The one neither of us saw

It was a long time ago. In those days I was a surgical registrar—I retired three ago—and our colleagues in the laboratory were called laboratory technicians. I had been nine years in Africa, come home and done the fellowship, and was mother of the mess.

On a Friday morning I was working on the ward when I was called by one of the technicians. “First of all, would you tell the housemen that there is a slide absolutely packed with malarial parasites of Plasmodium falciparum if …