The cafeteria of Three Counties Hospital was a traditional meeting place for most of the hospital grapevine, its stems and branches extending tenuously to every section and department within Three Counties' walls. Few events occurred in the hospital - promotions, scandals, firings, and hirings - which were not known and discussed in the cafeteria long before official word was ever published.
Medical staff frequently used the cafeteria for "curbstone consultations" with colleagues whom they seldom saw except at a meal or coffee break. Indeed, a good deal of serious medical business was transacted over its tables, and weighty specialist opinions, which at other times would be followed by a substantial bill, were often tossed out freely, sometimes to the great advantage of a patient who, recovering later from some ailment which at first had proven troublesome, would never suspect the somewhat casual channels through which his eventual course of treatment had come.
There were exceptions. A few staff physicians now and then resented this informal use of their arduously acquired tal
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