A TROUBLED NURSE

When we reach a certain age we all have to go for an annual check up to make sure our bits and pieces are all working ... and we take a water sample with us...

“Haven’t you finished in there yet?” called Monica from outside the bathroom door. “I need a wee myself,” she added, meaningfully.

“Just a moment. I’ve got to fill this little plastic bottle so that I can take it with me to the doctor’s for my check up,” he replied, “but it isn’t easy being as small as it is.”

“You’re better equipped to do it than me or any other woman is,” she told him. “I have to use a funnel!”

“Maybe, but that don’t make it any easier for me, but I’ve done it. Just.”

“About time too! Hurry up! You’ve got to be there in less than half an hour, and I’m coming with you so that we can do a bit of shopping afterwards.”

The bathroom door opened and he came out, grinning at her and holding his sample bottle for her to see.

“Urgh! It’s dripping! Be careful!” she admonished him as she swept past him and shut the door.

He was off for his annual check-up for which he’d already donated a couple of tubes of blood last week, and now he was going to be looked at, weighed, have his blood pressure monitored and have the secrets implied by his corpuscles explained to him.

Nurse Gemma Thompson was a buxom woman in her thirties with a contagiously happy personality, the sort of woman he felt he could quite happily explain details of his life to, so he did.

“I’m really happily married,” he said when asked about his personal life, “and my wife’s waiting out in the waiting room for me. We’re off shopping as soon as you’ve done your best.”

“You did bring a water sample with you?” she prompted him, and he produced his little plastic bottle.

“It’s wrapped in some cling-film in case it leaked,” he explained, and she placed it carefully next to the sink where she unscrewed the top and slipped a thin length of card in..

“It’s good stuff,” she told him, examining the tester that had turned to the right colour to make her happy.

“Self-processed whiskey,” he told her, “pure as sunlight, sweet as … I dunno.”

“I hope you don’t get through too much of the stuff,” she said, “it’s another question I have to ask though I don’t take much notice of what men say because they mostly lie. But I have to note what they say though the honest answer would probably involve doubling or even trebling it!”

“Then I’ll be exactly truthful,” he said, and was. “You see, I like a drop, but not too much,” he explained.

“I wish my father could be as frugal,” she told him, “but he isn't, I’m afraid. He likes what he calls his wee dram a little bit too much some times!”

She finished the appointment by praising him for the condition of his liver and with his mind soothed by her description of his healthy insides as encoded in his blood, he left.

When he was gone she picked up the little plastic bottle and screwed the cap back on it before slipping it into her handbag where it clattered against one or two others. Then she looked at her watch and switched her computer terminal off.

Noon. She smiled at her own reflection in the mirror. “Lunch time,” she told herself, “Better hurry.”

And hurry she did.

She lived a mere ten minutes from the surgery. What seemed to be like the middle of a thriving Midlands town soon gave way to a green and pleasant countryside as she walked down a narrow road towards the isolated Dingle Cottage where she lived with her father.

He didn’t get out much these days though he was younger than many of the patients who had their appointments for an annual check-up having passed the age of retirement. But her father had his weaknesses. She knew all about them and was determined to help him sort himself out while he still had time.

And she had her theories, theories that had evolved from her own deep thought and deeper convictions. Maybe they weren’t based on scientific research or even country knowledge but they made sense to her. Other attempted interventions hadn’t worked but she was damned sure this would. It had to, or she would no longer have a father, and despite his obvious frailties she knew she’d miss him when he was gone.

She opened the front door of Dingle Cottage and stepped into the relative cool and dark of its cosy interior.

“I’m home, dad,” she called out.

He was somewhere in the front room. She heard the clatter of something falling, and the sound of breaking glass.

“Are you all right?” she called.

“Yesh, I’m here...”

His voice was slurred, like she’d known it would be.

“Bloody whiskey,” she muttered under her breath.

“I’ve got a special treat for you,” she told him as she made her way past shards of broken glass where his tumbler lay shattered on the polished wooden floor.

“It fell. Yesh, it fell,” he complained, indicating the damage with a wide sweep of his arms and almost falling off his chair in the process.

“I’ve got lunch for you. Five minutes in the microwave,” she said.

“Don’ wan’ any lunch. But if you’ve got a wee dram…?”

“You know it isn’t good for you, dad,”

“It don’ matter. Wha’ve I got to live for anyway, at my age an’ with a good woman in her grave…?”

“Mother’s not dead, dad, and you know it. She’s living in Dorking with a conjuror and doing really well.”

“Well, she could’ve been doin’ really well living’ here, Gemma. She din’ ‘ave to go to Dorking!”

“It was your drinking, dad. You know it was, never sober, so you can’t blame your state on mum not being here.”

“I can’ help it. I need a wee dram now. Not ‘ad one since I don’ know when.”

“I do. Not since I opened the front door and came in. You really are too bad! But guess what. I’ve got a special drop for you, a very special drop. Here, let me get you a fresh glass seeing as you’ve broken the one you had.”

“Ish it good stuff, Gemma?”

“It should be. Reconstituted whiskey. Not anywhere near as harmful to the body.”

She disappeared into the kitchen and slipped a meal in the microwave for herself. Then she reached for a fresh tumbler and carefully poured the contents of Lionel’s urine sample bottle into it. It looked just right. The colour and beauty of pure Scotch whiskey.

“You’ll like this, dad,” she called, and walked nimbly through into the front room bearing the tumble.

“This might even do you good,” she purred as she handed it to him.

He took it and held it up so that he could see the light from outside the cottage window shining through the pale amber liquid, clearer than Scotch mist.

“Looks okay,” he acknowledged, and then he slowly and carefully took one sip.

“Funny stuff this,” he muttered, swirling it round his mouth, “don’t taste o’ whiskey at all...”

“It’s reconstituted,” Gemma told him.

“It ain’t,” he ground out, a look of horror on his face, and then he dashed the tumbler onto the ground.

“It’sh pish!” he shouted, his face twisted in anger, “it’s pure and poisonous pish!”

Nurse Gemma Thompson returned to the kitchen when the microwave pinged, a small smile hovering about the corners of her mouth.

“Well, I thought it might be good,” she called to him, “You know, the real McCoy. I thought you might really like it. After all, an old man who came for his check-up today had!”

© Peter Rogerson 25.11.17