Now, after a great deal of manipulation of the automated appointment system, Brian had managed to secure a face-to-face appointment with Dr Lumbogo. Brian had made the appointment using his professional title, Dr Beaver. He found that it often paid to flag his status pre-consultation. It put the bloody generalists in their place.
He sat in the waiting room reading a tattered copy of The Lancet. He was engrossed in a paper on the relative sizes of the male and female brain. There was reasonable evidence that men’s brains were ever so slightly larger. A female hand had written in the margin, ‘So, why can’t the big-brained bastards use a toilet brush?’
‘Twisted feminist,’ Brian muttered to himself.
An elderly Sikh tapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘Doctor? Your turn, it has come.’
For a split second Brian thought that the wise-looking Sikh was predicting his imminent death. Then he saw that the electronic sign on the wall above the reception area was flashing ‘Dr Bee’ in red.
He said to the man, ‘I don’t suppose you have this flashing-light nonsense in Pakistan?’
‘I don’t know,’ replied the turbaned one. ‘I have never been to Pakistan.’
Dr Lumbogo looked up briefly as Brian hurried through the door. ‘Dr Bee, please take a seat.’
‘I’m Dr Beaver,’ said Brian. ‘Your system has been -’
‘So, how can I help you?’
‘It’s my wife. She’s taken to her bed and says she intends to stay there for a year.’
‘Yes,’ said the doctor. ‘My colleague Dr Bridges has already seen your wife. The tests say she is in excellent health.’
‘I know nothing of this,’ said Brian. Are we talking about the same woman?’
‘Oh yes.” said Dr Lumbogo. ‘He found her to be of robust health and -’
Brian said, ‘But she’s not of sound mind, Doctor! She started to cook our evening meal with a bath towel wrapped around her! I bought her an apron every Christmas, so why…?’
Dr Lumbogo said, ‘Let us stop there, and examine this bath towel business more closely. Tell me, Dr Bee, when did this start?’
‘I first noticed it about a year ago.’
‘And do you remember, Dr Bee, what she was cooking?’
Brian thought. ‘I don’t know, it was something brown, bubbling in a pot.’
‘And the subsequent wearing of the bath towel? Do you remember the meals she was preparing?’
‘I’m almost sure they were some kind of Italian or Indian thing.’
Dr Lumbogo lurched across the desk towards Brian with his index finger extended, as though he were pointing a gun, and exclaimed, ‘Ha! Never salad.’
Brian said, ‘No, never salad.’
Dr Lumbogo laughed and said, ‘Your wife is afraid of the splashing, Dr Bee. Your aprons are inadequate for her needs.’ He lowered his voice dramatically. ‘I should not breach the laws of confidentiality, but my own mother makes our flat bread wearing an old flour sack. Women are mysterious creatures, Dr Bee.’
‘There are other things,’ said Brian. ‘She cries at the television news: earthquakes, foods, starving children, pensioners who’ve been beaten for their life savings. I came home from work one evening to find her sobbing over a house fire in Nottingham!’
‘There were fatalities?’ asked Dr Lumbogo.
‘Two,’ said Brian. ‘Kiddies. But the mother – single parent, of course – still had three left!’ Brian fought to control his tears. ‘She needs something chemical. Her emotions are up hill and down dale. The whole household is upside down. There’s nothing in the fridge, the laundry basket is chock-a-block, and she’s even been asking me to dispose of her body waste.’
Dr Lumbogo said, ‘You’re very agitated, Dr Bee.’
Brian began to cry. ‘She was always there, in the kitchen. Her food was so delicious. My mouth would water as soon as I got out of the car. The smell must have seeped out of the gaps in the front door.’ He took a tissue from the box that the doctor pushed towards him and mopped his eyes and nose.
The doctor waited for Brian to compose himself.
When he was calm again, he began to apologise. ‘I’m sorry I blubbed… I’m under a lot of strain at work. One of my colleagues has written a paper questioning the statistical validity of my work on Olympus Mons.’
Dr Lumbogo asked, ‘Dr Bee, have you taken Cipralex before?’ and reached for his prescription pad.
18
The district nurse, 42-year-old Jeanette Spears, had been very disapproving when Dr Lumbogo asked her to visit a healthy woman who wouldn’t get out of bed.
As she drove her little Fiat car towards the respectable district where Mrs Eva Beaver lived, small tears of self-pity misted her spectacles, which looked as though they had been dispensed by an optician sympathetic to the Nazi aesthetic. Nurse Spears did not allow herself feminine embellishment – there was nothing to soften the hard life she had chosen for herself. The thought of a healthy woman wallowing in bed made her sick, it really did.
Jeanette was up, showered, uniform on, bed made, lavatory Harpic’d, and downstairs by 7 a.m. Any later and she began to panic – but, sensibly, she kept brown paper bags in strategic places, and after a few inhalations and exhalations she was soon tickety-boo again.
Mrs Beaver was her last patient. It had been a difficult morning: Mr Kelly with the severely ulcerated legs had begged her for some stronger pain relief but, as she had told him time and time again, she could not give him morphine. There was a clear and present danger that he could become addicted.
Mr Kelly’s daughter had shouted, ‘Dad’s ninety-two!
Do you think he’s going to end up in a squat, injecting heroin into his fucking eyeballs?’
Jeanette had snapped her nursing bag shut and left the Kelly household without dressing his legs. She would not be sworn at, nor would she listen to a patient’s relatives telling her how to do her job.
She used fewer palliative care drugs than any other district nurse in the county. It was official. Written down. She was very proud of that fact. But she couldn’t help thinking that there ought to have been a ceremony with a plaque or cup handed to her by a VIP from the Regional Health Authority – after all, she must have saved them tens of thousands of pounds over the years.
She drew up outside Eva’s house and sat for a moment. She could tell a lot from the exterior of a patient’s home. It was always encouraging to see a flourishing hanging basket.
There was no hanging basket in Eva’s porch. However, there was a bird feeder with splodges of bird droppings underneath on the black and white tiled floor. There were unrinsed milk bottles on the step. Leaflets for pizza, curry and Chinese takeaways had been blown into the corners together with dead sycamore leaves. The coconut-fibre mat had not been shaken for some time. A terracotta plant saucer had been used as an ashtray.
To Nurse Spears’ disgust the front door was slightly open. She rubbed the brass doorknob with one of the antibacterial wipes she always carried in her pocket. She could hear male and female laughter coming from upstairs. She pushed the door open and went in. She climbed the stairs and headed towards the laughter. Nurse Spears could not remember the last time she had laughed aloud. The bedroom door was ajar, so she knocked and went straight in.
There was a glamorous woman in the bed, wearing a grey silk camisole and pale-pink lipstick. She was holding a bag of Thorntons Special Toffee. A younger man was sitting on the bed, chewing.
Jeanette announced, ‘I’m Jeanette Spears, I’m the community nurse. Dr Lumbogo asked me to call. You are Mrs Beaver?’
Eva nodded. She was trying to free a lump of toffee from a wisdom tooth with her tongue.
The man on the bed got to his feet. ‘I’m the window cleaner,’ he said.
Jeanette frowned. ‘I see no ladder, no bucket, no chamois leather.’