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CHALLENGE FOR DOCTOR LESLEY

(aka "Till the Tide Turns")

Ann Gilmour

'Even in these enlightened days of women's lib, the appointment of a woman doctor as the new resident at a conservative Scottish hospital was regarded as a disaster. Women don't know how to stick to rules, was the general comment. Dr. Lesley Leigh was determined her old friend Jim Graham was after the same job. And to add further complications to Lesley's career was Sir Charles Hope-Moncrieff, the brilliant physician who had reluctantly agreed to give the attractive doctor a place in his team. Where did he stand in the battle of private loyalties?

"You're
the finest physician in the West of Scotland - I never thought that you'd be unjust." Doctor Lesley Leigh held all five foot three of herself erect and defied Sir Charles Hope-Moncrieff across the vast expanse of his rosewood desk. She had been in this room for ten minutes. There didn't seem anything more to lose.

"Thank you for the vote of confidence, but it doesn't alter my decision," he said drily. "And you've learned very little from life, Miss Leigh, if you still expect it to be fair."

The omission of the courtesy title stung Lesley as sharply as the words.

"But you always give your residency to the medallist of the year," she persisted.

"Well, this time I've changed my mind." The tall figure in the well-cut blue suit leaned back in the swivel chair and surveyed her disconcertingly from the toes of her expensive shoes to the tip of her burnished red hair. "And don't ask me why. It's common knowledge that I won't have another woman doctor in my unit. They make nothing but trouble. The nurses don't like them and they invariably cause friction with the Sister."

"I thought you appointed your housemen - not the nursing staff." Lesley didn't quite manage to bite back the words.

"Now you are being impertinent, Miss Leigh," he said coldly. "Why you women want to do medicine in the first place beats me. It only lessens your chances in the marriage market. Far better if you'd gone
off
and been an air hostess, caught yourself a millionaire or something." He waved his arm airily.

The enormity of the suggestion gave Lesley fresh courage. "But I'm not looking for a marriage bureau," she persisted. "All I want is a chance to prove myself."

"My dear Miss Leigh," the quizzical dark eyebrows contrasted sharply with the silver wings of his hair, "I'm not in the least interested in whether you prove yourself or not. I have a medical unit and a post-graduate school to run. I've no time to indulge feminist whims. In my opinion there's too much expensive medical education squandered on women as it is. In the normal course of events my residents proceed to specialist qualifications. They use their time at St. Kentigern's to prepare for that. Most of them go on, to senior house posts and eventually take the Glasgow Fellowship and the London Membership examinations. These opportunities are at a premium. My job is to see that they go to the candidates most likely to exploit them to the full."

"But that's what I want to do. Every other Fleming Prizeman has specialised. Why shouldn't I?"

"Like most of your sex you want to have your cake and eat it. Oh, I'm not belittling your considerable talents, nor your no doubt laudable ambitions." He forestalled her protests with an elegantly able hand. "But ability and ambition are not enough. As Professor of Medicine I have to be a realist. The professorial corridor is no place for a woman who'll be married in under two years."

"But I've no intention of being married in under two years!"

"That's what you all say. Unfortunately statistics are against you." His voice held the mocking contempt of the perennial bachelor for the weakness of those who let marriage interfere with career.

"In any case, you've just told me that as a doctor I have a poor chance in the marriage stakes." Lesley knew that by now her face matched the fiery red of her hair.

He laughed then. The gay twinkling smile transformed his whole face. In spite of her bitter disappointment Lesley found herself responding to the old magic. "I only want the cake," she said grudgingly.

He uncurled from the chair and walked stiffly to the window. When he spoke he was serious again but all trace of antagonism was gone.

"In my experience, Doctor, women don't have what it takes. Very few of them - even the brightest - ever make it to the top." There was understanding, sympathy, even pity, for all the brilliant women like herself whose only misfortune was their sex. "There are too many forces arrayed against you, and the most powerful enemies of all form the 'fifth column' in yourselves." He spoke almost to himself. "But I'm forgetting that your generation wouldn't know the phrase."

In the lazy June afternoon sunshine Lesley became aware of the drone of a bee in the blossom of the red hawthorn outside his window. From this room high up on St. Kentigern's hill she could see the cascading waters of the fall. Children's voices just reached them from the park below. She looked again at this man who held her future in his hands. Young for the professorial chair, at forty he was already the head of the medical school - a legend almost before his time. Most of the students hero-worshipped him. The men tried to emulate everything about him from his irresistible bedside manner to his equally impeccable taste in silk ties. He didn't suffer fools gladly. He had only one standard. He was never tired of telling them that he was easily satisfied - with the best. And here he was saying that although she had been capped "the most distinguished graduate of her year" he didn't think she was good enough for one of his jobs.

"You need a certain brand of ruthlessness for this game," he was saying. "Women don't have that."

"How do you define ruthlessness?" Lesley's voice was barely a whisper.

He turned slowly from the window. "Seeking one's own best interest - if necessary at the expense of another's." The disturbing grey eyes held hers for a moment. "Women lack that kind of drive. They let too many things - other people's claims often - stand in the way. I'm not criticising this, only stating it as a fact. I know they can be very determined about some things if they want them badly enough. The only conclusion I can come to is that in this business they stop wanting too soon."

"I want this badly enough."

"I'm sorry, Doctor." He came slowly towards her, the very slight limp adding appeal to his dignity. "I know it's a bitter pill, but my mind is made up. Believe me, I'm not in the habit of explaining my decisions and I shouldn't have taken so long to do so now if I didn't have a high regard for your achievements. You've had an outstanding career as a student in this University. As far as I'm concerned it's just a pity that you're not a man." He held out his hand to end the interview.

It took all of Lesley's resolve to hold back. "You've no more certainty with the men than you would have with me. Four of your six residents in the past three years have emigrated as soon as they got their higher qualifications. The country lost on its investment in them just as surely as it does on any woman who gets married."

"Miss Leigh." He dropped his hand. There was a touch of asperity in his tone now. "Don't pretend to be less intelligent than you are. A country doesn't lose on its investment if a man whom it trains chooses to serve in some other part of the world."

She flushed again at the deserved rebuke. There was one last card to play.

"Your peripheral residency at Fenham isn't filled." It was a statement, but she made it sound like a question.

He had his hand on the door, but he turned sharply. "You would settle for second best?"

"It depends what you mean by second best. Half the students in college would give their eye-teeth to work in one of your wards." She caught the shimmer of amusement in his eyes, but she no longer cared about that.

He seemed to hesitate for a moment, then snapped his fingers in sudden decision. "Very well, then. You may write to the Medical Superintendent and say that I have agreed to your appointment. The twenty-sixth of July, nine a.m. - and I shall expect you to be on time."

"You mean I can have it?" She was caught off guard. It wasn't what she had wanted, certainly, but at least it was one of his annexe wards.

"I've said so, haven't I? Now if you'll excuse me. I'm not in the habit of being importuned in my room by young women at this hour in the afternoon." He held the door open for her to leave.

"Thank you, sir," she said eagerly. "I promise I won't let you down."

"Arrogant as well, Miss Leigh?" The eyebrow went up in its now familiar arch. "Since you can't possibly know what I shall expect you can scarcely promise that you won't let me down." He looked at her crestfallen face. It was almost like squashing an eager puppy. With sudden compunction he put a hand on her shoulder. "No one should ever promise another person that," he said wistfully. "You've still got an awful lot to learn, haven't you? I'm afraid Fenham may rub off some of the shine." He smiled then. "Anyway, I don't suppose you'll be thanking me in six months' time. You'll no doubt be wishing you'd settled for an easier option. Although, all things considered, it may be interesting to see how you survive in the jungle."

She was out in the June sunshine before she realised that he had driven a hard bargain. July the twenty-sixth, two weeks sooner than usual. Obviously his present resident hadn't managed to find a locum for his two weeks' leave. She was far too exhilarated to stop and wonder how any post in a unit of his came to be still unbooked four weeks before it fell vacant. In spite of all they had said to the contrary she had managed to pull it off - and without invoking the Sex Discrimination Act, either!

"Where
the devil is that flaming resident?" Dr. Harry Dayborough barged into Ward Two's duty room, setting the cups rattling on the afternoon tea tray which Jane Duncan, the probationer, was just placing on Sister's desk.

Angela Bishop dismissed her junior with a brisk nod of the head.

"I've told you before, Dr. Dayborough, I will not have that tone of voice in my duty room."

" 'I've told you before, Dr. Dayborough' - " He mimicked her precise tones - "I'll use whatever language I like in this or any other duty room." He tossed his stethoscope to land on the hook behind the door.

"Sit down and behave yourself." She rose and went to the cupboard, returning with a second cup and saucer. "You're not doing your blood pressure any good. If you'd stop to think before rampaging around like that you'd remember that the new resident isn't due to begin till tomorrow morning and Sir Charles gave Morrison permission to start in Surgical today."

"Sir Charles - !" He spat it out.

"And you can cut that out too." She went on pouring tea without looking up. "There's no one here to impress with your coarseness, nor, for that matter, with your jealousy." She pushed the cup of tea across the table towards him.

"Jealousy is too mild a word for what I feel." He slumped into the chair opposite her and took a chocolate biscuit from the tray. "Not content with the professorial corridors he has to snap up the only tuppence-ha'penny wards I was ever likely to get."

"Come off it, Harry. You never had a chance of these wards. Everybody else saw the writing on the wall even if you didn't."

"Your faith in me is touching - on the raw." His lip curled.

"It isn't enough nowadays just to have a higher degree. You've got to go on being interested in research. And you haven't done a stroke of work since your M.D. thesis - that must be all of ten years ago."

"You don't have to spell it out," he said bitterly. "I know it's not going to happen for me now. Somehow when you're young you think you've got all the time in the world. Then one day you wake up at forty to find time's running out. If you don't do it soon you know you never will. You can't go on fooling yourself for very much longer."

All the bombast had drained out of him. Angela Bishop felt almost sorry for him, but she kept the feeling at bay.

"I see it's 'be sorry for Harry day'," she said lightly. "If it were anyone else you'd be the first to tell them to snap out of it; to get up off their seats and do something instead of wallowing in self-pity."

"You get tired of always having to make efforts ... I suppose that one of my worst mistakes was to go off and spend four years in the tropics. Hateful climate, endless frustrations and shortages and setbacks. Disease in conditions such as one had never dreamed of. And then, just as the rewards for it all seemed in sight, the damn country goes independent and we all get booted out." He folded and refolded the tinfoil on his plate. "That much of life - all wasted."

Not for the first time she saw that his eyes were bloodshot; the once firm features were blurred at the edges.

"It depends what you mean by waste," she said quietly. "You were doing useful work and learning a lot, and the new government did pay some compensation. And anyway, it's a long time ago now."

"What's that got to do with anything? I still can't face the night hours. At first the nightmares were predictable but now -" he shrugged again, "the truth about yourself in the half-awake hours of the morning. No one should be expected to face that."