We, medical students, spent two days a week in the accident room, where I
began to feel I was at last learning a little medicine by discovering how to put a
bandage on without dropping it to the floor first.
The order was that a pair of us should sleep once a week in hospital attending
to cases that came during the night. This system was nearly the end of Tony
Benskin. In his walks round the sleeping hospital he had met a pretty nurse and
it looked as if he had fallen in love with her. Benskin's romance would have ended harmlessly if he had not made a mistake on the last night of our work in the hospital. To celebrate the end of our week in the accident room we spent the evening in the King George. At eleven, when it was time we returned to the
hospital, Benskin rushed to see his night nurse, while I went to bed.
Just after three I was shaken awake. Automatically I reached for my
trousers, thinking that it was necessary that I should go to the accident room: but it was Benskin.
"I wish you let me sleep," I said in a rough voice.
"Old man!" he said. "You've got to help me!" He acted as if something
terrible had happened.
"What's the matter?" I inquired sleepily.
"You know that night nurse — Molly?"
"Umm."
"Well, listen, old man, Oh, I wish you did not go to sleep again. Tonight I
came to see her and before I knew where I was I'd asked her to marry me! But
for the pint I had had at the King George I would have never done a thing like that!"
I tried to clear the sleep and alcohol out of my eyes: "It's doubtful that she
should have accepted you."
"But she did. Don't you realise what's happened! She's set her heart on
marrying me!"
"Perhaps she'll have forgotten all about it by the morning," I suggested
hopefully.
"Forgotten? Not on your life! You know what these women are! The
news'll spread all over the hospital by nine o'clock in the morning. I wish I had never done a foolish thing like that!"
"If I were you, I would go and explain that it was all in fun."
Benskin gave a laugh: "You go!"
"I see your point. It's necessary that I should think in silence."
After about twenty minutes I had an idea. I criticised it to myself carefully,
and it looked as if it worked/could work.
"I think I've got the answer," I said and explained it to him. He shook me
warmly by the hand and rushed away.
The solution was a simple one. My advice was that Benskin should propose
to every single night nurse in the hospital.