Meanwhile at the Hospital?

I remember when I was a kid in school being a little jealous of kids who got to have a cast and crutches. I thought it would be fun to have a cast people could write on and I would have liked to have gotten the attention they were getting. However, that was not when I was in First Grade and 6 years old. At that time, I was too young to have seen much of crutches and casts. It is interesting to me that not only is Lawrence aware of casts and crutches at this tender age, but Mike is aware enough of the status they will give Lawrence to be jealous of him. My guess is that the one of the genetic problems that the Milborough resident mutant children may have is fragile bones. Certainly the shape of their heads and bodies would imply there are problems with their skeletal structure. It could explain why Lawrence and Michael are so familiar with casts and crutches, if their classmates are regularly using them.

In today’s reprint of For Better or For Worse, we see Lawrence at the hospital in his boxer underwear. Gone is the mysterious man with the moustache and the glasses from yesterday who got him there. And if there was any dispute over whether he drove Lawrence or Elly drove him to the hospital, we need to look no further than Elly’s shirt which has changed colour since yesterday. Apparently, she took the time to change her shirt before she went to the hospital, which is something she would not do if she were the one driving Lawrence. This may be shocking behaviour to some; but remember that Elly took the time to dress Elizabeth in her outdoor clothes before going to see what happened to Lawrence in his accident. Clearly she considers the apparel for an occasion, before she considers the occasion. All things considered, Elly may have driven Lawrence to the hospital after going home to change first.

We will eventually find out that it is Lawrence’s right leg which is broken. However, for some strange reason the doctor has his right hand on a stethoscope in his ears, while his left hand seems to be counting out the number 1 or 3. I am not certain which number based on the fingers, but it could possibly be in response to Elly's strange hand gesture in the same panel.

I have to admit I am unfamiliar with this procedure. The doctors I know usually use at least one of their hands to hold the stethoscope chestpiece to whatever part of the body they are trying to listen to. It makes me wonder if this is a real doctor or an actor who is pretending to be a doctor and playing with the stethoscope in order to look more medical. “I’m not a doctor, but I play one in the comic strip For Better or For Worse and I think Lawrence has a small fracture. And no, I don’t need to look at an X-ray to figure that out thanks to this medical device I have in my ears.” To further this impression we see the doctor in Panel 2, resting his arm on the broken leg and playing with Lawrence’s knee. I would think that Lawrence might find that to be just a shade painful. Michael must also like that idea, because he has his hand moved up in the same direction like he wants to touch Lawrence’s knee too, or maybe slap the doctor’s hand if it moves much further north. Actually I think this doctor is supposed to be Dr. Ted McCaulay. He doesn’t look much like 1980s Ted, but in this strip from 1981, the resemblance is pretty close. However, the colourist did make him blonde, so I could very well be mistaken.

If this is Dr. Ted McCaulay, then it raises the question of whether or not this is a hospital emergency visit or a doctor’s appointment later. The Ted McCaulay I remember was a not an ER doctor, but a general practitioner or in family medicine. If it is a doctor’s appointment, then it would explain why Elly changed her shirt and why Elly says, “I got him to the doctor” as opposed to "I got him to the hospital" in tomorrow’s strip. It would not, however, explain why nothing happened in the emergency room. I suppose the other explanation is that Dr. Ted McCaulay has an office in the hospital, but we already know that he works in the same building as Dr. John Patterson.

Lawrence has his hands placed on his stomach in Panel 1, which is not the place you would normally expect for a boy with a broken leg. Lawrence’s body looks a lot like he has a fake body on top of his real body and he is holding it in place with his hands. I think this impression largely comes from the drawing of his shoulders at an odd angle relative to his body in the first two panels. Or as I call it, Lynn Johnston drew his head and shoulders and then drew the rest of his body, and then when she discovered they did not work together, decided not to do any erasing to fix the problem. In other words, standard Lynn Johnston art.

There also appears to be a mysterious suction force on the right side of the strip. Elly gets sucked off. The doctor gets sucked to the right and almost off. Lawrence is also being sucked over to the right. Only Michael seems to be unphased by all this sucking. Maybe his selfish jealousy over Lawrence's impending cast and crutches is holding him in place.