Doctor

        One of the doctor’s patients is a seventeen-year-old brunette girl with self-esteem problems. She first walked in on the 14th with a blue tanktop and skirt, and complained that her boobs were small. She had eczema, he said, and recommended her an expensive skin lotion.

        “You can pick it up at a local pharmacy.”

        “Are there any pills I can take?” she asked in a weak voice.

        “No.”

        “But…”

        “No.”

        She scratched at her left arm vigorously.

        Her name is Suzan, with a “z.” She takes a lot of pills for her problems. She’s always nervous about her body. One day, last February, she woke up with a grey hair hanging down her face. Ever since, she routinely checks every strand of hair for a grey one. The fact that she hasn’t found one since then, all fifteen months, doesn’t deter her.

        Jillian, her mom, told her not to worry so much.

        “Don’t worry about it so much, honey.”

        Suzan squeezed a healthy dose of hand sanitizer onto her hand and rubbed.

        “You know, a little bit of exposure can actually be good for your immune system,” Jillian tried in an encouraging tone.

        “It’s cold outside,” Suzan responded flatly.

        It was sunny outside.

        “Thermometer says 70.”

        “That’s cold,” Suzan insisted, “I’m gonna put on a sweater.” She went to her room, and didn’t come back out.

        “You’re gonna be late!” her mom shouted.

        “Ok.”

        The doctor is at that age when the years really start to show. His joints are stiff in the morning, and the wrinkles don’t go away with moisturizer. “You’re still young to me,” his wife often says sweetly to him, though he doesn’t feel young himself. He left his clipboard outside in the lobby once, a few months ago, on accident. A nurse handed it back to him almost an hour later while he was in his office, going through some other papers. He was quite embarrassed afterwards, and muttered to himself, “Oh, my memory is going. Oh yes.”

        Though the clipboard didn’t have anything important, the doctor felt oddly violated. He is a territorial man, and as a general rule, never shows people what he did, never tells people what he is thinking. His wife used to try and coax him to tell her how his day was at work, but he would just smile and shake his head. After many months, she finally gave up, and now she simply says hi when he comes home.

        The second time, Suzan sat down and asked for more pills. The doctor chuckled and said no. Suzan stared blankly at the wall, at a poster of a cross-section of a caucasian male face. The face vaguely reminded Suzan of her uncle, who had died a few years ago from prostate cancer. The doctor asked a series of questions relating to her behavior at home, her habits, academic performance…

        “Have you taken any drugs recently?”

        Suzan shivered a little bit, and pushed her hair back. The doctor eyed her intently. He tapped his pen, and gave a rather large exhale. He waited.

        “Uhh...no...no...don’t think so...no…”

        The doctor wrote down a few words.

        “Have you been experiencing any pains, tenseness, depression, lately?”

       

        The doctor has his own problems, of course. He wouldn’t call himself an alcoholic, as he is careful as to not drink excessively, but after long days and nights of exhausting work he would, inevitably, find himself coping through the medium of lonely shots of brandy. His wife was often worried as he would sit at his desk, staring blankly into the computer screen when it was late past midnight, and she was preparing to go to bed. In the morning, sometimes as early as 5am, the doctor would be up, loading up on coffee, reading magazines, checking his email, going through his daily workout routine. He would gel his hair and brush his teeth after a light breakfast, and leave the house before the morning rush hour and before his wife was out of bed. In the car, he listened to morning talk shows, not really taking in the words but rather only the sounds, to distract him from the otherwise absolutely monotonous engine hum. When he arrived at the hospital he worked at, he would park in the same spot, walk down the same hallways, give the same looks to the nurses.

        He wouldn’t call himself unfaithful, but his wife disagrees. She didn’t know of course, as the doctor was a clever and careful man that would not make silly mistakes as to reveal his questionable fidelity. He was good at excuses; it came with the job, of course, along with time, like the way he dodged questions and reassured concerned patients and gave convenient diagnoses. Nothing serious, he said, which was really only partially true. The doctor was rather smug about it all.

        Suzan has trouble concentrating at school. It started with her trying to fake ADHD so she could get an Adderall prescription, and though the plan failed, she’s still unable to focus during class. She taps her pencil excessively and changes sitting positions constantly; she talks in class, not jokes or anecdotes, but just a flow of words and words, meant to prevent the room from falling silent. Suzan hates silence—the silence that keeps her up at night, that drives her crazy.

        The teacher called on her while she was staring blankly at the wall, thinking about something. Suzan looked up in a surprised manner.

        “What?”

        “Suzan.” The teacher was shaking her head slightly. “Anyone want to help her out?”

        Silence.

        And Suzan couldn’t stand it.

        The tingling continues. Perhaps it is from her weak heart, or perhaps the drugs, the sleep deprivation, the stress, and the peer pressure...emotional detachment, numbness, numbness, the impossibility of feeling. Suzan thinks it’s her fake smiles, but more likely it’s just the cold weather. That’s what the doctor said, at any rate. He said something about blood circulation, with jargon and long words, saying it with a smile, probably fake, or maybe just polite and comforting. It’s not so much that he’s trying to hurt her, or hide the truth—long days and too many patients have dulled his empathy and enthusiasm.

        Persistence is difficult, the doctor finds. With age and routine comes that time when the days compound into a cycle of mindless motions, and he’s drinking, drinking, thoughts wandering...he thinks about his patients sometimes, as they and their albeit similar ailments are the only solace and variety in his day. The enjoyment is gone though—repetition is followed by numbness, and he now no longer smiles to his wife. The images on his television flicker and reflect blankly in the doctor’s eyes as he pours himself another drink.

        “I wonder if I did it all wrong.”

        “What?” his wife asks, quizzically, as she passed by.

        “Nothing.”

        Suzan wants a resurrection. It seems most absurd, but she is most serious. Her mom, Jillian, thinks it’s absurd.

        “What? That’s absurd.”

        “I was just saying—”

        “You need to get out more.”

        “And do what?”

        “I don’t know...anything.”

        

        Clouds cover the sun. The temperature is cool but not cold, a temperate breeze blows by. Suzan is walking down the sidewalk, contemplating. She likes thinking about puppies and warm blankets and rainbows, but there is a pain in her leg that refuses to leave her body and her mind. Looking up, she thinks, “Where is the end?”

       

        The doctor is up late again, drinking cold coffee as he reads a magazine. His shoulders are stiff, but he’s used to it now. The magazine is turned to an article on a new healthcare bill that the doctor himself is actually quite apathetic about. He now focuses on the wall in front. There’s a picture of him and his wife, when they were young—smiling, happy, bright.

        Sometimes the doctor will, while at work, peek into the hospital lobby and observe the patients sitting on the couches, wondering if they understand. He feels ill, yes, but that’s not of his concern.