The spinning wheels of the fellow sufferer’s metallic throne, a sore symbol of legitimacy, creaked as it passed by. It was as if smug satisfaction had been encased around his leg in plaster for all the world to see - no wonder he kept his eyes closed.





Mike hated hospitals. Like almost all other rational people, he did his utmost to avoid them. Not today, however.





It had been the first time he’d gotten injured enough to warrant reluctantly dragging himself into one. One small lapse of concentration and here he was - beleaguered, annoyed and wandering through a sea of fellow unfortunates. A maudlin crowd of puffers, wheezers, groaners and moaners – each soul desperate to shave a precious minute off the interminable waiting period. A process seemingly designed to weed out the impatient, as much as it was to eventually serve the sick.





Those bleary-eyed sheep, huddled, worried and bleating. They waited until their, equally bleary, azure-clad shepherds came for them. A few patient prods to move them along accompanied by a gritted smile that looked as if it could fall off any minute, yet, somehow didn’t.





Wali, a boy of around ten years with ants in his pants and glasses that were wonky from the heavy physical demands of football, playground fights and, worst of all, his older brothers, tugged impatiently at Mike’s sleeve.





‘Excuse me, where’s the toilet?’ he said.





‘Down there,’ Mike replied. It wasn’t.





After the boy had gone Mike watched as two white and black, chequered fun-spoilers flanked a red-faced brawler who, even now with two broken legs, was eyeing for his escape route.





Mike closed his eyes. He shouldn’t have, but the boredom and bleakness of the scene overwhelmed him until it was too late.





‘ Mr . Weyland, it’s time,’ said a disembodied voice.





This was it. The moment where he would find out if his sprain was worth acknowledgment in the form of painkillers, or not. All it had been was a single, fateful step that had sent him plunging into the shadows between curb and floor. The dull throbbing hadn’t ceased and it only made Mike’s mood worse than it already was. An isolated moment of clumsiness and, two days later, here he sat.





The examination room was sterile but in a calming way. As Mike had gotten up with the doctor, he almost had to suppress a cheer.





She’d introduced herself as Dr. Hakim. She seemed more mother than doctor , shaking her head in light-hearted disapproval while Mike explained how simply, and avoidably , he’d fallen.





‘Any allergies?’ she asked.





‘Only common sense,’ Mike replied. A dash of bravado or an admission of idiocy, it didn’t matter.





‘You’d get on with my son then…’





They liked each other. Mike fed off her maternal warmth and she off his politeness and sudden, youthful charm. Politeness was rare enough in this part of East London. All his previous angst and suspicion of the place ebbed away as she spoke comfortingly to him.





Her eyes were two darkly glittering beetles, crawling against a softly wrinkled, ochre desert. A desert whose weathered dunes were softened by life and the passage of time.





Most of all, they were kind.





She cooed that ‘boys will be boys’, and ‘these things happen to everyone, some time or another’. Even if it wasn’t true, it put him at ease to consider that maybe he wasn’t that uniquely stupid after all.





He wondered, then, what her hair looked like but understood that he’d never know.





With great care and, almost supernatural, tenderness, she gauged Mike’s swelling and winced as he did. Something changed with that final prod, though - a fleeting look. Mike asked her what was wrong.





‘Nothing dear, I just need a second opinion,’ she said.





And with that, she was gone.





Mike was suddenly alone again, staring at the walls until they grew in height so high that he couldn’t make the ceiling anymore . His feet swung in the air above a seemingly-endless trench. If he wasn’t careful, he might just be stuck here.





Then the twinge started, needling away with pine-martin ferocity. The door shyly parted, enough for Dr. Hakim to step back in. The beetles weren’t so shiny now.





Next thing Mike knew he was pleading with another less-kind, heavier-set nurse to not cut open his faded jeans. She didn’t even give him her name.





‘There must be another way!’ he protested.





There wasn’t.





Mike closed his eyes and listened to the wheels of his metallic throne as he was pushed down the crowded corridor of patients to be. His left leg, now encased in plaster, was for all the world to see.





The End











