The surgeon I worked with in private the other day had a registrar with him, a senior trainee. I always enjoy it when this happens, because it takes the pressure off me to make conversation.
Half way through the list, her phone rang, and one of the nurses took a message. It was her Croatian grandfather calling, and she said she’d ring him back after we were done.
She didn’t seem particularly excited by the prospect of talking with him, and she explained to us that he was a complicated man. For years he’d maintained that as a child, he’d been on holiday in Egypt during WW2. “How long were you on holiday for, Papi?” “Two years”. “Wow! That’s a long time, especially during a war…” Doing some reading on the period recently, she’d discovered that he’d actually been in a refugee camp over that time. “Refugee camp! Pshaw. We had fun.” “But Papi look, here’s a photo of a memorial they have over there, to all the children who died of disease and malnutrition while interned there.” “Oh you young people make such a big deal of everything! I tell you, it was that thing, what do you call it? Glamping! We were glamping.”
