No Doctor, No Village

What am I doing in this eternal winter?’ bemoans the title character in Franz Kafka’s Ein Landarzt (A Country Doctor) when called out of bed one stormy night to attend to a sick patient.

- Jonathan Self

Our local medico must surely have been asking himself the same question at 1am on Tuesday morning as he drove through bitterly cold, torrential rain to our house.

We had hesitated for several hours before telephoning him, but, eventually, our child’s symptoms became so bad we convinced ourselves it was something really serious. It was probably the doctor’s sixth middle-of-the-night visit to us since he opened his practice in a nearby village a quarter of a century ago.

Not once has he complained, although he must sometimes have felt we had disturbed his sleep unnecessarily. Instead, he always reassures us that we have done the right thing and asks for a cup of tea for himself and a biscuit for his dog.

He has a winning way with younger patients: ‘Deep breath. Doctor, doctor, I feel like a pair of wigwams. and out. the problem is you have become too tense. Open wide. Doctor, doctor, I’ve broken my arm in two places. Say “aaah”. I’d advise you not to go back to either of those places.’