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Cruise
Doctor
an original novel
KERRY MITCHELL
© Copyright, 1963, by Horwitz Publications Inc.
Pty. Ltd., Sydney, Australia.
All rights reserved
This is a work of fiction and all characters and
events in the story are fictional, and any resemblance
to real persons is purely coincidental.
One.
The shipping company manager eyed the rugged good looks of the auburn-haired young man sitting opposite him.
“You’ve had no sea experience then, Dr. Grady?” he asked.
“No. Except for a passage to Korea.”
The shipping company manager scanned the forms on his desk, his face bright and hard as a new quarter.
Hiding his impatience, Dr. Ben Grady looked out through the window. Ten floors up, he could look down on the whole of Los Angeles’ Long Beach; on to the seaward arc of Rainbow Pier, almost two miles long, and Pierpoint Landing stalking on long legs into the sea. Beyond Rainbow loomed the fantastically rich reservoir of Signal Hill, the oil wells making of it a giant pincushion.
“Medical school?” The nasal voice rasped into his consciousness.
“Cornell,” Grady answered automatically. “Look,” he said, frowning, “you’ve got all this in my application.”
“Yes,” murmured the manager, making notes with his ball-point, and Grady got the impression he was double-checking, waiting for a discrepancy. “Where did you learn about our vacancy?”
“My brother pointed it out to me.”
“Ah yes, your brother. Dr. Frank Grady—perhaps you are not aware that it was your brother’s recommendation which got you this position?”
If the manager expected any complex reaction he was disappointed. Ben Grady grinned equably and said:
“Sure I am. He usually has a hand in these appointments.” Unconsciously Grady stretched out his right leg a little. “Seems then I get the job?”
The manager had noticed the leg movement. “M’mm,” he hedged, “Your leg . . . I noticed a slight limp when you came in?”
The query hung between them. Grady was used to it, and was becoming a little tired of explaining his limp wherever he applied for a locum post, but he admitted the right of this man to know the facts. The Pacific was not always pacific. Ships, even luxury pleasure liners, roll.
“Nothing to worry about there,” he offered his stock reply, “the semitendinosus was damaged a bit, but a surgeon in Pusan did a good job of suturing.”
“The semi . . . ? What’s that? What happened?”
Grady answered in a flat professional tone, as if he were describing his injury for the first time:
“The semitendinosus is a muscle in the back of the thigh. It bends the lower leg toward the thigh, helping to lift the foot in walking. Mine stopped a bit of MIG cannon shell over Korea. I can’t run a one-minute mile, but apart from that the leg is back to normal. You could,” he said with a jibe of humor in his blue eyes, “check on that with my brother.”
The shrewd, hard face looked at him severely. “There will be no need of that. What is needed, Dr. Grady, is an appreciation of the importance of this interview.”
Grady drew in his horns at once. He wanted this job. “Certainly”—he smiled respectfully—“at your service.”
The manager nodded. That’s better, the gesture said. He lifted one hand and shot his cuff. Grady expected it to snap out on to the desk. It merely reached the knuckles. The ball-point tapped at the filled-in application form.
“You have done a lot of locum tenens work, Doctor. In fact, you seem to specialize in it. Why is that?”
“Several reasons,” Grady answered easily. “The main one is to gain experience. Not only surgical and medical experience,” he said a little quickly, “I think you will find my professional qualifications satisfactory. I mean experience of people and places. They both interest me. Then, of course, I like to travel about. Got the bug in Korea, I guess. I’m not ready to settle down just yet.”
“That surprises me, Doctor. I see you are thirty years of age—surely with your brother so well-established in New York . . . ?”
Grady had gone through this a dozen times also, but he had to remember that the interviewer was always hearing it for the first time.
“Yes,” he said, “Frank would like me to go into practice with him. Maybe one day I will. But not yet.” He shifted in his chair. “Frank mentioned that Pacific Queen’s regular surgeon is ashore with appendicitis. I’d sure like to take his place on this trip to Australia and back.”
“M’mm.” The ball-point was laid down, taken up again. The other cuff jerked down into full view. Nervomuscular malfunction, Grady diagnosed automatically—slight, as yet, caused by responsibility, over-work, parent-bucking daughter or a wife. Duodenal ulcer coming up.
“M’mm,” the manager said again. He looked up at Grady over his spectacles, and there was no malfunction in his eyes—they were narrowed, and keen and shrewd. “This is a pleasure cruise, Doctor. The passengers are wealthy, used to getting what they want. There should be little or no surgery, but you may have to deal with—ah—hypochondriacs.” His tone became crisp. “Will your medical sensibilities be offended by this sort of practice?”
Grady was ahead of him. He had just spent a hard and thankless month in a farming community in Minnesota. For a cruise across the Pacific and back he would deal with hundreds of hypochondriacs. Yet his answer was sincere.
“Not at all. There is a school of medical thought which subscribes to the belief that hypochondriacs may be, in their way, ill. Or at least, not normal. I go along with that. If they think they’re sick I’ll listen to ’em.”
“Good, I see you understand.” For the first time the manager smiled. “We must remember that our customers are always right. They are out for pleasure, they are paying for it, we must see that they get it. Now. You will be in uniform, of course—here is an order for that, second floor—but you will understand that you are a minor cog in the officer hierarchy.”
“Fair enough”—Grady grinned—“just so long as I rate a surgery.”
“Sickbay, Doctor,” the manager corrected mildly. “In that connection it will help your position if you learn as many sea terms as possible. Passengers expect you to talk about the starb’d side, not the right-hand edge of the boat. Clear?”
“Perfectly.” Now that his appointment was confirmed
