The Doctor Is Sick by Anthony Burgess

wanting to be giving ye.’
    The tired voice at the switchboard said: ‘Yes? I’ll put you through to the night porter.’ There were windingsand yawns. Why, wondered Edwin, the night porter? Why not some doctor or sister or other? ‘Hallo?’ said the night porter.
    â€˜Sure, and have ye a patient that’s escaped from your hospital?’
    â€˜Escaped? Escaped? What do you mean, escaped?’ It was the voice of one who didn’t sleep enough during the day. ‘There’s nobody escaped , as you put it.’
    â€˜Oh, well now, there’s a man here in Hounslow who says he’s escaped, so if ye’re wanting the spalpeen at all, ye’ll know where to be finding him.’
    â€˜Where did you say? What are you talking about?’
    â€˜In Cockfosters, it is,’ said Edwin. ‘Sure, and I’ll be mistaking my own name next.’
    â€˜It strikes me,’ said the voice, ‘that you’re barmy. People don’t escape from here. This is not a loony-bin.’
    â€˜All right, me boyo,’ said Edwin. ‘Don’t say ye haven’t been warned. May the blessed Virgin Mary and all the holy angels and saints guard ye and keep ye,’ he added. Then he rang off. Curious. Did the American sister believe him to be still straining away there? Did she perhaps, being new to the country, think it possible that the British tempo of evacuation was different from that of the States? Curious that the whole hospital should not be humming with panic. He himself now hummed a little tune, hands in pockets, encased in this tiny pharos. He took one hand out to press Button B, but this time there was no free gift of coin, no – he laughed – metallic evacuation or nomismatorrhea.

CHAPTER TWELVE
    It was still early, but there were purposeful people around rushing for tube-trains. Edwin had left his coffin because a woman, short, middle-aged, with a moulting fur coat, had come along to be a bona fide incumbent. (But could you say ‘incumbent’? That meant a lier-upon. Perhaps ‘instant’ was more correct, and it conveyed also her urgent coin-tapping on the outer glass.) Edwin, evicted, wandered slowly along, thinking that, if William Barnes or the Nazis had had their way with the English language, there might now be FARSPEAKER instead of TELEPHONE; that closed butcher might be, as in old Scotland, a flesher; the tobacconist here would be a cigarette handler. Outside the cigarette handler’s was a cigarette machine. Edwin had a florin, so he was able to buy a packet of ten. No human intermediacy. That was a help. Flat to the glass of the door of a stationer’s he saw magazines. There was the one Charlie had brought him: Brute Beauty . And there were others he had never seen before: Valour; Act; Oh! He rubbed his eyes, which were troubling him with an odd impairment of vision. Were those really Air, Pride, Plume, Here? He lit a cigarette (five matches left) and tried to steady his eyes by reading the advertisement cards in a glass case. Exotic Coffee-coloured Model 41 - 24 - 39, Available Afternoons. Annette, Specialist in Correction. Janice for Leather. Baby’s Pram Going Cheap. Flatlet Suit Business Gentleman, Regret No Coloured.
    Round the next corner he saw a big white milk machine.He had sixpences. Excellent. An early breakfast, again without human intermediacy. He was delivered, to the flashing of lights, a clammy carton with a blue tear-off corner. He drank the cold milk gratefully, his eyes looking into the bitter morning sky which was still really a night sky. But the moon had set. A little farther down the street he saw a machine with six columns of chocolate. He fed in his last sixpence and drew out a block of Honey Nut Milkshake.
    He chewed, sucking his clogged teeth. He had a threepenny piece and two pennies. That wouldn’t get him far, would it? He couldn’t even telephone without getting change. But, of course, he