# The doctor — Short Fiction character guide

> The doctor in Short Fiction by Ernest Hemingway.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** The Doctor, the Doctor

**First appearance:** 0004-indian-camp

## Snapshot

Nick Adams's father, a small-town physician whose plain way of telling hard news shapes how his son learns to look at pain.

## Who they are

The doctor moves through the early Nick Adams stories as the figure who explains what has happened — the major's young wife dead of pneumonia, the machines and the photographs of restored hands. He is practical, unsentimental, and a little removed, delivering catastrophe in the same even voice he'd use for a diagnosis. His presence gives Nick's world its moral weather: things happen, someone tells you plainly, and you carry it.

## In the story

### [Indian Camp](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/chapters/indian-camp)

Performs the Caesarean section with improvised tools, later discovers the husband's suicide.

### [The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/chapters/the-doctor-and-the-doctor-s-wife)

Nick's father, who becomes angry when accused of stealing logs and later goes for a walk.

### [In Another Country](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/chapters/in-another-country)

The hospital doctor who operates the rehabilitation machines and encourages the patients, showing before-and-after photographs to instill confidence.

### [A Simple Enquiry](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/chapters/a-simple-enquiry)

The major, who interrogates Pinin and later wonders if he lied.

### [Now I Lay Me](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/chapters/now-i-lay-me)

Implied as Nick's father, who is a doctor collecting specimens.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/the_doctor
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters