Doctors & Nurses

by Lucy Ellmann

  A RUSSIAN GUY is sitting alone on a train. A young Englishwoman (Jen), gets into his compartment. They sit for hours in utter silence as the train zips through the STEPPES or the URALS or the CAUCASUS or somewhere. Finally, the young woman (Jen) asks if she could open the window a little. The Russian guy leaps up and says, ‘Enough of zis talk! Take off your clothes!’

  An old joke, which Jen has elaborated on:

  Without preamble, without beginning or end, the Russian guy starts fucking Jen from behind while she looks out at the passing trees, the FORESTS OF RUSSIA. Jen is WEAK from his fucking but he doesn’t care, he turns her and fucks her some more. He fucks her until all she KNOWS is his fucking (she’s forgotten all about the trees of Russia!). All she can think about is his cock going into her, like a train in a tunnel. And by his intent expression she can see that all HE can think about is his cock going into her.

  Medically Impossible

  One day, Jen was summoned to Dr Lewis’s office. It was their first real REUNION since she’d got the job. Beaming at her from his swivel chair, Dr Lewis told Jen that he was going to entrust her with some actual PATIENTS now. She tried to look enthusiastic. The next thing she knew she’d been sent back to her little office with her arms full of yet more PAPER!

  Her new task was to write to all the women on Dr Lewis’s list and persuade them to come in and have SMEAR tests. These are of dubious medical value and have an established record of failure, but Dr Lewis was going to get a big fat BONUS from the NHS if 50% of his women patients could be conned into having the test, TRIPLE if he could rustle up 80%!

  Jen had to write a lot of LETTERS and lug them over to the post office. It took WEEKS. She wore out a whole pair of shoes, and was deeply, deeply bored. But the results were good: women started turning up in droves to have Jen shove her speculum up their fannies, pussies, beavers, slits, trims, twats, quims, gashes, snatches, purses, privates, kippers, cooches, boxes, DOWN-THERES, nether regions, under-carriages, WHATEVER they wanted to call it. The BUSH. Their RURAL BACKWATERS. (Most preferred the term FRONT BOTTOM – as if the cunt is just some miniaturised version of the ASS.)

  Then they went home to await the worrying letters about the results and the subsequent LAPAROSCOPIES and other unnecessary treatments for vaginal irregularities they didn’t HAVE (Jen got all the SLIDES mixed up!). But it was WORTH it: the bonus was in the bag!

  Jen’s next assignment was to talk parents who didn’t want their kids to have the MMR jab into LETTING their kids have the MMR jab. There were a lot of parents out there who were wary of the MMR vaccine, and Dr Lewis was SICK of them and their MMR worries. Who cares about AUTISM anyway? ‘It’s better than being DEAF,’ as he said to Jen.

  So Jen dragged the recalcitrant parents into her office, one by one (there wasn’t much ROOM in there amongst the milk crates), and urged them to join the vaccination programme. ‘Get with the programme!’ she would tell them jocularly. Her technique was to deny, flatly, that there could ever be, or ever have been, any connection between the MMR jab and autism. It was ‘medically impossible’, she told them. Many parents were instantly persuaded by this – people want things to be medically POSSIBLE, that’s just how they want the world to be!

  But if they were still hesitating, Jen would badmouth the anti-MMR brigade: the campaigners and their so-called EXPERTS. She accused them of having ulterior motives in dissing the MMR jab, their true intention being to sell newspapers, or herbal remedies. These people were DANGEROUS, they wanted to cause an EPIDEMIC!!! She was SICK and TIRED of cowardly parents who sat back and let OTHER parents take all the risks. The brave parents, who had their children vaccinated, reduced the risk of measles in the COMMUNITY, from which the cowardly parents indirectly benefited … Bla bla bla.

  If all else failed, Jen would say, ‘I’ve had my OWN kids done! It’s one’s DUTY.’ Nobody knew Jen HAD no children. Nobody knew who the hell Jen WAS.

  Jen worked her ASS off to sell that vaccine, and discovered in the process how much Dr Lewis’s patients DOTED on him. All she really had to say to most of the mothers was that DR LEWIS was keen on the MMR vaccine, and they would eagerly hand their kids over to Jen to jab. Wiping away a tear or a blob of blood afterwards, Jen would say, ‘There now, you’ll live!’ and she was pretty much right: only a few kids died, two or three got autism, and NONE WENT DEAF. And Dr Lewis got another BONUS!

  Oh, how the women of that rural backwater pined for Dr Lewis, longing to surrender themselves in every medically possible way to his stern stewardship. They were suckers for every skill, every pill he had to give (made out their WILLS to him too). They admired HIM, and through him, every echelon of his esteemed profession. These women wanted to be TAKEN OVER by modern medicine, looked at inside and out, investigated, ROGERED till they felt no pain. He was like a MAGICIAN, wielding power over life and death with his magic wand. In fact, he could have been a FILM STAR with that CLEFT CHIN of his!

  Men liked Dr Lewis too! Though he never went to the pub, and played golf on his OWN, if at all, he was revered at least for being WELL PAID. He was good about house-calls too. He sometimes turned up without even being ASKED, just to see how people were doing. He’d sit with his patient and have a nice big hot cup of tea, while he told gruesome medical stories, or expounded on bewildering aspects of the patient’s condition, and bestowed upon it some Latin name. A bruise was not a BRUISE to Dr Lewis, it was an ECCHYMOSIS. His patients kindly ignored or at any rate TOLERATED the good doctor’s own AKATHISIA (inability to sit still), his ECHOLALIA (parroting of his patients’ words), his FASCICULATION (muscle twitches) and some outlandish BORBORYGMI (intestinal gurgles) – and luckily had no KNOWLEDGE of his TINEA CRURIS (crotch rot), PES PLANUS (fallen arches), or ZOOPHOBIA (which might not have gone down well in farming circles).

  Ah, the strange primeval world of the medical man! Dr Lewis slept fitfully, and had dreams of TERRIFYING BLANDNESS. Nothing seemed to HAPPEN in these dreams: Dr Lewis would be wandering around some unfamiliar hospital looking for a place to WANK. Every time he thinks he’s found a good spot, it turns out to be overlooked by a WINDOW opposite, or the wall beside him is a TRANSPARENT SCREEN, so he has to go off in search of somewhere better.

  Most of these dreams occurred during brief naps in his swivel chair in the consulting room which despite the new paint job still smelled of pee, the age-old pee of PATIENTS. Patients can’t seem to LOOK at upholstery without peeing upon it.

  Vaudeville

  It was like fucking VAUDEVILLE in there!

  PATIENT:

  I come about me knee, doctor.

  It hurts when I bend it, and

  I can’t cross me legs no more.

  DR LEWIS:

  Well, don’t cross them! NEXT!

  Never mind that a previously sound knee was now ON THE BLINK. That needn’t interfere with the quick, easy, breezy, and CHEAP reply. Stomach hurts? Don’t eat. Ass hurts? Don’t sit/shit. Head hurts? Chop it off! Doctors will gladly CUT you up just to SHUT you up.

  The thing about a rural practice is that you don’t just treat one isolated person at a time. You treat MANY isolated people, all of whom happen to be RELATED. Dr Lewis prided himself on knowing their names – he memorised them at night. He also rehearsed his affable manner in front of the mirror – the gleam of his whitish teeth, the cold grey eyes – and honed his diagnostic skills by rummaging through the records of the dead, trying to remember what this or that incurable MOLE looked like, or the hot temper that accompanies a brain tumour. He took an INTEREST in his patients, of a sort.

  MICHAEL was having trouble sleeping or concentrating. Dr Lewis handed him a big bottle of sleeping pills, saying, ‘You’ll be right as rain with these, Michael.’ But Michael was having trouble sleeping because his wife had recently thrown him out of the HOUSE and told him she didn’t love him any more. He had to make APPOINTMENTS to see his kids. He’d even lost custody of his DOG. Instead of hanging from a suspension bridge in a Spiderman outfit to demonstrate the indispe
nsability of DADS, Michael swallowed all the sleeping pills Dr Lewis had given him and drove to a local beauty spot. Gulls danced and crapped on his car as he died.

  Michael’s daughter, JANET, was brought in to the surgery soon after this, weak, emaciated, constipated, and experiencing leg tremors when going up and down stairs. Diagnosis: inadequate food intake (she was STARVING). Treatment: cod liver oil. NEXT!

  TREVOR was off to the BUSH on BUSINESS, and wanted a cholera vaccination. Dr Lewis made an innocent mistake that could happen to anyone: instead of a cholera injection he gave the guy MODECATE, a powerful tranquilliser. Trevor missed his flight to Africa and was found wandering around the airport in a disorientated state, having lost his testicles, spectacles, wallet and watch but – at least he didn’t get cholera!

  JAMES had just RETURNED from the bush (Malawi). His symptoms included fever and lassitude. Dr Lewis prescribed codeine. But four days later, James was no better. Dr Lewis had a flash of INSPIRATION and asked James if he’d taken any anti-malaria drugs before going out there. In his delirium, James thought Dr Lewis was saying ‘anti-MALAWI drugs’. Of course he hadn’t taken any anti-Malawi drugs before going to Malawi. That would be SILLY. James died two days later of cerebral malaria and renal failure. But he’d been quite wrong to suspect Dr Lewis of being ANTI-MALAWI.

  JOHN had a sore hand. Dr Lewis sent him to hospital for an X-ray. They found that John had fractured a metacarpal, but it was well aligned so they left it unbandaged and told him to see his GP again in two weeks’ time. Two weeks later, John duly went to see Dr Lewis. Proudly remembering John’s name was John, Dr Lewis shook him warmly by the hand. They both heard a loud CLICK. When Dr Lewis released John’s hand, there was now a very noticeable bump. John had to go back to hospital and have surgery on his hand. After that he was scared to shake hands with ANYONE.

  SAM had a history of gout and came limping into the surgery with a sore foot. Dr Lewis prescribed more GOUT MEDICINE. The foot continued to deteriorate. Eventually Sam had to have his leg amputated below the knee: his gout was thereby HALF-CURED. Next!

  IAN, a soldier home on leave, was spitting blood. Dr Lewis gave him some tablets. A few days later, Ian’s distraught girlfriend SARA ran right past the flailing arms of Francine into the consulting room, where she begged Dr Lewis to tell her what kind of pills those were that he’d given Ian because SHE’D taken them: she had tried to commit suicide on account of Ian’s imminent departure, but she’d had second thoughts. She now wanted to LIVE, and needed to know if she should go to hospital to have her stomach pumped. Unfortunately, Dr Lewis couldn’t REMEMBER what the pills were, and hadn’t made a note of it. Sara told him they were brown and shiny. Dr Lewis decided they must have been vitamins and told her not to worry. But they were NOT vitamins! They were IRON tablets. She died within the week.

  JACK was a ninety-one-year-old with chronic CONSTIPATION. A humdrum affair. In fact his abdomen was swollen as tight and hollow as a drum! When Dr Lewis DRUMMED on it, there were strange CRUNCHING sounds. (Luckily, it didn’t HURT him – Jack’s Drum-Tummy was NUMB.) Dr Lewis sent him off with more senna pods. Jack eventually died of colonic cancer, which had blocked his bowel and made it BALLOON. Inside, they found hundreds of CALCIFIED FAECAL PARTICLES (and a hell of a lot of senna pods).

  JOYCE, a five-year-old, had swallowed a drawing pin. Her parents kept bringing her in to the surgery because of her sore throat, but Dr Lewis couldn’t see anything wrong until the fourth visit, when he noticed the drawing pin. This he removed but still Joyce didn’t get better. She was listless and stopped eating. SPOILT, Dr Lewis concluded. Then she had a HEART ATTACK. In hospital, doctors discovered an ABCESS. They drained 40 ml of fluid from her windpipe, but she died anyway.

  Dr Lewis killed people every day, people who wanted to live. Those that wanted to DIE, he saved. It’s a system!

  CATHERINE had motor neurone disease. Now unable to speak, she handed Dr Lewis a note she’d typed:

  Were I to reach a state of obvious misery and incapacity, leaving me wholly dependent on medication and the kindness of friends and relatives, I wish you to take no extreme measures to keep me alive.

  Deeply offended, Dr Lewis declared, ‘That would be a breach of my ETHICS, Catherine. I’m a good doctor! I passed all my EXAMS.’ (He was always talking about those exams.)

  MATTHEW, another patient with the same disease, begged Dr Lewis to keep him ALIVE, if only for a few months, so that he could finish a book he was writing on the Special Relationship between Britain and America.

  ‘Of all the hare-brained schemes!’ Dr Lewis said to him. ‘People are always writing books! I can’t spend all my time trying to keep them alive. Face it, Matthew, you’re DYING. You have a FATAL DISEASE. Death is part of life. There’s no getting around it!’ By now, Dr Lewis was violently SHAKING the guy in his wheelchair. The little front wheels were spinning! It had been a long day.

  He must have shaken him TOO MUCH. Matthew developed pneumonia. It could have been cured with antibiotics, if they had been administered quickly enough. Matthew’s wife kept calling the surgery all morning, but because Dr Lewis was ‘busy with the LIVING’, he didn’t come until the afternoon. By then, Matthew was dying. Dr Lewis was caught a little by surprise at this, and hurriedly called an ambulance, but it was too late: FOUR HOURS too late.

  So the world never got to hear Matthew’s inside knowledge of the chilling hold America has over Britain that results in Britain going along with every half-assed scheme of world domination America comes up with, the old SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP that would lead in the next few years to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people (including IAN, incidentally). But Dr Lewis felt VINDICATED: Matthew did have a fatal illness. His death had proved it!

  Another of Dr Lewis’s more desperate patients was PAUL, who’d been on a RESPIRATOR for twenty years, after being paralysed from the neck down in a motorbike accident. For many years he’d wanted to die. He was taken care of by his old da, who now had cancer and only one leg. Dr Lewis dropped in on them every once in a while.

  ‘What can I do for you today, Paul?’ he would say, as he burned his tongue on one of their boiling hot cups of tea.

  ‘Switch the respirator off,’ pleaded Paul.

  ‘Oh, you don’t really want me to do that, Paul. What would your father do without you?’

  ‘It’s KILLING him, having to take care of me!’

  Dr Lewis handed Paul some more painkillers and gave his father a nice pat on the back. Sometimes that’s all patients really NEED: a good pat on the back!

  Paul’s father died a few months later. Paul was deposited in a nursing home where no one talked to him for weeks at a time. Eventually a cleaner accidentally turned his respirator off while hoovering the room, and that was the end of Paul.

  ANGIE, the local postmistress, idly remarked one day to Dr Lewis, while getting him his Child Benefit money and a bag of sweeties (for HIMSELF, not his kids!), that she’d like as pain-free a death as possible. He told her to make an appointment. So a week or two later Angie appeared in the surgery. Dr Lewis had her lie on the couch and injected her with a plentiful amount of lidocaine. Then he pulled a curtain and left her to DIE, while he saw other patients!

  At the end of the day he phoned Angie’s niece, SYLVIE, and told her to arrange for an undertaker because Angie had ‘PEGGED OUT’ in the consulting room. Sylvie burst into tears and, in her confusion, started to babble about how she wasn’t really Angie’s NIECE but her GRAND-NIECE.

  ‘I haven’t got all day, Sylvie. Busy doctor, you know. Get a grip on yourself,’ he sighed. ‘Just tell me what you’d like me to put on the death certificate as the cause of death.’

  Perplexed, Sylvie replied, ‘Well, whatever she DIED of, I suppose!’

  ‘OK!’ Dr Lewis said cheerfully and hung up. His little joke.

  PURE VAUDEVILLE.

  Roger Lewis’s Body

  As a child he tortured goldfish from a fair, threw them on the ground to watch them
squirm. But bones grow, a boy’s bones. They MUST. Soon to handle the stretch to vagina, mortgage, taxman, grave.

  In a sunny room at university he quickly climbed out of his clothes. His first love! Their paths crossed, criss-crossed, wound round. He has loved no one since.

  He’s proud of his long legs, neat hips, blond locks, grey eyes, cleft chin. Dr Lewis is well aware of the importance of his chin cleft to the VILLAGE. He shaves his sideburns so as to give EMPHASIS to his chin cleft, shaves them into POINTS that point at his CHIN CLEFT. He spends most of his TIME trimming those things! When not seeing patients or reading a magazine on exotic foreign travel, he’s ploughing the field of his face.

  The cleft in his chin has ECHOES elsewhere. You can’t look at it without thinking of the groove between his BALLS, the crease down the middle of his six-pack stomach, his ass crack and the ridged and bumpy path of his spine. Taken together, these indentations are like an invitation to slice the guy IN HALF, by cutting along the dotted line.

  People often describe the scrotum as outside the body, but it’s not. If it was, you’d LOSE it! The scrotum is no more OUTSIDE THE BODY than an EAR is. Dr Lewis’s scrotum is as firmly attached to him as anyone’s is, and he (rightly) has no fear of losing it. But such fearlessness is a DENIAL of how soft and vulnerable the body really is. Men LIKE to deny this! Surfing, skate-boarding, sky-diving, hunting, mountain-climbing, drinking, driving and IN WAR, they fall for their own delusion of TAUTNESS. They seem to think the body is maintained through sheer will-power. Yet they die like everyone else when the planes fall and the bombs fly! Hell, they die falling off ladders fixing a LIGHT BULB. Mere flesh and blood after all, and mortal.

  At a distant unisex salon Roger gets his highlights done. A blow-job from the sauna below. The mountains he’s climbed for the sake of those hardened thighs! But does he KNOW what a ridiculous figure he is as he parades up and down the only real street in this rural backwater of his, hoping to be noticed by the GOILS? (No.)

  His method of picking his nose, and blowing it, is unpleasant. But everybody, even ROGER LEWIS, has the right to handle his own body his own way. We’re all at the MERCY of our bodies. We think we have free will but GLANDS pretty much tell us what to do. The mind is just one PIECE of the body. There’s a lot of stuff we do WITHOUT thinking: breathe, swallow, play the piano, jerk away from HOT things. Men DUMP THEIR WIVES without thinking (Roger had). It’s a sort of REFLEX ACTION.