Doctors & Nurses

by Lucy Ellmann

  It was his proximity in the building! Jen’s senses were continually stirred by the sound of Dr Lewis moving around in the surgery, or in his flat upstairs. She listened out for his every BOWEL movement (the loo was right next to her office). She waited for the ring of instruments clattering to the floor of the consulting room, giving her an excuse to rush in and STERILISE stuff. She listened admiringly through the walls to the wails of his patients – Dr Lewis was not one to shirk or shrink from giving patients BAD NEWS. He was a doctor to his very bones: his words cut through people like a SCALPEL.

  Jen had not intended to fall for another doctor. That OSTEOPATH at the hospital had fucked her like he was exploring OCEAN DEPTHS, fucked her hours at a time, his impassive face as blurry as the ultrasound images he recorded of their encounters. He’d driven Jen CRAZY with all that fucking, as crazy as she might have been if he hadn’t fucked her AT ALL: the effect is roughly the same. It was a great relief to Jen when he just DISAPPEARED from the hospital one day, leaving his jacket on the back of a chair in his office, never to be seen again! (He was later found to have died HILL-WALKING in a thin shirt and work shoes – the urge to HIKE must have come upon him very suddenly.)

  Despite her training (she had completed a six-week course on Infatuation) and her resolutions, but in accordance with doctor–nurse NOVELETTES, Jen had embarked on some serious hankering. She had always been a bit of a hankerer. She hankered for her next meal as soon as the last one was over! She hankered for PETS and PENTHOUSES and an adequate PENSION. She had hankered her whole life to have her MOTHER back. She hankered just to be a PART of things. Hankered and hankered, and hankered most of all for all the hankering to be OVER. Her feelings for Dr Lewis were quite unlike NAPOLEON’S for Josephine (Napoleon, according to JOSEPHINE, was easily QUELLED) – Jen’s hankering was made of sturdier stuff.

  They were now on first-name terms (though Jen still felt UNEASY about his name, especially the R in it). She liked the way his eyebrow quirked just before he told her to do something. She liked his trim waist and hips, his long legs, cleft chin, and his JAG. Jen LUSTED for his Jag. Sometimes Woger CAUGHT Jen thinking about his Jag. He pretended not to notice she was thinking about his Jag, but the mere possibility that he might THINK she was thinking about his Jag made Jen UNCOMFORTABLE thinking about his Jag in case he thought she thought about it TOO MUCH. So instead she tried to think about HIS TAUTNESS in contrast to HER SOFTNESS (they were both extreme examples of their own body types).

  But he was so ALOOF. He had clearly been HURT by some woman in the past! Jen had deduced this from the way he YOWLED in pain one day when she accidentally stepped on his foot. A less FRAGILE man might have smiled bravely and tried to FORGET the incident. But Woger seemed curiously OFFENDED. The usual indignities of life were UNENDURABLE for Woger. He had suffered, was STILL suffering, right down to his TOES.

  One morning, Dr Lewis knocked on Jen’s door and asked her what she was doing for LUNCH. Jen said she didn’t know. The door shut. Jen sat there waiting for him to return. Maybe he would take her somewhere in his Jag! Maybe they would go to a cosy country PUB, as in doctor–nurse novelettes, and eat STEAK PIE and down a few pints and get a bit frisky in the back seat before returning to work (DUTY IS ALL).

  But he never came back! The whole building went quiet, as it always did at lunchtime. Everything went still, RIGID. So did Jen! What finally roused her was her inability to BREATHE – she needed AIR! Gasping, she groped her way out into the corridor (twenty-three). Catching sight of the staircase, she suddenly hankered to be on the roof! Only there would she be able to breathe …

  Jen Surveys Her Domain

  Plodding and panting up the stairs, Jen tiresomely aggrandises her sitch, comparing herself to a SLAVE, a CONVICT, a REVOLUTIONARY! Like Charlotte Brontë, Jen expresses her sense of injustice through HYPERBOLE, turning the slightest slight into a VIOLATION, the gentlest rebuke into a CURSE. It’s a system!

  Jen has lost sight of the true disappointments in life (they would overwhelm her), burying them beneath a MONOLITH of tiny ones she’s blown up out of all proportion. She is daily burdened by bullies, strangers and MISCREANTS (patients). This is a woman who thinks in terms of TRAGEDY and TRIUMPH if she fails to extract money from a cash machine, or succeeds! This is a woman who feels browbeaten and disenfranchised if she runs out of BOG ROLL.

  There is something absurd, is there not, in thinking in terms of LIBERATION just because you need some AIR? Something silly about constantly imagining yourself to be of intense interest to the POLICE, or to EXECUTIONERS. But like Brontë’s, Jen’s life has been macabre, and it has made her melodramatic. She has attempted to resign herself to her utter WORTHLESSNESS. But out of the fantasy of total rejection rises the phoenix of HEROIC RESCUE: Dr Lewis is Jen’s designated Hero. As she stumbles past his door therefore she vows to subjugate herself to his will – her EMPEROR – if he will only free her from her CHAINS (and give her Wednesday afternoons off).

  At the top of the stairs she unlocks a little door and steps out on to a very narrow balcony. She is instantly almost swept off it by the wind! But at least she can BREATHE. Jen surveys her domain. There’s a huge chasm opposite the surgery, a purplish vulval VOID, surrounded by dark forested bluffs. She’s noticed the local landscape is HILLY, but was unaware until now of such a dramatic DEPRESSION.

  Cars zoom past below as she catches her breath. In one of them is a man who looks a bit like Jen’s BROTHER. It is NOT her brother, but just the thought that it MIGHT be her brother is enough to revive Jen’s sense of PERSECUTION.

  People concentrate too much on PARENTS as the main influence on children. But what about a big bossy brother or sister who’s always stealing your STUFF? Round and round you trail after this person who secretly DESPISES you and mourns those happy days prior to your existence. Nicky told Jen WHAT to do, and WHEN (never WHY), told her everything she ever knew or thought, told her she was ugly, mocked her body, mocked Jen’s TENDERNESS too, mocked it until he KNOCKED it out of her; he criticised, deflated and defeated Jen at every opportunity.

  For a time Jen believed there must be some LAW entitling older siblings to appropriate anything belonging to younger ones. Clothes, toys – even Jen’s FOOD was never her own but subject to being swapped or SWIPED at any moment. All the dull TEDDIES given to motherless children were torn from Jen’s arms and torn LIMB from LIMB by Nicky, yet Jen stuck to Nicky as if she too wanted to be torn limb from limb! All because Nicky knew how to steal from women’s handbags, roll down hills without getting hurt, sleep outside in a tent, grate carrots, and rush little sisters to hospital when they got their stupid fingers caught in car doors (he had his MATERNAL side).

  Nicky was Jen’s BLUEPRINT for all future relationships, her repetitive search for love amongst SUPERIOR TYPES who were actually bent on her DESTRUCTION: all the SMART ALECS, ACHIEVERS, DECEIVERS, patronisers, bosses, ward sisters, RECEPTIONISTAS and misleading MOTHER FIGURES that badmouth her BEHIND HER BACK and always want to KILL her in the end.

  She has never quite recovered from a sorry little incident at school. She and her supposed friends had had a big argument, and Jen had run off to the Girls’ Loo to STEW. Her friends came in a few minutes later, unaware that she was there. Jen quickly hid in one of the booths, standing on top of a TOILET, like a JERK, so they wouldn’t see her. It worked! From this precarious vantage point, Jen was able to spy on her friends and listen while they BITCHED about her:

  ‘Well, I hate her!’

  ‘So do I.’

  ‘She thinks she’s so special.’

  ‘Teacher’s pet.’

  ‘She’s ugly!’

  ‘And stupid.’

  ‘And FAT.’

  ‘Did you ever see her in a swimsuit?’

  ‘Ugh, no!’

  ‘It’s DISGUSTING!’

  And so it went, for FIVE MINUTES. Jen hardly dared breathe, and it was tricky getting OFF the loo after they’d left, she was so STIFF. She’s had no great faith in frie
ndship since, though she can still be duped by the HEROIC and MARVELLOUS.

  For years Jen has pursued such people, in the hope that somehow their glory will wash off on HER, and that she will thereby become WORTHY of them. But most of these people don’t even notice Jen EXISTS! She is distant, they assume unfriendly when in fact she is merely suffering from AWE. She liked Urma Thurb so much she wanted to jump up on her lap sometimes, lick her all over and kiss her on the MOUTH, like some kind of playful, passionate and spontaneous DOG. But the betrayals have mounted up, making Jen the stinky, slinky, doomed and reviled creature she is today, scuttling along her widow’s walk like LONDONERS scuttled in their overcoats after the war. You see them in photographs, hollow and damaged, COLD – but still able to SHOP, read newspapers, PROCREATE. People carry on. It means nothing but they do. They survive stuff and proceed. Doesn’t mean they’re HAPPY.

  Jen originally went into nursing to get away from Nicky, who’d done DENTISTRY. She didn’t think their careers could possibly collide but she was WRONG. Doctors at the hospital were always coming up to her and asking if she was related to NICKY, the ORTHODONTIST, and if so, could they have his PHONE NUMBER. He was much in demand. Jen told them Nicky was just a DENTIST, but it made no difference! That was one of the reasons Jen applied for the RURAL-BACKWATER job – not much call for GOOD TEETH in a dump like this.

  Jen paces to and fro on her widow’s walk, working up her usual head of STEAM about her brother. She’s particularly irked at the moment by Nicky’s refusal to hand over Jen’s share of the MONEY from the sale of the family flat, their MUTUALLY OWNED property. Nicky INSISTED on selling it and now he isn’t handing over the dough. He still can’t admit I EXIST. He thinks HE gets EVERYTHING.

  Jen tried to scupper the sale! The day the viewings were meant to start, she crept out at dawn and pinned a notice to the front door:

  DUE TO THE MURDER

  AND ONGOING POLICE

  INVESTIGATION, TUBA—

  BAND PRACTICE WILL

  TEMPORARILY BE HELD

  IN FLAT DIRECTLY

  BELOW, MONDAYS,

  WEDNESDAYS & FRIDAYS.

  DAILY REHEARSALS TO

  RESUME NEXT MONTH,

  ALL BEING WELL.

  CHEERS!

  (Jen had always wanted to play the tuba!)

  Nicky couldn’t understand why no one was coming to see the place until, in exasperation, he flung open the front door and found a HAGGARD-LOOKING COUPLE out on the landing, peering at the SIGN. With great aplomb, Nicky tore the notice off, guffawing merrily, and managed to steer the blasted pair inside. So now HAGGARD-LOOKING PEOPLE snooze in Jen’s old bedroom (it was the biggest – and Jen had grown to fill it) while JEN penuriously poultices the impetigo of the local peasantry –

  Her train of thought is abruptly halted by a loud QUACK. It sounds like a homicidal CROW, or GOOSE, or maybe a COW (Jen’s not too up on her animal noises). She hears it again and spins round, nearly falling off her perch. What’s SQUAWKING? Then she realises it’s coming from INSIDE the house, and it’s LAUGHTER. Somebody’s LAUGHING at her! Can it be Dr LEWIS, chortling over Jen’s outrage at not being taken out to lunch?!

  Jen doesn’t like being LAUGHED AT, any more than she likes people talking about her BEHIND HER BACK. Even when people talk KINDLY about her – as Urma Thurb often did during shift changes and weekly managerial meetings – the mere THOUGHT of being talked about makes Jen CRY. Mortified and furious now, INFLATED by fury, Jen finds it quite hard to squash herself back through the little door. The laughter, if it can really be CALLED that, seems to be coming from Dr Lewis’s flat, as Jen tiptoes past. Her pace accelerates as she rushes down the stairs, a whirling fury BALL, to her dungeon. Slamming the door behind her, she falls down the steep steps in the dark. She HOPES she’s sustained a serious injury, necessitating Dr Lewis’s immediate assistance – but she has merely BRUISED herself all over, and has to CRAWL into the kitchen to microwave herself some PIZZAS, which she washes down with lots of LOW-CAL WHITE WINE, thinking as ever about Nicky’s SCORN for her occasional dieting efforts (such as dry white wine). Then she lugs herself like a wounded ANIMAL, into her bedroom, and flops on the bed.

  Above her, hanging on the wall, are dozens of HANDBAGS, bulging like SKIN CELLS under a microscope. Each a different size, colour, texture. Such VARIETY: this must be what MEN want, Jen thinks, THIS is what they require of women: they want a different size, colour, texture, personality, a different PERSON, every day! What are the chances she’ll ever hit the day Woger wants HER?

  She weeps until her den looks as red to her as a fox’s lair and Jen herself is MAROON, marooned there on damp blankets, nursing her full stomach and sore wrist, waiting for something GOOD to happen. She falls asleep at last and dreams about Dr Lewis, dreams he’s TINY! She watches as he gets into a tiny CAR and drives along the PAVEMENT, a dangerous thing to do when you’re that small.

  Pandora’s Boxes

  Yes, Jen had finally unpacked all those pesky BOXES. They weren’t full of clothes or books or HEIRLOOMS (the only thing Jen had inherited was her unfortunate ATTITUDE). Of course, she had the usual copy of Jane Eyre; also, an old Dionne Warwick tape. She had her fair share of PASTA pots and frying pans too, a few toiletries, towels, some colourful little rugs, nursing textbooks she had never read and never WOULD read, and a very small CACTUS which may or may not have been DEAD.

  But most of Jen’s boxes contained one item only: a handbag. Jen liked RETICULES. She even liked the WORD ‘reticule’ (she was alone in this). Her handbags had been packed resentfully and with care, their confinement excusable only on grounds of privacy. Jen’s handbags were not for everyone’s eyes!

  Women like things that OPEN. They like CONTAINERS. They like soft, rounded, glinting secret things with colourful folds suggestive of something PRECIOUS. Oh COME ON, they like anything resembling a CUNT. Men have their phallic ties, women their labial handbags.

  In the STONE AGE, women didn’t NEED handbags, not just because they didn’t have any money, keys, lipstick or cigarettes, but because they could show off their actual GENITALS. They were NAKED for chrissake! The pursed lips of their cunts were on display ALL DAY.

  Clothing, and being UPRIGHT, interfered with LORDOSIS and the easeful exhibition of female genitalia. Cunt SUBSTITUTES had to be found, cunt ADS. The cunt itself went into hiding! These have been the cunt’s WILDERNESS YEARS. How inconvenient then that WHOLE HUMAN BEINGS emerge from this void. One of the most absurd achievements of human civilisation has been to drain the cunt, the CUNT, of meaning. People are always draining things.

  Hence, the handbag. Worn on the arm, held in the hand, strapped over the shoulder, attached to the waist (the ‘fanny-pack’), or hung on the back in the form of a mini RUCK-SACK (displacing all sexuality to the rear), the handbag is an awkward thing to carry, prone to loss or theft. A POCKET might be more secure. But a pocket doesn’t convey a lifetime of one-night stands, disaffection, or your readiness for LOVE! For a handbag is not just a vehicle for transporting your makeup, your chequebook and SWEETIES. It’s an emblem of your VAGINA.

  Many believe handbags convey something of the actual CONTOURS and CHARACTERISTICS of their owners’ sexual anatomy! Yet many women remain unconscious of the expectations they raise with a nice plump soft jingly jungly rounded and ridged receptacle, that snaps open at the lightest touch. Nor do they seem aware of how easily desire may be NULLIFIED at the sight of a zippered waterproof leathern BOX, pockmarked with tiny CRATERS like inverted nipples (but they SHOULD be).

  Some handbags have openings you can’t get your HAND into. These are not happy handbags! Handbags want to be rooted through, manhandled, they want their bottoms searched, they want to be fondled, fingered and FILLED. No doubt about their ultimate aim: impregnation. Handbags crave contents.

  There are people who see words as COLOURS. These people are EXTREMELY TEDIOUS and never more so than when they’re talking about their FUCKING SYNAESTHESIA. What do they MEAN, green is the
colour of Wednesday? What the hell are they TALKING about, and why do we let them get AWAY with it? Jen didn’t see words as colours, I’m glad to report, but she did see women as HANDBAGS. Whenever she met a woman, she would study the woman’s handbag to assess her PERSONALITY. Hardassed rectangles of stiffened QUILTING for the heartless; round iridescent magnetic sacs for the hapless and helpless. Tiny shiny hand-held PODS for flighty ice maidens; galumphing CARPET-BAGS for the jilted and jaded, the faded, the chlamydia-invaded. Softies seek out handbags of feather, felt, silk or straw. Others more predatory choose alligator, leopard-print and pony pelt. (Poor ponies!) The monogamous favour BUCKLES.

  Nobody has HOBBIES any more, but handbags were Jen’s hobby. Sometimes she perhaps expected TOO MUCH of a bag! She still had one of her mother’s: navy-blue with a gold-chain handle. Jen had searched it for TRACES of her mother, of which there were none, apart from a half-used powder compact. In an inner pocket, there was a matching navy-blue leather-backed MIRROR, that Jen looked into once in a while to see if she could find her MOTHER. (WHAT? Wouldn’t you?)

  But much of her collection had been amassed by STEALING the handbags of old ladies at the hospital during difficult days on the Geriatric Ward. When Jen didn’t like somebody, she took the old duck’s handbag home and ABUSED it, voodoo-style, stabbing it with SCISSORS or SHITTING in it or twisting it into a tight unseemly BALL. (She NEEDED to do this, for her own sake and that of OTHERS, or rage might have OVERWHELMED her!)

  She never stole the handbag of a woman she ADMIRED. Instead, she would ASSIGN her a handbag from the pre-existing supply or, if necessary, BUY her a nice handbag (that the woman in question would sadly never see!). Into it, Jen would then tuck HONORIFIC OFFERINGS – perfume, ciggies, flowers, autumn leaves – and messages of praise (sometimes tempered by a few words of COMPLAINT or PERPLEXITY if the friendship wasn’t going too well). Every handbag Jen owned represented some imaginary friend or enemy or other.