Doc's Office

The doctor thought that she was wasting his time. She could tell, with that bored grin he looked at her and gave her a perfunctory nod. But she was here on a medical professionals’ say so, she wasn’t a hypo. She tried to convince herself and go back over the script she’d rehearsed in the waiting room.

"Honestly it hurts, when I type. It burns inside the joint….the nurse said I should get it checked out".

She tried to looked pained as he lazily examined the wrist and put some flinching into her expression, but his eyes burned through her just as her thumb burned as he rotated it. It really did ache, and it did really hurt when she typed or tried to hold things.

“Have you taken anything?”
“No”.
“Well I suggest antinflamatories taken regularly and not just when you have a bit of pain, and if you say that it gets better by not doing mouse work then - don’t do it. Not much point referring you at this stage, unless it gets worse of course”.

Sanctimonious git.

He smiled again. She regarded his photos of presumably his pretty wife and pretty kids, doing pretty things. She went to pick up her bag. Doing the obligatory thanking for his time, she prepared to swan out and slam the door so that the office rattled, but as she reached the door:

“So how have things been then…………?”

How had he orchestrated that? In that second he’d turned things round, and now wanted to treat her as a patient not a time waster. Wasn’t he meant to keep to his seven minute appointments slots, and only discuss one hypochondriacal ailment at a time. There was a notice in reception stuck up with surgical tape that told her so.

"Fine".

Curt. She sat down again and sighed.

“Not good. But we never thought that it was going to be".

It was her turn to smile and give the look, the look that most people had learnt – meant back off, I ain’t talking about it. He carried on smiling. His pretty wife carried on smiling.

“Actually I want to drive into a tree, does that help? We are both crying out for attention but having to provide balance to the other? My heart has been ripped out of me. My partner has cheated me out of motherhood, and I’m supposed to be supportive and loving while he’s being an ostrich, and at times I’ve wondered about unbuckling myself from this rollercoaster, but I love him and wouldn’t be without him and we’re in this together and have to get through it”.

Breathe

"It’s part of the marriage trial, that we chose to be bound to. It’s a question of holding onto the wreckage of a pedallo while a storm rages about you, and you can see a tornado on the horizon as you start the long pedal to shore. The only way you’ll get to shore is if you both pedal together".

It all gushed out. Sod the anti-inflammatory.

“Pretty tough then..”.

“Yep you could say”.

She tried to steer the conversation round to talking about treatment options, then they’d be on safe ground. Talk about how the men in white coats could help them.

The ruse worked for a moment or two, but she could see through him. He didn’t really care, he was a nice guy, but there was a patient coming in next who really needed his time, an old lady with a dodgy hip, that Nurofen just wouldn’t work for.

So instead, she stood up and moved to the door, and instead of rattling the door as she slammed it. She left it slightly open and it was only her heart that was rattled.