Winnipeg Doctors Play Practical Jokes
Dr. Patterson was a leading physician of Winnipeg, but he is my medical adviser no longer. This is why. One Hallowe’en about 10 o’clock, when I was handling flimsy on the Free Press—three different services were enough to drive a man to distraction—I was going down to the business office, when the Doctor, collarless and coat unbuttoned, rushed in and excitedly said:
“Great guns, but I am glad to see you have recovered!”
“From what?” I naturally asked.
“Why,” he replied, “just got a ’phone that you had fallen in a fit.” Grabbing my wrist, he encouragingly remarked as he felt my pulse: “Well, it’s not so bad. A little stimulant will put you all right.” And he dragged me across the road to Clougher’s.
As we were returning to the office and had reached the lane in the rear of Clougher’s, we heard footsteps hastening down the sidewalk from Main Street.
“Hold on,” he said, “let’s see what’s up.” The “up” was Dr. Good, and Dr. Jones, and Dr. Cowan and Dr. Neilson and Dr. Benson and Dr. Henderson and Dr. Codd and others, making a round dozen in all, and they were all glad to see me alive. Each mother’s son had received a similar ’phone call to the one Dr. Patterson said he had got. The whole medical fraternity boldly charged me with playing a Hallowe’en trick on them, Dr. Patterson being the loudest in his denunciation. I tried to explain my entire innocence to the whole group at Clougher’s, but it evidently did not go with them. Dr. Good said he had just retired from general practice and had become a specialist, but on account of our old friendship he had left a patient in his office to answer the call. Dr. Jones, who was in his slippers, stated that he was about to retire after a hard day’s work, but couldn’t see me suffer. Dr. Neilson asserted that he had to neglect another patient to answer this fool call, and what the other doctors said was unfit for publication. They all looked upon me with suspicion and if another call had been given them for me that night, I would have died of old age before they would have come to my aid.
It was a long time afterwards when old Alex McLaren, of the McLaren House, and I met in front of Trott & Melville’s drug store on Main Street, just a short distance from the Free Press office. We always stopped and had a chat when we met, and this time Mac burst out laughing and said: “That was a good one we put over you last Hallowe’en, wasn’t it?” Then he realized he had said too much and was as dumb as an oyster. Finally, he admitted that he and Dr. Patterson were walking past that drug store on that fateful evening, and the Doctor put up the job on me and his confreres. He went in and arranged with the telephone exchange to call up the other medical men, then taking off his collar and disarranging his clothes as if he had rushed out to answer a hurry-up call, piked for the Free Press half a block away. And even to this day the Doctor unblushingly asseverates that by his prompt action he actually saved my life. I never received a bill for their services—but they made me spend all my money at Clougher’s that night in rendering continued aid to their injured feelings. And that’s the kind of man Dr. Patterson is.