【转贴】国外医生写的一篇英文小说

小***拽

整理其他版的一篇英文小说过来请大家分享：

一篇外国医学生的小说

This novel is a sad story about the sincere relationship between a freshman in an American medical school and his first patient, an old lady. I have read it for many times, but still I am deeply moved by it each time. It is a kind of ideal relationship worth being pursuited by every medical student. But unfortunately when I took my practice as an intern in a teaching hospital, I found it is very difficult to establish a relationship like this. The human dimesion in the treatment is or has to be neglected by many doctors. And they influence their students.
                                           THE FIRST PATIENT
September 25, 6:45 a.m.
        In an hour, Paul Stevens will meet his first patient. The course is called " Freshman Intervi***g -- An

Introduction to the Doctor-Patient Relationship. " The title of the course does not discribe Paul's feeling,

however, for although he has been in classes for 3 weeks, this morning will be his first time up on the wards of

the hospital. In the dim light he pushes aside the cup of coffee he made himself. It is already growing cold. He

has barely touched it, for he is nervous, though he doesn't like to admit this to himself. He tells himself instead

that this morning is really no big deal. He's only going to go talk to a patient. And he has talked to people all of

his life. Yet, doubts surface. What if the patient is silent and Paul can't get him to talk? Or hostile? Or even

crazy? He heard that that happened to one of his classmates earlier in the week. A thousand " what if's " run

through his mind.
        He goes into the bedroom and straightens his tie in front of the mirror. He puts on the white coat he

bought at the bookstore yesterday and then pins his new name tag over the left breast pocket. It takes several

tries to get the tag lined up straight. He notices that the price tag is still dangling from the lapel of the coat and

cuts it off with hid wife's manicure scissors.
        As far as Paul is concerned, he still doesn't look like a doctor. With his new Litman stethoscope in

one pocket and a thick manual of lab values and procedures in the other, he should look like a real doctor, but

he feels like an imposter. The coat isn't part of him. Wearing it like this makes him feel like he's pretending, and

this makes him uncomfortable. The day fefore, Paul argued this very point in class. He was among those who

argued that students wearing white coats and calling themselves doctors is an exploitation of patients--that

they are subtly " lying " to their patients, poor people in a county hospital being used for training purposes. He

still feels this way; but this morning in the pale light, he simply thinks to himself, " This isn't me . "
        His preceptor will be Dr.Irving Gellman. He hasn't met Gellman yet. The word from the sophomores is

that he's OK, " a nice guy, " one student told Paul. Whatever means, Paul thought. Paul received word the day

before through Gellman's secretary to meet on Ward Six North at 7:30 a.m. Dr.Gellman had to meet with the

students early so that he could attend his own patients across town on rounds later that morning.
        Paul shrugs his shoulders and turns from the mirror toward his wife Joan, who still lies nestled

enviably in sleep, the sheets pulled up over her head. He kisses her lightly and whispers good-bye. They have

been married less than a year. They moved from St.Peterburg, Florida, so that Paul could go to medical school

in Los Angeles. He is 22 and she is 21. Being a year behind him, she had to drop out of college after her junior

year. The plan is for her to go back and finish her senior year at UCLA " as soon as possible. " For the moment,

however, she is working to help put Paul through medical school. At 9:00 she will drive to the medical center

herself in the old VW ( their only car ) where she works as a secretary in Radiology. This morning Paul will ride

in on his bicycle. He locks the door behind him and ventures out into the smoggy L.A. morning. At 7:15 he

chains his bicycle to a fence near the medical school. Across the street the County Hospital scowls down at

him through the smog like a massive concrete magistrate. It is the largest building for miles, and it dominates

the east L.A. landscape. Paul was told by one of the sophomores that the building had once been used in a

movie version of Orwell's 1984-- The Ministry of Information. Paul can believe it, for it is huge, impervious, and

seemingly indestructible. During the Depression, it held many thousands of patients. In more recent years, the

census has been reduced to a little more than 2000, but it remains one of the largest hospitals in the country.

Paul has heard other doubtless apocryphal stories about the building: that its walls are 3 feet of solid granite

and so strong they could not be dented by the wrecher's ball, and that deep in its bowels, its foundation rests

on huge iron rollers which could withstand any earthquake. It is as though people regard the building as a

symbol for illness and human suffering itself, eternal and, in the end, indefeatable. Paul looks up at its myriad
小说的第二部分（in the hospital）

He entered through the basement and weaved his way down the corridors toward the elevators that

went to Six North. The basement itself was a fascinating labyrinth of intense activity. All around him people

hurried this way and that. They all seemed to have one thing in common, in contrast to Paul: they knew what

they were up to and where they were headed. Young men in white linen uniforms drove electric tractors that

towed huge carts  full of linen along the corridors. Kitchen workers pushed stainless steel racks brimming with

plates that contained the patients' breakfasts. Messengers scurried everywhere. Nurses walked briskly on

their way to work. Every so often Paul saw an intern or resident, distinguished by his surgical greens ( as

opposed to Paul's crisp white jacket ) , drooping eyelids, and, it seemed to Paul,  a certain unmistakable self-

assured and knowing look.
        A group of these interns and residents clustered a few feet from Paul waiting for the elevator. At their

center stood a graying man with a long white coat, their attending. They talked loudly, competing with each

other for his attention. Despite the presence of many nonmedical people waiting for the elevator -- including

visitors as welll as ambulatory patients -- They freely discussed " the liver failure on Four North. " Oblivious to

everyone outside their circle, they chatted eagerly about a particular lab value and how it related to an article

in the New England Journal of Medicine. The gray-haired man seemed impressed.
        So was Paul. Looking at these three men and two women, in their authentically crumpled surgical

greens, Paul felt very acutely the gap between himself and these " real doctors. " Although their rudeness in

talking about the intimate details of a patient in front of visitors had not eluded him, he envied their self-

assurance. By contrast, he felt like a complete bumbler. Once, during a brief tour of the wards when he first

arrived at medical school, he had seen young men and women like these conducting a cardiac resuscitation.

They had functioned so smoothly, with such aplomb. Paul had been terrified and had stood at the doorway, half

in and half out. And just the day before he had struggled unsuccessfully to draw 5 cc of blood from his lab

partner during a practice session. How would he ever be able to run a resuscitation?
        Up on the sixth floor, he was innundated by sights and sounds that were new to him, unfamiliar

musky smells, strange equipment, tubes, monitors, bottles, and i.v. poles. He couldn't  help gawking at one

patient, literally half a person. ( Paul had heard of this operation, a hemicorporectomy, but it was very different


edited by 小医生不拽 on 2005-10-27 at 05:50 PM

小***拽

seeing its results and what they really meant. ) There, as alive as Paul, was a young man about his age,

chopped off at the trunk. He wheeled himself about vigorously on a gurney. His big biceps bulged under rolled

up sleeves, and he wore a tatoo that said " Hell raiser. " With a scraggly beard and unkempt long blond hair, he

looked a lot like patients Paul had seen at the free clinic where he volunteered. Except this one had been cut

in half. Yet there he was chatting, actually flirting with a couple of nurses in the hall who giggled in response.

Paul felt ashamed of his desire to stare. He upbraided himself for having " morbid curiosity " and tried to turn

away and act more " doctorly. "
        He was again struck by the almost regal confidence that the interns and residents on the floor

seemed to emanate. They moved in clusters, chatting, sipping coffee from styrofoam cups. He heard a bellboy

go off. " Doctor Jordan ... Doctor Jordan ... call extension 7482. " Though these young men and women were

actually little older than Paul, really only students themselves, they struck him as being light years ahead in

maturity and experience. As he approached Six North, he passed another gurney where a frail, wrinkled woman

lay on her back. She was clutching a brown paper sack with her name written on it in pencil. She was wheezing

heavily, obviously having trouble getting enough air, and clearly in pain. Paul could see, even with his untrained

eye, that her lips were cyanide blue. Was this the difference his professor had been talking about in lecture

when he referred to " pink puffers " and " blue bloaters " ? Somehow this old woman seemed liked much more to

Paul than simply a " blue bloater. " He was tempted to stop and do something for her, but he didn't know what;

besides, she wasn't even his patient, he told himself. So he went on.
        By the time he found Gellman and the three other students who were part of his intervi***g group, it was 7:30. And Paul, who had come through the doors of the hospital barely 10 minutes earlier, already felt tired,  overstimulated, and bombareded with a thousand new sights, sounds, and emotions.
小说的第三部分（Mrs. Clark）

Gellman seemed reasonable enough. He had fasionably long hair and a mustache. He wore cords. All

of this put Paul at ease, for he had feared that Gellman might be one of those formidably professors in long

white coats. Gellman had a wafer thin bellboy clipped to his shirt pocket. Paul saw this for the status symbol it

was. He had already noticed that in the hierarchy of the medical pecking order, less is more. The interns

trudged around with big bellboys sagging from their belts, pockets laden with pamphlets and examining

equipment. Residents often dressed in street clothes and usually carried only a stethoscope stuck in their hip

pocket. Attendings, like Dr.Gellmam, wore no equipment at all, except for the wafer thin bellboy.
        " I've got a great case for you, " Dr. Gellman said to Paul. " Leukemia. Acute lymphoblastic leukemia. "

They agreed that for this first interview, the other students would go off and interview their patients on their

own. This morning Gellman would go with Paul. In the coming weeks he would rotate through to observe the

other students.
        " Her name is Mrs. Clark, " Dr. Gellman added, almost as an afterthought.
        He grabbed a chart from the rack in the nurses station and led Paul in to see his first patient. Paul ran

through in his mind the steps he had been lectured about the day before. Establish rapport. Make eye contact.

Ask simple questions. Identify yourself to the patient. But somehow, in spite of  himself, all of these

considerations were far from his mind when he first laid eyes on Mrs. Clark.


edited by 小医生不拽 on 2005-10-18 at 06:18 PM

济**馨

还是要感谢你!!

小***拽

第四部分（the embarrassing beginning）

Sitting up expectantly, alone in a room with three other empty beds, Paul saw a smiling, emaciated

black woman who had no hair. Yet, there she sat, in a pink bathrobe, holding in one hand a Holy Bible and in the

other a mirror and a brush. She saw Paul staring, first at her bald head and then down at the hand which held

the brush. She then looked down at the brush herself and with a smile and flustered apology said, " I forgot

sometimes, first thing in the morning. "
        Despite how thin she was, her face was broad with high strong cheekbones. She had large

expressive brown eyes and a full-lipped engaging smile. Her face was the kind that invited trust even in

strangers, and her expression said, " Don't be afraid, come closer. " Despite her baldness, her demeanor was

unmistakably feminine.
        Paul took a second to gain his composure.
        " Good morning, Mrs. Clark, " he finally said. " I am Dr. Stevens. "
        He had been encouraged by Dr. Gellman to introduce himself that way, but having said it he

immediately felt like a complete phony. He hastily added that he was " a student doctor. " Then, ... " A

freshman. " Mrs. Clark smiled, nodded, and waited expectantly.
        Paul then muffed his opening  line. He had been told in lecture to ask, " What sort of troubles have

you been having? " Instead he repeated himself, nervously introducing himself a second time as " Paul Stevens

... Dr. Stevens ... a student doctor. " Once again Mrs. Clark smiled and waited.
        " Ah, um, how are you, that is? " Paul stuttered.
        " I'm fine, " she said patiently.
        " Um, I see ... um ... "
        She seemed to empathize with Paul's discomfort, for as he stammered and fidgeted she leaned

forward him and raised her eyebrows encouragingly, as though she wished to help him, like a fledgling actor,

over these difficult opening lines.

        After a bit more fumbling, Paul managed to find himself a chair and to seat himself by the side of her

bed. He tugged once on the knot of his tie,cleared his throat, and began to try to sound " doctorly. "


edited by 小医生不拽 on 2005-10-18 at 06:18 PM

小***拽

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爱*儿

挺不错的，就是字有些小，看着眼痛噢

m****r

好东西要顶！

l****g

好东东！

b****a

thank you

n****a

deeply moved:'(

红***膏

m****y

小弟好久没看豆芽菜了 许多单词都忘了 看不懂了
楼主能不能私下发一份翻译成中文的我看看
谢谢 我QQ号码是574623877