How it opens
You were twenty-six, newly qualified, and the Harley Street of your ambitions wanted money you had not got.
The Lancet carried three advertisements that October morning, and two of them were for respectable poverty, and one was odd.
You are the new one. The young one. Then for God's sake listen, because I am allowed eight minutes and the meter is running.
Choose
I am listening, madam. Begin anywhere, and I will keep the door of the room shut.
You are a patient here. Whose, mine or the doctor's?
Then why are you downstairs, in my surgery, at one in the morning?