Soon after the registration, he had to stand up for a little while; the doctor in a white apron, with a towel round his waist, walked across the waiting-room.  As he passed by the boy who hopped, he shrugged his shoulders, and said in a sing-song tenor: 

“Well, you are an idiot!  Aren’t you an idiot?  I told you to come on Monday, and you come on Friday.  It’s nothing to me if you don’t come at all, but you know, you idiot, your leg will be done for!”

The lad made a pitiful face, as though he were going to beg for alms, blinked, and said: 

“Kindly do something for me, Ivan Mikolaitch!”

“It’s no use saying ‘Ivan Mikolaitch,’” the doctor mimicked him.  “You were told to come on Monday, and you ought to obey.  You are an idiot, and that is all about it.”

The doctor began seeing the patients.  He sat in his little room, and called up the patients in turn.  Sounds were continually coming from the little room, piercing wails, a child’s crying, or the doctor’s angry words: 

“Come, why are you bawling?  Am I murdering you, or what?  Sit quiet!”

Pashka’s turn came.

“Pavel Galaktionov!” shouted the doctor.

His mother was aghast, as though she had not expected this summons, and taking Pashka by the hand, she led him into the room.

The doctor was sitting at the table, mechanically tapping on a thick book with a little hammer.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, without looking at them.

“The little lad has an ulcer on his elbow, sir,” answered his mother, and her face assumed an expression as though she really were terribly grieved at Pashka’s ulcer.

“Undress him!”

Pashka, panting, unwound the kerchief from his neck, then wiped his nose on his sleeve, and began deliberately pulling off his sheepskin.

“Woman, you have not come here on a visit!” said the doctor angrily.  “Why are you dawdling?  You are not the only one here.”

Pashka hurriedly flung the sheepskin on the floor, and with his mother’s help took off his shirt. . .  The doctor looked at him lazily, and patted him on his bare stomach.

“You have grown quite a respectable corporation, brother Pashka,” he said, and heaved a sigh.  “Come, show me your elbow.”

Pashka looked sideways at the basin full of bloodstained slops, looked at the doctor’s apron, and began to cry.

“May-ay!” the doctor mimicked him.  “Nearly old enough to be married, spoilt boy, and here he is blubbering!  For shame!”

Pashka, trying not to cry, looked at his mother, and in that look could be read the entreaty:  “Don’t tell them at home that I cried at the hospital.”

The doctor examined his elbow, pressed it, heaved a sigh, clicked with his lips, then pressed it again.

“You ought to be beaten, woman, but there is no one to do it,” he said.  “Why didn’t you bring him before?  Why, the whole arm is done for.  Look, foolish woman.  You see, the joint is diseased!”