26 — Creative Writing
“But he’s already had one of those you silly boy, and the second confirmed; terminal, nothing to be done.” Where is the terminal located doctor? “About the bowel, I suppose. At least his symptoms would appear to suggest as much. I really can’t be too sure.” Then how can you be sure he’s terminal? The doctor pulls himself from the blur and pounds over to the bedside. Producing once more his pen, he leans into the dying man’s face and hooks his lower lip with it, prying his mouth open. The doctor thrusts his tongue out, goes ‘ahhhhh’, and the dying man does the same. “Here, right here. Does that look like the tongue of a healthy man to you?” The doctor grabs at one of the dying man’s resting arms and lifts it from the bedspread; pinching his thumb and forefinger, he tweaks the knot which fastens the gown, and the gown falls open to reveal an exposed armpit. “Here, the smell, the swelling, does that scream healthy to you?” Manic now, the doctor unfurls himself and hauls the arching bedstead lamp down to shine into the dying man’s face. Using the same fingers which had unslipped the gown, he peels back the dying man’s eyelids so that the eye within bulges and swivels, almost to bursting. “Stay still for me and look into the light. There, do you, or I, or anybody of sound health have an eye that is so obviously staring into the impending vortex of the eternal gloom?” I tell him I don’t know what a healthy tongue looks like, what a healthy smell smells like, what a healthy size for a swelling is, and that I have never seen the vortex myself, or an eye that has, and so cannot soundly judge as to the dying man’s sight. The doctor, still craning over the bed, holding with both hands the bedrails opposite mine, whoops a holler of victory, and snaps back from the bedside. “No, no, but I know and all signs are consistent with a diagnosis of terminal.” That’s right boy, terminal for me I’m afraid, but no harm done, it is a Monday after all. “Now, now, Mondayitis isn’t terminal you know.” All round laughter at this, and the doctor produces a sticky red toffee from his pocket and plops it into the gaping jaws of the terminally ill man (for surely he is terminal). “Very good,” and the second doctor flicks a tear out from behind her flashing wire-framed lenses. “But though laughter is the best medicine, it can’t cure all ailments I’m afraid.” We are still laughing, but we are all hearing the doctor and remembering that laughter cannot cure all sicknesses. “I’m sorry darling,” and the wife is behind the lying figure, not laughing anymore but still smiling and fluffing at his pillow, “but the doctor says that no matter how much you laugh, it won’t be enough.” That’s okay, I was tired of laughing anyway. “But if we all laugh at the same time doctor?” Didn’t we just try that? I see no change in the triangles (must have someone see to that) so please don’t interfere madam, just let him enjoy his last moments in peace. “And no laughter?” Well I don’t see what good it can possibly do. Doctor?