Sunday Whatever – Doctor Everywhere   by Geraint Jonathan

(Adapted from the prose-poem, Mademoiselle Bistouri, by Charles Baudelaire)

I knew him for a doctor right away. He wasn’t tall, and he was dressed in black, from top to toe. A gentleman and a doctor. On a night visit, I shouldn’t wonder. Come with me, I said, even though he’d said he wasn’t a doctor. Not a doctor?  Haha . . . Just like a doctor, that. It’s the humour. I’ll treat you, I said. I only live round the corner. You just call me Miss.

It was the middle of the night, not a bod to be seen, just me and the doctor. I put my arm in his, and there was no point his trying to wriggle free. When we got to my residence . . . well, his face said it all. I did warn you, I said. But then remembered I hadn’t. He smiled, I’m sure that’s what it was. It’s a poor light. But he was impressed by what he saw. Doctors on every wall, and he examined every face there was, each one in turn. Most of them are framed, but not all. So I sat him down and I fetched the cigar I keep for just such occasions. And brandy, a full half bottle. You put your feet up, I said. Even doctors need a rest. Didn’t take him long to remember his early days, his younger days, innocent little intern that he was. He didn’t need to say a thing. The way he held his cigar and his glass of brandy was enough to make me cry. It was his hands.  To think of all the cutting and sawing and scraping and stitching and snipping they’d done through the years. Bless his fingers, every one of them. But I’m not a doctor, he said. That’s what he said, sitting there, as though he wasn’t. That’s right, I said, you go ahead. Let off steam. He was a surgeon, you see. I’m not a surgeon! he said. Of course you’re not, I said. You might’ve thought he wasn’t too, the way he said it. That’s when I knew it was time to get the scrapbooks out.  The surgeons who’ve gone on to greater things are all in there. I took him with me every page. There were faces there he didn’t recognize for all the grey of the beards grown on them. Colleagues of old, grown old, but if he looked hard, I said, he’d see who they were by their eyes and their glabella and their noses. They were still there, I said, in their faces. He was being funny again, doctor-like, but he didn’t say anything, didn’t need to; he had the face. That’s what it’s like sometimes. He sat forward, like they do. Then out of the blue he said, Where did all this begin? He was looking straight at me, those brows of his all puckered and wise. Where did all what begin, I thought.  But didn’t say. After a while he stood up. I’ll have to go, he said, thank you for the brandy and the cigar. All I ask, I said, is that you come visit me from time to time in your operating gown. Bring me a picture, I said. Just yourself, that’s all. Just himself was all I asked. He could be on the wall or in the scrapbook any time he liked, I said. He was free to come see himself anytime he was passing, day or night. Though night might be best.

Geraint Jonathan

Image: a collection of colourful leaves, pods and dried petals in pinks and purples