Now, looking back, I realize that saying yes to the St Helen’s job wasn’t a very wise decision, but, as they say, It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time.


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