Colin Ryan buttoned up his shirt as the specialist finished writing notes on his medical record. He looked around the examination room and felt quite nauseous at the antiseptic smell that filled the room.
“Mister Ryan,” said the specialist. I’m afraid your body is not responding to the treatment the way we had hoped.”
There was silence for a moment as though the specialist was waiting for a response. It never arrived so the specialist carried on speaking.
“It does mean that recovery now is very unlikely but we will of course do everything we can to try and alleviate the pain.”
“How long?”
That was the question that the specialist was expecting but he was also expecting more emotion from his patient. A small tear, a desperate plea, anything that would give the doctor a clear sign of how totally dependent his patient was on him. He wanted to see the frailty of humanity when confronted with its own mortality. Instead, all he got was a cold, unemotional question. He was a little disappointed.
“That’s a little difficult to say. Your age is something that will work in your favour. It will be a long while before your health deteriorates so badly that you could not function unless assisted.”
Colin Ryan let the word slip into his mind and bounced it around in his thoughts.
Function.
It sounded as though his body was a machine made up of cogs, wheels and electronic impulses. It was as though all that he really needed was a full service at a garage. Change this part, add a little oil here, tune that and then off you go, back on the motorway of life. He put his right hand against his temple. The smell had now given him a headache.
“Would you like me to tell your wife?” asked the specialist trying to sound concerned but all he sounded was in a hurry.
“No. I’ll tell her myself.”
He looked around the examination room once more. Everything looked so clean, so pure, as though there couldn’t possibly be any germs anywhere. He breathed in deeply.
“How many organisms have I breathed into my body?” he thought to himself.
“Can I do something for you Mister Ryan?” asked the specialist in his poorly executed concerned voice.
“No. Nothing. Nothing whatsoever.”
This work by Leonardo Morgado is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
