A Visit to the Doctor

Not all doctors are nice people.

“I’m sorry,” the young receptionist said, with her practiced, vacuum-molded smile. “But Doctor Valladay called in sick today.”

            Leroy sniffled miserably beneath the stuffy cotton mask.

            “Can doctors even do that?” he asked.

            “They’re people just like everyone else,” the receptionist reminded him. She started typing away at her keyboard behind the protective plastic wall.

            After a while she returned her attention to Leroy. “Looks like you’ll be seeing one of our other practitioners today. I’ve set you up with Doctor Shore. Take a seat, and we’ll call you in shortly.”

            Leroy nodded his thanks to her, and, stepping over what was probably a barf stain on the carpet, selected a chair in plain view of the door to the examination rooms. The air beneath his sick mask was hot and humid from his own breath, but whenever he tried to lift it up and sneak in some fresh air, the receptionist glanced over at him like she had a psychic warning system. So Leroy sat there in his own wretchedness, next to the hunting and fishing and interior decorating magazines that all waiting rooms seemed to own.

            Soon, a ginger nurse stuck her head out from the door. “Leroy?”

            Leroy rose from his chair and joined her. She led him through the white, sterile labyrinth of the clinic’s inner hallways before stopping in front of an empty room. Inside was the familiar setup of the desk and chair, the cabinets and the examination table. Everything looked normal. Leroy took a step forward, assuming this room was his.

            The nurse took him by the shoulders and dragged him back outside, positioning him squarely in front of her.

            Leroy started to ask if something was wrong.

            The nurse shushed him, and pulled out a vial of water from her pocket. She opened the cork and dipped her fingers in the liquid, flicking a couple of drops at Leroy’s head. She then made strange passes in the air in front of him, muttering what sounded like prayers.

            “What… are you doing?” Leroy asked.

            “You’re going to see Doctor Shore, aren’t you?”

            Leroy nodded.

The nurse shuddered. She took out a clove of garlic and tucked it into his shirt collar.

            “I’m protecting you as best I can,” she told him. “But as of now, your fate is in the hands whatever cruel deities exist to have given life to such a person as he.”

            She made a cross in the air in front of him and backed away quickly down the hall.

            Leroy stood alone in the hallway at the entrance to the examination room. Through the walls around him he could hear blood pressure machines and muffled talking, the ambient sounds of a doctor’s office. Everything felt normal again. But he certainly felt a bit more concerned than before.

            He walked inside and climbed up onto the examination table. The sanitary paper crinkled when he moved, as loud as firecrackers in the empty room. Several minutes meandered by. Leroy’s feet thrummed against the hollow metal anxiously as he waited. His only friend in the world was the round clock on the wall.

            The door opened. Doctor Shore entered the room.

            He looked like a regular person. He had thoroughly greying hair, short rectangular glasses, and the white coat and stethoscope that only real doctors were allowed to wear. There was a clipboard in his hand and a steely look in his eyes.

            “Mister Leroy Folkman?” he asked.

            Leroy nodded. “Yes.”

            Doctor Shore looked down at his clipboard with a worried expression.

            “While you were waiting, I pulled up your medical history and did some diagnostic tests,” he began, peering beneath his glasses. “I’m sorry, Leroy, but… I believe you’re suffering from a deadly and incurable condition. It’s undoubtedly terminal.”

            “Oh God!” Leroy said, starting to panic. “Wh - what? What is it?”

            Doctor Shore took off his glasses and pierced Leroy with an icy, inhuman stare.

            “Mortality,” he snarled.

            The room suddenly became very cold.

            “Your body,” Doctor Shore continued slowly, savoring Leroy’s stunned, unbelieving gawp, “is a bloated, festering sack of tissues and liquids, constantly churning, constantly roiling in their own filth. There are millions of ways that any number of those fragile tubes could rupture, split, twist, grow, shrink or otherwise malfunction, leaving you dead on this floor and fit for nothing besides a nearly hopeless salvage for usable parts for somebody else’s pitiful existence.

            “I’ve studied for years, learning all these malfunctions and disruptions, learning to treat, cure, or eliminate them, not to mention countless hours implementing this knowledge upon my own body to keep myself fit and healthy, thus making me both your physical and mental superior. As such, I demand respect. And if I do not receive that respect, I will push you out of this clinic myself, where you and your ailing organs will have to either miraculously cure yourselves, or leave this world to those who would better deserve it. Do I make myself clear?”

            During this monologue Doctor Shore had continuously moved his face closer to Leroy, until their foreheads were almost touching.

            Leroy tried to form words with his mouth, but it felt strangely dry.

            “I will interpret your petrified silence as defeat and submission,” Doctor Shore said, picking the garlic clove out of Leroy’s collar and tossing it into the garbage bin behind him. He took a seat in the rolling chair by the computer, and started scribbling onto his clipboard.

            Leroy tried to surreptitiously wipe his sweating hands on his jeans. What should he do? Should he describe his symptoms? Wait for Shore to finish? The silence in the room was more oppressive than the hot air building up under his mask. Leroy decided to speak up.

            “I’ve been-”

            “Silence,” Doctor Shore snapped, not looking up. “Whatever you think you know that is important enough to interrupt my work, I know already.”

            He continued to write.

            When he finished with that, he logged into the computer system and pulled up a few complicated-looking graphs, which he consulted silently. The only sound in the room was the continuous ticking of the clock. Even it sounded nervous.

            “I’ve just got a cold,” Leroy tried again. “I was just seeing if I should get some antibiotics, or if you think it’s… it’s… it’s a …”

            Doctor Shore stared at him again, with his evil grey eyes that felt both robotic and simultaneously filled with an unspeakable rage.

            He stood up, not breaking eye contact.

            He turned to the counter and poured out a cup of liquid with a strong, stinging aroma.

            “Here,” he said, handing the paper cup to Leroy. “Drink this bleach.”

            Neither of them moved.

    Leroy tried to force out a word, or a laugh or something. He wasn't serious. Right?

    Doctor Shore continued to hold out the cup.

            Leroy, feeling equal parts awkward and confused and terrified, reached out and took the cup.

            Doctor Shore still did not move or speak.

            Leroy waited. This was all a setup for something. A lesson to be learned. Some new point to make.

            Doctor Shore crossed his arms. He was dead serious.

            Leroy brought the cup of bleach up to his lips.

    He slowly tilted it upwards.

            Doctor Shore swatted the cup from Leroy’s hands, the cup and its contents flying across the room and smashing into the opposite wall, and Leroy jumped back in terror.

            “You’re an idiot, Leroy,” Doctor Shore whispered intensely. “And that is the one thing that I am incapable of curing.”

            Leroy curled up in the fetal position on the examination table, whimpering.

            “You’re weak,” the foul man continued, pacing around his victim. “You’re undeserving of my assistance and my time. Antibiotics? Really? You think I’m some fresh new graduate from Phoenix University with a degree in making-the-boo-boos-better? Is that it? IS THAT WHAT YOU THINK OF ME, LEROY?”

            Leroy shook his head frantically, tears coating his eyes. In a blind panic he flung himself off the examination table and opened the door, sobbing, bashing into walls and other nurses as he fled the scene. 

            Back in the waiting room, the receptionists watched bemusedly as Leroy ran screaming through the clinic doors, running panicked circles through the parking lot.

            “Isn’t it astounding,” one of them began, turning from their computer, “to think that doctors used to treat illness with things like leeches and intentional skull fractures?”

            Her companion nodded solemnly. “It makes you grateful for how far we’ve come.”

Reviews

[Indra's Child]

I f*****g love this, as usual... made me laugh so hard I almost woke up my drunk, vomit covered roommate I sometimes call a brother....
Your stories get better and better the more I read