Doctors & Nurses

by Lucy Ellmann

  The whole point of weddings is to INSULT everybody, the bride, the bride’s father, the ushers, the flower girls, the organist, the guests, even MENDELSSOHN: weddings make everyone feel like CRAP. Brides by the score are driven DEMENTED organising these things! You see them hanging around street corners in HORNS and ANTENNAE, and T-shirts that say ‘I’M A SLAG’. Even weddings that don’t HAPPEN take their toll – you still have to CANCEL everything you ordered (cake, flowers, church, priest, priestess, guru, ORGANIST, bikini wax, honeymoon) before the traumatic decizh was made.

  The TREES that have vanished to produce the wedding INVITES and RSVPs and THANK-YOU notes that brides and their mothers spend so many argumentative evenings designing, addressing, stamping and mailing! The MONEY, that would have come in so handy for the MARRIAGE, or the DIVORCE, that’s poured instead into feeding a laconic horde CHICKEN ROULADE and MELON. The reunions – so needless! – of friend and foe. The RINGS and things. The carefully constructed CHARACTERLESSNESS of it all, the CONFORMISM. Why does it have to be so Mrs BEETONISH? The show, the sham, the shame, and all for WHAT? So that the guests can buy cooking utensils at John Lewis and rent Edwardian outfits and dance Highland reels and devote AN ENTIRE DAY AND NIGHT to making sure two dopes get hitched? So the bride’s father can hand her over to some poor schmuck to FUCK? How revolting. You hate a world in which such things HAPPEN. You hate YOURSELF. (You’re supposed to.)

  Dr Lewis wanted the WORKS. He wanted a church wedding and he wanted all his patients to come and he wanted his favourite hymns sung and sung LOUD. He interviewed three different live bands and hired TWO, the second as back-up in case the first one went quiet. He lined up a photographer who had a cheap deal going on fake-leather photo albums. He ordered a three-tiered wedding cake with circular pillars that looked like a Pompeiian villa primed to COLLAPSE under the weight of Dr Lewis’s demands. He even persuaded Jen to get fitted for a wedding dress which, through complicated corsetry, was two-tiered and gave her a WAIST. The petticoats were manifold. She looked like a meringue.

  Jen’s only requirement was that the wedding should be SOON. She didn’t think she could handle a long ENGAGEMENT, which (she assumed) would feel like an interminable DATE. Jen had never been on a date during which she didn’t wish she was home eating ice cream instead (it always seemed such a PALAVER before the FUCKING could begin). She was already in a state of HIGH ALERT, convinced she would LOSE Roger at any moment! She was WRITHING with uncertainty about him. Either he would go off her because she was unable to LOVE HERSELF enough, or he’d be stolen by some envious creep in the neighbourhood. Jen regarded every other woman now with the deepest suspicion, even Francine. ESPECIALLY Francine!

  Francine’s behaviour since the announcement of their INTENTIONS had been noticeably erratic. She was often absent from her post, the cups of TEA stopped coming, and she seemed to have embarked on a FRENZY of make-overs! What TV show was she WATCHING? Her hair kept changing colour, size and shape: sometimes angular, sometimes TRIANGULAR, sometimes cuboid, sometimes spiralling out of control! BOTOX too seemed to have a role in her transformations – there were days when Francine’s forehead was so smooth she couldn’t even look peeved with PATIENTS.

  She was so CHAMELEONIC! Jen suspected that it was all a ploy to STEAL ROGER, once Francine managed to zero in on the right look. But why now? Why hadn’t Francine made a pass YEARS AGO if she was after him? Now it was JEN’S turn!

  Jen’s extreme state of engagement-anxiety was alleviated NOT by taking out wedding insurance, but by anaesthetising herself with WEDDING FOOD. The caterers kept sending samples of chicken roulade and devilled eggs to try. And there were a number of cheap champagnes also – Jen was somehow supposed to decide which was the best. So she burped, she barfed, she ballooned (putting the old wedding dress idea in jeopardy), and she blamed Roger daily for not HELPING more.

  She had no one to invite. But in a drunken moment she defiantly mailed a few leftover invitations to both her brother and Urma Thurb. She expected no reply – but they were coming! Urma Thurb had even volunteered to be the matron of honour! After her years in the hospital, Urma Thurb was no longer touchy about the word ‘MATRON’ (she was alone in this).

  Urma Thurb was PLEASED for Jen. She had never expected anything to go RIGHT for her. She had been worrying about the girl ever since their days on the Children’s Ward together, when so many inexplicable EMERGENCIES had erupted during Jen’s shifts: monitors turned themselves off so that kids died without warning, the keys to the insulin fridge and drugs cabinet kept going missing, and the Crash Team was always being called to assist with BRAIN DEATHS or HEART ATTACKS, in children who’d only come in to have their TONSILS out!

  Urma Thurb had of course been impressed by Jen’s sangfroid, though Jen’s indifference to her patients sometimes seemed a bit EXTREME, even in a NURSE. But who cares about a bunch of KIDS anyway? Plenty more where they came from, an endless supply in fact (as an exasperated Urma Thurb had often remarked to Jen when they faced yet another bed shortage).

  Urma Thurb would be sorry to leave TONY behind (he couldn’t accompany her to the wedding, he was in the middle of rewiring the Liver and Intestinal Diseases Department), and their THREE-IN-A-BED SEX SESSIONS, which he organised so well. Urma Thurb never had to TALK to the other girl – she would just arrive at the beginning and disappear before dawn. Tony was so good at CHOREOGRAPHING the thing too, humping one while licking the other, then ARSY-VERSY!

  Afterwards, they would all lie in a ROW between each other’s legs, like ROWERS, Urma Thurb usually at the BOTTOM, Tony sandwiched in between, and the girl at the HELM, smoking a cigarette. At such times Urma Thurb sometimes felt crushed, CRUSHED – but it was worth it.

  The Wedding-Eve Supper

  So, after reluctantly bidding farewell to her hard-working hubby, Urma Thurb took a train to Jen’s rural backwater, and now sat mute in the back of Roger’s Jag with Jen beside her. Jen’s brother Nicky was in the front seat, admiring Roger’s upholstery. They were all on their way to the WEDDING-EVE SUPPER at a local fish restaurant that was supposed to be good.

  Unfortunately, they ordered PAELLA, which took FORTY-FIVE MINUTES to come and was NOT good. The rice was still hard, the whole thing was covered with pickled squid bits and KERNELS of salmon (?) dry as Grape Nuts, and it tasted OFF. They had ordered a pile of PAST-IT PAELLA! (But what do WEDDING GUESTS care about food? These are people willing to eat MELON-ON-STICKS with THREE HUNDRED GOOPS they don’t know!)

  The long wait for the paella gave Nicky a chance to exchange many a WISECRACK with Roger over medical matters – Nicky had always been a SUCKER for doctors. (They liked him too!) He also found time to mock, scold and GRILL Jen on everything from her paltry INCOME to her uselessness on the CLARINET.

  As children, when not eating Grape Nuts (their father’s favourite cereal), they had both been forced to play the clarinet, all because their father believed the clarinet’s REPERTOIRE was superior to any other instrument’s. But Jen never got anywhere near the clarinet’s REPERTOIRE: she could barely blow a note! She had MOUTH ULCERS the whole time, brought on by the REEDS or, psychosomatically, by her reluctance to PLAY. She thought she was going to ASPHYXIATE on that thing! Her clarinet misery only ended when her kind clarinet teacher told her father that Jen was too YOUNG to play the clarinet: she didn’t have the LUNG CAPACITY. You have to be at least ELEVEN, he declared. (This didn’t explain why NICKY had been playing the clarinet with APLOMB since the age of SIX.)

  WHILE he grilled Jen, Nicky kept looking over her head to see who else was in the restaurant, CRANING his neck as if someone more interesting might come along any minute. Jen had forgotten what it was like to be with Nicky. Urma Thurb was no help – she was missing Tony and didn’t say much. Roger was kept happy by all Nicky’s flattery and seemed to think everything was going very well! But Jen was disappointed. It was months since she’d seen either of these people, and there seemed to be so little to SAY. She wasn’t just angry, she was BORED.
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  After tasting the paella, Jen ordered a big bowl of CHIPS to have on the side, despite a disapproving glance from Nicky (still trying to STARVE her). Now he launched into her TEENAGE YEARS: fat as a house, draped in sacklike clothing, eating Grape Nuts and smoking dope in the middle of the day behind closed curtains and failing her O levels. But isn’t that what MOST people’s teenage years are like? The real mistake was in letting Nicky pay for the wedding-eve supper – he seemed to think it entitled him to disclose every mortifying detail of Jen’s past he could remember. Next he’d be telling them how Jen’s NIGHTIE rose up once when they were small and Nicky saw her TINKLER and LAUGHED AND LAUGHED. Jen decided to pre-empt this by asking Nicky where her half of the dough was on the FLAT SALE.

  ‘The flat sale, huh?! There wouldn’t have BEEN a sale if I’d left it up to you!’ cried Nicky. ‘You and your TUBA BAND.’ And Nicky went on to tell Roger and Urma Thurb all about Jen’s attempt to sabotage the transaction, until he was almost hysterical with glee! DRUNK, Jen thought. She wanted to SLAP him.

  Then Nicky almost denied them all DESSERT! He’d forgotten all ABOUT dessert! He was about to get the BILL before they’d HAD any! When Jen pointed this out, he relented and graciously asked Jen, as the MATRIARCH OF THE FAMILY, what she wanted for dessert. She said ICE CREAM. Nicky ordered one piece of CHEESECAKE for them all to share! How rude. Nicky KNEW Jen hated cheesecake. Just because Nicky was paying, and NICKY liked cheesecake, didn’t mean they ALL had to eat cheesecake, or watch NICKY eating cheesecake, at the WEDDING-EVE SUPPER.

  Jen went to the loo and SEETHED. She didn’t care if Nicky used this as an opportunity to talk about her behind her back, or even as an opportunity to SNOG ROGER, as he’d clearly wanted to do all evening. Jen just wanted to be ALONE. Fuck the wedding, the presents, the JOB, the fiancé, Urma Thurb’s discomfort. Fuck ICE CREAM.

  She hadn’t been sleeping well. There had been weird scufflings in the night, and more of that silly SQUAWKING. It filled Jen with foreboding. Maybe this whole wedding thing was a SET-UP for the biggest humiliation of her life: absent groom, sneering guests, Mendelssohn delays and whalebone insurrection.

  There was nothing to look at in the loo except the usual anti-menstruation sign. Why is there a warning in every public toilet forbidding the disposal of menstrual products down the loo? SURE, shit, vomit, drugs, condoms, stillborn babies, secret documents, weapons of mass destruction, even whole plates of SPAGHETTI are FINE, but a TAMPON, or just the WRAPPER off a tampon? NO. For that you need a serious-looking MEDICAL BAG and an INCINERATOR – as if menstruation’s some kind of communicable DISEASE. They’ve had HUNDREDS OF YEARS to come up with a toilet capable of handling this stuff but there’s no will to do it! Much more fun to watch women squirm with guilt and shame. The cunt requires CONSTANT APOLOGY.

  No ropes or blindfolds that night! After dropping Nicky and Urma Thurb off at their B & B, Roger went straight upstairs in demure recognition of the wedding eve. Jen thought of having a dip in the JACUZZI but there was a dark RING around it that she hadn’t left there herself. Somebody else must have been in her flat that evening, enjoying JEN’S JACUZZI! So she gave it a miss and went to bed. She dreamt that she and Urma Thurb ate so many meringues they EXPLODED, which was a great relief.

  Jen was woken by squawking outside, and the sound of Roger attempting to quieten somebody. Her fiancé was IN PERIL. Jen leapt out of bed, rushed up the basement steps, and threw open the front door. She could see Roger struggling in the car-park with some WOMAN.

  ‘What’s happening, Roger?’ Jen called out from the front step.

  Roger and the woman froze. ‘Don’t worry, darling,’ he called back. ‘Go to bed.’

  ‘But don’t you need some help?’ asked Jen.

  ‘No, I can handle it, thanks.’

  So Jen went back to bed, wondering if the woman outside was the one who had squawked so often from some secret realm of the house and scrabbled in the gravel outside her windows night after night and maybe even used her JACUZZI. To sum up, had that duck been paddling in her pond?

  The Wedding Itself

  Urma Thurb arrived first thing to help Jen into her wedding dress. It had been hanging for three days on the door of Jen’s office, so Jen was a little worried that it might smell of blood, guts and FORMALDEHYDE, but as soon as they opened the door they realised things were even worse: there were swathes of white satin and TULLE all over the floor! It looked like it had SNOWED in there.

  Jen snatched the dress off the hook and examined it under the desk lamp. The OUTER layers were fine; but inside, the many petticoats had been viciously, violently, angrily TORN and shredded, not just the cotton and satin flounces but the really stiff icky ITCHY whorls of tulle netting that were supposed to make the dress stick out even more than it naturally WOULD with JEN in it. It’s a pity we ever became tulle-users.

  ‘What is going on here?’ asked Urma Thurb in a tone Jen knew well from the old days: it was the tone Urma Thurb had used when Jen forgot to bring her WHISKY.

  ‘How do I know?’ Jen said defensively. ‘It was OK yesterday!’ Dangling in the bodice were a pair of sewing scissors given to her a few days before by a patient who couldn’t make it to the wedding (too SICK). Or NAIL scissors. Jen hadn’t been too sure WHAT kind of scissors they were (what did Jen know about SEWING?). Now she knew they were wedding-shredding scissors! Only an hour to go and the dress was a MESS!

  There was no time to DWELL on such matters however. It was still wearable, if less puffy than planned, and it was Jen’s duty to put it on. She struggled into the thing from below, like a POTHOLER. When she reached AIR and LIGHT again, Urma Thurb laced her up, creating that surprising WAIST. Then Jen clambered up on to her swivel chair and let Urma Thurb TWIRL her in order to affix a red cummerbund to Jen’s MIDRIFF, making Jen look like TWO meringues, with JAM squidging out in between. The cummerbund was a souvenir of URMA THURB’S wedding: a piece of the red carpet she and Tony had walked along.

  NICKY turned up in the middle of this operation. It sent him into a fit of GIGGLES. He called her ‘the meringue of the family’! Dizzy from the twirling, Jen hardly knew what was happening when Nicky then yanked her cloud of frizz down and Urma Thurb pinned on the tiara. Jen felt like a lamb for the slaughter. She felt like an IDIOT. Everything hurt.

  So they were all set! Something borrowed, something blue. They were ALL feeling a little blue, as they plodded to the horse and carriage: Jen was SCARED, Urma Thurb was missing her hubby, and Nicky had a hangover (they were also irritable from ENVY and PIQUE, like everybody else at a wedding).

  Who wants to know anything about their doctor’s LOVE LIFE? It’s like having to think about your PARENTS fucking. Nonetheless, most of Dr Lewis’s patients (the ones that were still ALIVE) were dutifully milling about the church. Martha was in the FRONT ROW, helplessly stirred by the organ. Dotted around elsewhere were Trevor, Catherine, Frieda, Jack, John, Janet, Sam, Sylvie, Marvin (without MAY), and others. (But no Virginia.) Francine, wearing a Jackie Onassis PURPLE number mit pillbox hat, was herding Dr Lewis’s kids around the churchyard like little DUCKLINGS, searching for children’s tombstones.

  Dr Lewis circulated happily amongst his guests, quizzing them on ecclesiastical architecture and hymns until they were all eager for him to shut up and get married! But the women softened when he picked up their BABIES. What is it about the sight of a grown man holding a baby – of his OWN SPECIES – that moves people so? What is so REMARKABLE? Do they expect him to EAT it? We’re not lions!

  Finally, Jen and Roger stood at the altar, with Nicky all geared up to GIVE JEN AWAY. The ceremony was long and convoluted. Roger had opted for the Latin Mass, Communion wafers, Bath Olivers and Jammy Dodgers. He exhausted everyone with his hymn choices and hymn MIX-UPS. They stood, they knelt, they sat down, stood again, knelt, sat down by accident, blushed, tipped OVER, collected themselves, sang, knelt, prayed, stood and sat. It began to feel like THE END OF THE WORLD.

  Finally the priest start
ed winding things up by asking if there were any objections to this match. If only he’d asked sooner – because there WERE!!! All those hymns were a big waste of time! A muffled sound was heard coming from the back of the church and a dark, wet, hairy, slimy purplish thing like a walking VULVA made her way slowly up the aisle. What base cunt was this? Bleeding, drooling, stinking, swelling – and yet the creature somehow commanded RESPECT.

  When she reached the altar, she twisted round towards Dr Lewis and said, ‘He can’t get MARRIED – he’s already married to ME!’ And then she started to CACKLE, a laugh very similar to a SQUAWK. In spite of the VEIL which (as always) clouded her vision, Jen now saw that the interloper was none other than:

  FRANCINE!!!

  Jen looked over at Roger, who was OVER-QUIRKING. Jen had never SEEN such quirking! This was turning into a real quirking EMERGENCY. Then she fainted, an AVALANCHE of squashed tulle and taffeta and crêpe and lace and satin and DIADEMS that covered the stone floor. There were people there, INSANE PEOPLE, who hoped Jen would do a SOMERSAULT, but they were disappointed. Her humiliation was restricted to lying like a flayed SHEEP, spread across the aisle, until fourteen or fifteen of the wedding guests recalled they had medical experience and rushed up to conduct First Aid on her.

  Once she had been thoroughly resuscitated at least four times, Jen instinctively reached for her TIARA, as you do, but it was gone. Her WAIST was going too – some of the stays must have snapped. Jen desperately searched the crowd for Nicky and Urma Thurb, her ATTENDANTS, but they were nowhere to be seen! Probably laughing behind her back somewhere.

  Roger was signalling her to get up. As always, his aloofness galvanised her. Jen stood. Roger grabbed her hand and beckoned the others to join them.

  ‘You would not begrudge me this woman if you knew how I live!’ said he, as he led a parade of colleagues and patients past the failing post office, the failing café, the failing fish shop, the failing school, the chemist’s shop, the sweetie shop, the petrol station, the antique shop and various pubs, to the surgery. (They picked up a few more locals on the way.)