If he was a doctor in a hospital, he had a phone in his car. That's how the nurse would notify him if a patient was going south. Or notify him a plane crashed and the hospital was about to be swamped with incoming.

Not unusual at all. And he obviously was/is a doctor in this hospital. Radio-telephones are widely used out in Southwest in places like the Navajo reservation. Where it is 10 miles to the nearest land-line phone.