A weekend in Palermo? Oxford, 1977. Short Story.

Our next story ‘A weekend in Palermo?’ is a short saga about our medical student Alice becoming less naive and more street-wise. There is no such thing as a free lunch, as they say, and it seems all the extra surgical training , Alice was receiving in Oxford, came with a price tag attached. Listen to the very end to see how Alice fairs during this trial.

 Have a really lovely day today and go outside for a time.

Thanks for listening. Go to my YouTube channel @drdianerlesleywebster to hear more stories or read them in my latest novel “Four ways to die at Riverside Towers” available from Amazon and Kindle. Until next time, have a great day today and everyday. #shortstory #drdianelesleywebster #fourwaystodieatriversidetowers #thegoodguideforlife #simplestepsforhappiness #theartoflivingagoodlife #wellnessresilience

Transcript

A weekend in Palermo?  Oxford, July 1977

 I’m completing the young girl’s appendicectomy with a beautiful continuous subcuticular suture. 

“That’s the way,” Dr Randall said quietly to me. “We’ll make sure she’ll have a very tiny scar that no-one will notice.”

I’m feeling really pleased with myself as I complete suturing the incision. This is the first full appendicectomy that I have ever performed myself and I am only a fifth-year medical student. Dr Randall, the consultant surgeon of the unit, has been instructing me, every step of the way. So, really, I didn’t do it. My fingers and hands held the instruments, true, and performed the incision, ligation of blood vessels, isolating the appendix and removing it and finally closing the incision, but I couldn’t have done any of it alone. I didn’t really know what to do. It was Dr Randall who is the specialist surgeon and he’s guided me right through the operation to its successful completion.

 I’m in the middle of my 6-week surgical elective at the Radcliffe infirmary, Oxford University, Oxford, UK. Two other male medical students, Andrew and Frank, both from my medical school in Australia have come with me. We are all in our fifth year of medicine at Monash University in Melbourne. 

 It is the end of the operating list now, and Dr Randall is walking out of the operating theatre with me, back to our respective change rooms. He has been so good to me since I started on the surgical unit. He has taken me on ward rounds and explained everything important to me about the patients. I started by assisting him with all his general surgeries and now this last week I have performed two surgeries where I was the principal surgeon, under his guidance, of course; a varicose vein removal and now the appendicectomy. I have definitely been given special treatment. Both my friends, Andrew and Frank, have not been invited on these special ward rounds and neither of them have been able to do an appendicectomy. They have been merely assisting their consultants in surgery.

 “You’re doing very nicely with your surgery, Alice. I’m sure you will do a lot more surgery with me over the coming weeks,” Dr Randall said.

I was thrilled to think I would get even more surgical experience at the Radcliffe. No medical students ever got to do the surgery on these types of cases at home in Melbourne. In Melbourne, you would only get to do the actual surgery, if you were a fully qualified doctor and in a surgical training program.

 Dr Randall continued on in his usual casual friendly style,

“Would you like to join me this weekend for a few days in Palermo? I think you would like it,” he suddenly said to me.

 I was totally shocked and taken aback. I couldn’t believe what he just said. A weekend in Palermo? With a surgeon? With Dr Randall? He had to be about forty-five years old, I’m thinking hurriedly and I know he is married with two kids. I’m…Twenty-one? What the? I couldn’t say any of this to him, of course, so I just said,

“Oh……I’m…...not…...sure,” I replied in a little voice that I could hardly hear myself.

Where had this come from? What was he thinking?

“Sure,” he said confidently, “give it some thought. How about I meet you this evening for a drink, around eight? We can meet at the Blue Boar, if you like.”

“Oh, sure…..I’ll see you then…..” I trailed off and then slunk away as fast as possible, into the ladies change rooms to get out of my scrubs. 

 After changing into my street clothes, I left the surgical suite in haste, hoping I would not run into him again, before I got out of the hospital. Thank goodness, I didn’t see him. I walked straight back home to my bedsit where I was staying. It was basically the attic of an old lady’s house; a room she rented out, but it was close to the hospital, cafes, and food stores, so I found it very convenient. When I got back to my room, it was 6pm. Two hours to go, before I had to meet him again for a drink at the pub. These two hours seemed to go by very slowly and were spent in fear, ruminating on what was going to happen at the pub and ruminating about the possible weekend in Palermo?

 How did I get myself into this? What are we going to talk about at the pub? And even more important, what does he think we will be doing, on the weekend in Palermo? What do I think we will be doing on a weekend in Palermo? I’m imagining, maybe, going for walks, seeing the sights, swimming in the hotel pool? Italy, right? Palermo is in Italy. It seemed like a long way to go for a weekend. Then it all fell together in my mind. 

 Yes, he thinks we are going to have sex. Yes, sex. I don’t even know what that looks like. I’m a naive 21-year-old medical student and he is a 45-year-old cheater on his wife. He’s probably taken plenty of nurses to Palermo for other weekends. Am I just another sitting duck regarding this whole situation? Do I have to meet him at the pub? He is my consultant after all and I need to get a good elective term report from my supervisor. Luckily, I am thinking, he is not my actual supervisor. It’s Professor Cornell, the Head of the whole surgical unit. He’ll be doing the sign off. But I can’t really get out of meeting Dr Randall at the pub when I said I would. 

 I walk into the Blue Boar at 8 pm and there he is, seated at the bar, with a drink in front of him.

“What will you have to drink?” he asks me.

I’m thinking; I usually don’t drink anything.

“Um, A lemon squash would be fine,” I say.

We chat at the bar for about fifteen minutes. I don’t think I have said very much at all during this time. Just something stupid about my friends and our elective, maybe? He has finished his drink now. He doesn’t order another. He doesn’t look at me.

“Your very young, aren’t you?” I hear him say, looking straight ahead. There has been no mention of Palermo.

I say nothing.

“Tell you what, I’ll take you home now, it’s getting late,” he says. 

I’m thinking, it actually isn’t. It’s only 8.15pm.

 Back in his car I am in the passenger seat and he doesn’t lay a hand on me, or say anything to me on the short ride back to my lodging, thank goodness.

Once we are back at my lodging, he opens the door and we say goodbye. That’s it.

He drives away. No more said about Palermo, the weekend or anything.

 In fact, for the rest of my elective at Oxford, he ignored me completely. He never spoke to me again, took me on a ward round, or asked me to assist him with operating. I was relegated to the big ward rounds now, with my two other medical student friends, Andrew and Frank, and I just assisted at surgery with the other surgeons in the unit; never again was I invited to assist Dr Randall.

 “I see you’re not operating with Racy Randall anymore, Alice?” my friend Frank said to me. “It seems like he’s taken a shine to one of the nurses now; follows her around everywhere. You obviously didn’t come across with the goods.”

“I didn’t know he was known as Racy Randall,” I replied, “and no, Frank, I obviously didn’t come across with the goods.”