Bruce Costello

Out is out and there’s no way back in. It’s like having a baby.

          When you’re in a position of professional responsibility, you have to be careful what you say, to stay within your role. You’re there to provide a service, not to amuse yourself, or entertain your patients.

          I guess we all mess up occasionally but, once words have slipped out your lips, there’s no way you can suck them back in again.

          I haven’t a clue why I told the woman I’d had a funny dream about her. A weird gleam sprang into her green eyes.

          “Do you know anything about dream interpretation?” she demanded.

          “Not a lot. Do you?”

          “I most certainly do. And the meaning of your dream is perfectly clear. The Cornish pastie you tried to give me is symbolic.

          “Oh, really? Of what?”

          “You may be a doctor,” said the woman, sitting up, “but you’re also a disgusting old bugger who gratifies his sexual needs by having sexual fantasies about his female patients. I shall complain about you to the Medical Council.”

          With a look on her face that would freeze an Eskimo, she sprang off the examination couch, tripped and fell to the floor, exposing her shapely backside with its heart-shaped tattoo. She jumped to her feet, leapt into her jeans, and stormed from the room, head held high, snorting like a bulldog with Brachycephalic Airway Obstruction Syndrome.

           Maybe I’d thought a touch of humor would help her relax, lighten things up. Or maybe it was to relieve my own stress, because doctors aren’t made out of steel, you know. We feel things, and sometimes use humor to distract ourselves. Especially when we’re tired out, last patient of the day, sort of thing.

          Or perhaps there was no reason, deep-seated or otherwise. Just something I said, spur of the moment, without thinking.

          Does everything have to have an unconscious motivation? I could navel gaze until I’m blue in the face, but it wouldn’t get me anywhere. I’m not what you’d call a self-analytical type, though I think I’m quite insightful about myself, as self-aware as most men.

          Of course, I could be wrong in thinking that, and if I am, how would I know?

          Where do I go from here? Time to retire, maybe? At sixty-three, I’m near the end of my working life. I’ve had a distinguished career, both in general practice and as a regular guest lecturer at the Medical School.

          I can’t understand why her reaction has upset me so much. If she does make an official complaint, it’s bound to be dismissed as frivolous. I’m sure of that, having served on the Complaints Panel myself on numerous occasions.

          Anyway, I asked my lawyer to make some enquiries about the woman and he found out she had a doctoral degree in psychology. She’d written her thesis on Sigmund Freud’s theory of dream interpretation, but, for reasons he couldn’t uncover, had never been registered as a psychologist.

          I spoke to a prominent Freudian analyst whom I happen to know rather well. In his opinion, the woman was way out of line reacting to my dream in the way she did.

          “Silly as a hatful of arseholes,” was the quaint expression he used.

          Why am I so bothered? I’ll never have to see her again. She probably won’t make a complaint and if she does, it wouldn’t stand up. I’ve nothing to worry about there.

          But it hurts. It just bloody hurts. You live an honest life, work hard, wear yourself out trying to do your best for your patients, then you innocently say something better left unsaid, and get shafted by the person you’re trying to help. Or that’s how it feels, anyway.

          Maybe I need to increase my own medication.

          I’ve got lots of patients, but not much family and few friends. I did have a wife once, but she sent me packing thirty years ago for reasons that had little or nothing to do with me.

          A man’s got to be fairly robust to survive a long-term relationship with a female and I don’t think I am, so I keep to myself. There’s safety in solitude.

          I must say, though, at times I do yearn for feminine warmth in my life, the softness of a woman cuddling up, someone to talk to, laugh with, weep with.

          It’s especially hard for me as a doctor, because two thirds of my patients are female, constantly reminding me of what I don’t have. It’s like being famished and standing outside a restaurant with open windows, wafting with the aroma of roast lamb—for other people, but not for me.

          What that patient said seems to have really hit home for some reason, though there’s not a grain of truth in it. Not a grain.

          You must admit the story does have its amusing side, I tell myself, but I start thinking about the strange gleam in her eyes. There’s a knocking on my front door and I wonder if she’s found out where I live.

The end.