Hellish Heaven

The Receptionist answered on the third of fourth ring, giving out the same information in a robotic monotone. There were no doctor’s appointments that day. None. Perhaps if they called back first thing in the morning, or later in the week. I’d worked out by the third malingerer, she was impatient to be shot of them. Shot of us all. Worse, one of the General Practitioners had themselves called in sick. The Green Medical Practice was at code red. She carried the burden of uncaring alone.

I was an unsmiling distraction standing in front of her. I wouldn’t listen either. Books filled our house. Dad could read in six languages. I could grunt in one. We stayed in 12B. Little different from the other high flats in Dalmuir. Imprioned light bulbs and a gloomy half light that strained the eyes when reading. Low ceilings. Big view over towards Erskine and a more expansive world. Underfloor heating that was too expensive and didn’t work. Bedclothes grey with age. Neighbours, two floors below, whose choice of music shook us down. A scatter of embroidered oriental cushions on the settee evidence of a luxury we never possessed other than to rest our eyes on print.

Perhaps if my undoing had been the typical kind, sniffing glue, snorting cocaine, falling over drunk in the doorway, or injecting heroin, I could have partied too. But in the half-light and half-sight, with glasses perched on my nose, I’d never been that kind of boy.

Having never known my mum, I’d the modest life of a bachelor child. I never painted the furniture red, or scratched my name on people’s doors with the number of Wendy, who was a gobbler. In case you didn’t believe in her, there was artistic license attached with balls and a spunking cock. I’d loved to have the courage to phone her, but we didn’t have a phone, and didn’t entertain guests. Never made a noise that would disturb my dad’s—or my—reading, because his seemed much more important than mine. Didn’t dare disturb the cold, dark dampness and winter of our lives.  I wouldn’t have known how to.  

The reception glanced up at me as if I wasn’t there. I felt compelled to speak. But not distract her by looking directly at her. My eyes hovering over files and phones. ‘I’d like a doctor’s appointment?’

‘What’s the matter with you?’ she asked.

I was sadly overweight with a bit of a wheeze. My dad had a leather-bound book written in Aramaic that asked that question, but I could never decipher more than a few sentences. He has several hundred others, ranging from what used to be called moral philosophy and religion to popular psychology, which attempted to answer weightier issues.   

My face flushed in the way it usually does. I stammered, ‘I’d rather speak to a doctor about it.’

She answered the phone while giving me time to reconsider. When she checked, I was still standing there. Obstinacy in others was often considered a hindrance.

Her painted eyebrows and patience were overstretched as NHS resources. ‘What I meant was it an emergency?’

It would have been foolhardy to get into a debate about what she meant by the term, emergency. ‘I’d say so or I wouldn’t be here.’   

She snorted and offered a half smile. ‘You’ll need to go to A&E then.’

I was still standing, waiting, two phone calls later.

‘It’s not that type of emergency,’ I said.

She decided to indulge me. Rocking forward her swivel chair and peering at me. ‘What type of emergency is it?’

In Tolstoy’s stories, she’d have consumed herself by ideas. A need to know more about other people, learn more about herself. The way her social world was ordered and her role in it, and she’d have died a tragic death because of all these factors. I figured she was just nosey. ‘It’s highly personal.’

That hinted in a very limited way about something that made her uncomfortable and push her chair back and stare at the screen. ‘There’s no appointments, but you can wait to see if there’s a cancellation.’

‘That’s fine.’

I didn’t tell her I was a Patriarch of waiting. Doctor’s waiting rooms used to have comfy chairs and magazines such as People’s Friend. People like me with no friends liked to read. But that set the wrong tone, as if patients were looking for chandeliers, recitals, balls and the hesitant laughter peppering literary conversations as a blood-splattered hanky fluttered from a pale lady’s lips to the marble floor.

Modern surgeries were designed as hubs. Indestructible plastic chairs bolted to the floor. In-and-out without passing through the inner sanctums in your best shoes.  

The receptionist announced I could go in and see the doctor. I didn’t quite catch the doctor’s name, but the room number was enough. I trekked along the corridor and stood outside, listening and breathing in the slight medicinal tang of something rubbed on your skin. Not sure whether to knock.

I took a backward step when the Doctor hauled the door open. I hadn’t been paying attention to general trends. He was more likely to be a she. The older generation of General Practioners had phased themselves out. Retired with a bought house and healthy pension.

Dr Licht, bronzed and smiling with more white teeth than a Colgate advert, seemed younger and healthier than me. She’d my file in her hand and tossed her hair and laughed heartily at my unease. If she’d a cap, she’s have cocked it at a provocative angle and smoked Gauloises, blowing the smoke in my face. She floated rather than walked back to her desk.

I sat facing her like a mourner at my own funeral.  

She leaned forward and gave me that smile again. ‘So, there’s not much here. You  haven’t been here in what? Five or six years.’ She placed her hand flat on the spine of the file. ‘So what can I help you with?’

My cheeks lit like tinsel, as if all the iron in the blood going to my brain had diverted to my cheeks. ‘It’s my penis.’ I couldn’t look at her face. I was sticky with sweat that ran down my back and pooled at my ass cheeks.

‘Yes,’ she replied, making encouraging noises. ‘What about your penis?’

‘It’s shrunk.’

She guffawed like a girl that danced all night in the sand and sung mournful songs to the sounds of a violin. Then put that girl back in her hiding place and tried to act professional, before laughing again. ‘That’s perfectly natural,’ she said. Before correcting herself. ‘I mean, it’s perfectly natural for a boy of your age to believe such a thing.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I wish it wasn’t true too.’