valorous idylls chapter 12

Dude Where's My Doctor? (James And Fiona And Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure)

At Tallaght hospital the admissions procedure began again.
The front of house people were good.
I was sent to a cafe in the foyer to wait while the documents from the other hospital were sorted.
The woman who took my documents told me she'd deal with the paperwork and fetch me from the cafe in twenty minutes. She was as good as her word.
A lissom, dark haired, lissom, businesslike, but still lissom, triage nurse called Fiona assessed my injury.
I tend to hold with Professor Shappie Khorsandi's theories regarding Fionas.
In social science it's known as the Khorsandi hypothesis and states that people called Fiona are evil bitches.
This one was a particularly striking girl.
Not on strike.
The nurses strike had taken a pause in the past hours to allow the government to cave in.
Striking.
Her looks were of a peculiarly arresting quality.
Nothing to do with style.
She was wearing the neutral baggy overalls that hospitals rightly now favour for women staff members but which still can't quite conceal lissomness.
Nothing to do with glamour either.
She hadn't particularly accentuated her looks in any way that I could see.
Yet she was possessed of a most unsettling presence.
An almost primal something.
There was no denying it.
Nor was it easy to say what exactly it was.
It was certainly remarkable.
Hence my remarks.
All the more so for being unfathomable.
I don't know if I've ever seen a girl quite as beautiful.
The word whoargghhhhhhh kind of captures it a bit.
She was not completely unaware of her power of course.
Women are not idiots.
They know if people find them attractive.
The wise ones know not to over rate such things.
It seemed to me that she must get a lot of attention from men.
It doesn't always help a human being to be admired.
She handled it responsibly enough.
I for my part tried to keep my rubbery lechery face as neutral as a baggy pants suit.
"How did you fall?"
That old gag.
I gave her the truth minus one giant supernatural scald crow.
"Have you ever been in hospital before?"
"I think I was in for a night in 1983 when I cycled a bicycle into an oncoming car."
"1983?" quoth she musingly, "I was only a twinkle."
I resisted the urge to say: "You're still a twinkle."
Then I resisted the urge to do an Eddie Murphy impression from Trading Places: "Once you go out with a man from 1983, you'll never go back baby. You and me baby. Porgy And Bess."
Then I resisted the urge to say: "Whoargghhhhhhhh."
It was a close run thing.
She called in a doctor.
Doctor Calum Swift burst through the door like an actor making an entrance.
He was another whom nature appeared to have gifted in the looks department.
Slightly long hair, Mediterranean features. Big eyes. Plenty of muscles.
He could have been a male model rather than a doctor.
But his manner was good.
He didn't seem overly distant or vain or egotistical.
There was a pleasant, relaxed, friendly, youthful, instantly likeable quality to him, not incompatible with the possibility of professional competence.
"Hey," he said by way of greeting.
I digested this.
His cool as a breeze deportment evoked something.
My mind searched.
What was it? No, not so much a male model.
More like a surfer dude.
A surfer dude, yes that was it.
To a tee.
That was my doctor.
I glanced at his name tag.
The photo on it had the polarities reversed so that he looked like a black man with white hair and a white beard.
I did not find the frivolousness of this overly reassuring.
I felt like saying: "Where's your beard? And why aren't you black? And why aren't your polarities reversed? And what have you done to Dr Calum Swift you Mediterranean person you?"
For the beard, white or not, was nowhere in evidence on his person.
Nor was his skin black.
Details I suppose.
Nobody takes identity cards seriously in these pleasant relaxed informal times.
Dr Calum Swift had a look at my arm.
He asked how I had fallen.
I told him most of the details.
"We might be able to operate on you today," he said.
"Really?" I said.
"You've been fasting haven't you?" said he.
"I have," said I.
"That's great. We should be able to go straight ahead."
"Except for a quick sangidge and a coffee that I grabbed in the cafe a few minutes ago before I was called in here."
The doctor sighed.
"We'll operate on you tomorrow," he said.
"You're not seriously going to postpone just because I grabbed a coffee and a sangidge," I pleaded.
Doctor Calum Swift gave me a reproachful spaniel dog look.
"There's no problem," he said kindlily. "But we'll do it tomorrow."
Another doctor arrived.
Doctors seemed to like the ambience around here, I thought.
This I could understand.
If I was working at Tallaght hospital I'd have been bobbing in and out of Nurse Fiona's triage station too.
The new arrival introduced himself as Doctor Danilo.
Like a name from The Simpsons cartoon, I thought glumly.
He was young and built like a rugby player.
I checked his name tag.
He'd hung it around his neck upside down.
I would never know his last name.
Standing there, Doctor Calum Swift and Doctor Danilo looked quite the pair.
Surfer dudes, or rugby players, or male models.
But not doctors.
Perfectly capable fellows I'm sure but the generation gap, for such I admit it to be, meant I would never see them as anything other than Bill And Ted having another great adventure.
"Are you really going to operate on Heelers dude?"
"I totally am dude."
"You think we should attach his arm to his leg socket, and transfer the leg to his arm for a joke?"
"I'm totally there dude."
I could almost hear them.
I began to waver in my decision (such as it had ever really been my decision) to seek treatment for the injury.
"Do I really need an operation?" I asked. "Could we not just let the arm heal?"
Doctor Danilo drew himself up to his not inconcsiderable height and began a speech about how by inserting metal thingummies here, and cleaning up the shattered bone fragments there, and by a stroke of luck all over, I might, just might, recover significant usage of my arm but that otherwise I could be left with barely any movement in it at all.
He did the required thing and let me know a few of the risks associated with going under anaesthetic most of which seemed to involve a recurrent chance which he insisted was remote, of meeting the character Death also from Bill And Ted's Great Adventure.
He added that a great surgeon called Maloney was in situ at the hospital and about how really I'd gotten lucky because Maloney is one of the most famous and one of the best surgeons in Ireland, Maloney is a genius really, and happens to be on hand, so really I should have this operation.
His enthusiasm was Churchillian.
He proffered a consent form for me to sign.
Doctor Calum Swift smiled encouragingly.
"If it was me," said Doctor Calum Swift simply, "I'd be having this operation."
I began to read the consent form.
Doctor Danilo said: "I have to take a call."
He stepped out into the corridor.
Too important to watch me reading, I thought, but I read the thing anyway.
And signed.
Nurse Fiona was busy being elementally phenomenally gorgeous with some paperwork in the corner.
I handed the consent form to Doctor Calum Swift.
"What is Doctor Danilo's last name?" I ventured.
"I don't know," said Doctor Calum Swift, "I think it begins with an M."
Oh Dude.
Lame Dude.
L-a-a-a-a-a-a-ame.
D-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-ude.