Painkiller by N.J. Fountain Read Free Book Online

dog coming out of a pond. ‘Yes of course. Earl Grey? Decaf?’
    ‘That would be lovely.’
    He smiled again. ‘Coming right up.’
    So he left, and I pushed my pain back into myself, in case it further inflamed his anger.
    It’s all very well him having qualms about bearing false witness
, I thought.
But he doesn’t mind it when I lie to him.
    Every single day.
 

Monica
     
    I wake up…
     
    … Not too bad today.
    It’s taken three days but I think I can get out of bed. Maybe even out of the house.
    Breakfast. OK. Fine. Dressing myself. A bit of a struggle, but yes I get everything on. Tights. Skirt. The works.
    So now I’m up.
    What do I do?
    I’m tired of thinking about the letter. Thoughts affect my emotions, and emotions affect my pain. I’m sure the mere fact the letter troubled me, and it prowled around my brain like an angry tiger, helped to keep me in bed for three days.
    Perhaps I should do something positive. Get out of the house. Perhaps I should keep that appointment with my pain specialist. His secretary has been leaving me messages for weeks, reminding me that I’d been booked in for a consultation today.
    I ease the car into the hospital car park, and soon I am in the tiny pine-themed reception area, barely big enough for four people. I am greeted with a smile from the overly tanned pine-themed receptionist. It’s not long before she tells me, in words so soft that I can barely hear what she’s saying, that Dr Kumar is ready to see me now.
    He welcomes me warmly, gestures to a seat, but does not shake my hand. Inadvertently causing his patients to scream by touching them is an occupational hazard.
    His office is pristine; a smooth desk, devoid of clutter, an anaemic watercolour of some forget-me-knots on the far wall. On one of my better days we got to chatting, and he happily took me through the decor in his office.
    ‘When I started,’ he explained, his voice swooping and rising like a flock of swallows, ‘my office was very cluttered. I had a big clock on that wall over there, and family pictures covering the back wall, and a bird who took drinks from a glass on the desk, a present from my daughter when she went to Mallorca. Then I realised after some weeks many of my patients had little tolerance for such things. The ticking of the clock, the reminders of a carefree family life, the repetitive movement of the ornament… Because of their condition they fixated on these things and it made them quite agitated. Now, as you can see, I keep things very clean, very tidy, no distractions…’
    I listened and I sympathised and I pitied those people, because it was one of my good days.
    On another day I knew I would be imagining myself ( tearing the clock off the wall and stuffing his bloody drinking bird down his throat )
    Now, when I’m on a bad day, I fixate on the forget-me-knots, wondering if the painting is designed to provoke me. Forget-me-knot.
As if I could.
Sometimes I even look at the places where the clicking clock and the dipping bird used to be, imagining the bobbing movements and hearing the tock-tock-tock.
    I wish he hadn’t told me.
    Today, like every day I see him, he is in good humour. On my better days I admire him for that; his job – dealing with poor wretches like me, day in, day out – must be very difficult, and he has cultivated a crusty shell of bonhomie to keep him sane.
    On my bad days I would like to ( take him by the throat and crush his bonhomie out of him )
    ‘So, five years. Is it really five years now?’
    ‘Yes, five years.’ I don’t know what else to say, so I just say ‘yes’ again.
    ‘Goodness.’
    ‘Five years.’ I don’t know why, but I repeat myself.
    He knows better than to supply the automatic response: ‘Doesn’t time fly?’ Because he knows it doesn’t. Instead he grins his big sunny smile and says, ‘Well perhaps this will be an auspicious day, a new chapter of your life. How are the combinations working these