The Doctor is Sick
Anthony Burgess
 The "doctor" of the title is Edwin Spindrift, Ph.D., an unhappily married professor of linguistics who has been sent home from Burma to England suffering from a mysterious brain ailment. While Edwin is confined to a neurological ward, undergoing a battery of diagnostic tests, Mrs. Spindrift amuses herself with some disreputable new friends at the surrounding pubs. Sometimes, to Edwin's distress, she sends these friends to keep her husband company during visiting hours, rather than come herself. Most of the novel is a dream sequence: while anesthetised for brain surgery, Edwin's anxiety over his wife and the company she keeps turns into a slightly surrealistic fantasy in which Edwin leaves the hospital and encounters his wife's friends, with whom he has various adventures.