Bush Doctor in the City. Vol 19
Bush Doctor in the City. Vol 19
The Bush Doctor had settled things with his Nurse during the early hours of the morning. Enough was enough with this French volunteer Doctor. The Bush Nurse had said she knew her Oil worker ex boyfriend was a foreign government spy and that she had see a look of recognition in his eyes when he saw the French Doctor. She too must be a spy.
The ward round went very quickly. Everyone was doing well except the construction worker from East Africa. He had initially improved on the intravenous Suramin but had now relapsed. He slept all day on account of the dreaded sleeping sickness. His step mum had taken her younger son to the city for Chemotherapy on his now shrinking jaw tumour (Burkitt’s Lymphoma) and was expected back that afternoon. The volunteer Doctor was in tears after they left his bed side. The Bush Doctor’s compassion had failed him.
Later that day when they all assembled in his office he went straight to the point.
‘Sorry to bring this up, being such a personal matter and seeing you are so upset about this man with Trypa..Trypan..sleeping sickness’ he coughed and paused.
‘We are worried about your closeness to the young man’ said the Bush Doctor.
They all sat in awkward silence.
‘I don’t really think you believe this talk about them being marine scientists with a grant from the UN. No woman is that stupid’ said the Bush Nurse. The Bush Doctor was taken aback by his Nurse’s rudeness.
The volunteer Doctor began to sob louder.
They sat in more silence.
‘OK. Go take a rest. We can discuss this some other time’ said the Bush Doctor. The volunteer Doctor hurried out of the room. The Bush Nurse gave him a dirty look.
‘What? She was upset. There is no rush’ he said.
They went off on a walking round to the Leper colony without their French visitor and stayed till late in the evening.
Early the next morning the Bush Doctor was startled by the noise of a jeep. He scrambled for his hurricane lamp and hurried out. The jeep was gone. So was the volunteer Doctor with all her belongings.
It wasn’t long before the machine gun fire broke the calmness of the morning.
Trypanosomiasis struck a cruel that morning. The young man lay motionless in his bed while his step-mother wept for him. ‘Where is our oyibo Doctor wey been dey help us o’ she cried.
The Bush Nurse kept on saying ‘I knew it. I knew it. That woman was so suspicious’.
Suddenly the Militia leader ran into the ward very frightened.
‘The federal troops are coming! Save me!’ he screamed.
He dropped his ruck sack on the floor. The Bush Doctor remembered his American dream fund. He wondered what might happen if the federal troops came in, dragged out this frightened young man and shoot him.
‘No one else would know there was money in that rucksack’ he thought.
The idea was from the bereaved woman. The Bush Doctor feared for his mother. Bush Nurse was not sure why he agreed to such a strange plan. Surely now they were all accomplices.
The Federal troops rushed in and saw the body dressed in bullet belts and army fatigue. They saw a ruck sack containing Dollar bills lying next to the bed on the floor.
One of the soldiers walked up to the body and laughed. Suddenly he brandished a huge knife with which he disembowelled the corpse.
‘Where the Cobra head he hides in his belly?’ he laughed. The soldiers dragged the corpse outside and set it alight.
When they had gone the Militia leader took off the bandages from his face, got out of the hospital bed and hugged the bereaved woman. He then grabbed the black bag into which housed the rest of his money and ran back into the bushes.
‘Someone has betrayed us’ he said as he ran off. He didn’t ask where the French Volunteer Doctor was.
It was the bereaved woman’s idea to have the militia leader’s clothes put on her dead step son and then have his face riddled with bullets, making it unrecognisable.
‘At least I have a burnt corpse to bury. When his father died we had no corpse’ she cried.
The rest of the patients on the ward acted like nothing happened
The Bush Doctor in the City was off to do a Locum.
6-07-07. 3.30pm. Arrived at the Surgery. Looked shut. Knocked on window as no one answered the door.
‘We do not need you. There are three Doctors here tonight’ the Practice manager said. I wondered if I had heard wrong. Could this be a wasted journey? I had left my diary at home so didn’t have the agency’s telephone number. We all groped in the darkness for a while till when in a flash of inspiration the Practice Manager checked the computer.
‘Oh. You are booked at the branch Surgery and the first three patients are waiting already’ she said
‘And where is this branch Surgery?’
‘Oh, just ten minutes down the road’ she said.
Thirty minutes later I pulled up in front of a health centre and wondered why someone was locking up.
‘Ah, you need the Surgery down the road’ he told me.
I was tired by the time I finally sat down in the consulting new. There is something about that chair though. It might be a strange room with a strange computer system and maybe even stranger receptionists, but one thing is certain.
Sit in that chair and you are in the mood.
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