After our fierce interrogation, the Doctor said he wished he was an emu so that he could bury his head in the sand. He looked like a cat on hot tin bricks; running around like a scalded fly and in and out like a yo-yo.
Once he had given up the ghost, the Doctor wanted to know how we had tracked him down so quickly. I explained that, unlike the genuine article, his isms had been printed in lower case capitals - a silly mistake to make. That hit him like a pat in the teeth. He blamed his printing staff for not being able to organise a cock-up in a brewery, despite them having high-fangled facilities that should have put them leap-years ahead.
I pulled out all the strings in the book and the Doctor started singing like a fish. He pleaded to be left to get on with his medical work and reeled off a list of reasons: the assessment for children’s needs was still in its infancy; he was still having teething problems with the mobile dental service, and; he needed to try some dummy runs in the neonatal unit. Evidently, this was on top of his impatient population that was becoming older and frailer and problems in the CSSD department. Apparently one of his wheelchair patients had tried to complain about him, but he didn't have a leg to stand on.
In a last desperate effort to get off the hook, the Doctor also complained that 50% of his locum doctors came from internal staff and 50% came from the unemployed: strange that, because I thought it would have been the other way around!
I told him that this was a pack of lies ......... and from a man who went to Sunday school religiously every week. I told him it was too late. His lip was too big for his boots, he had pushed the boat out into no-man’s land and was about to get a rostering for it. The local police came and leap-frogged him hand-cuffed out of the centre. I hoped he rue every hair on his head. The Doctor’s receptionist was also arrested for being his middle-man. I felt a bit sorry for her and told her to take a coat with her as it was turning quite chippy outside. But don't forget, I shouted, "Nous retournerons l'annee demiere!"
That this international isms fiasco was drawing to a conclusion was food to my ears. I’d got that stomach off my chest and helped to put things back on an evil keel. Having nailed that issue in the bud, the only jobs left on my list of outstanding jobs were the ones I’d got left. I was coming back because I could see it was the way forward.......
