Not long ago...a visit to a doctor.

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Ear, oil on card, 14 x 15 cm - unavailable

Not long ago, shortly on my return from the Pantanal in Brazil, where I had been sent by VEM Engineering to discuss the possible creation of a giant plant for the manufacture of domestic appliances, I began to hear in one of my ears a constant scratching sound, much like a knife scraping against a ceramic plate.

After several weeks of this, I went to see my doctor.

He conducted the obvious examination: peering into my ear with a special eyeglass. Finding nothing,  he began to ask me questions about my home and work life before cutting me abruptly: “Stress.”  He scribbled a note. “Give this to your employer. Take a week. Go to the seaside.”

So the next day I found myself strolling listless on a dull Eastbourne promenade, a paperback unloved in a pocket, the scraping sound in one ear, the sound of waves crashing in the other.

And week later I was back in the surgery demanding further consultations: he sent me to an Audiologist near Paddington station. I stood in a tiny room at the end of a filthy corridor in which elderly, obese, patients quietly rotted like forgotten vegetables in a provincial corner shop. 

I lay on a couch and a nurse, using a fantastical machine made a scan of my ear region. With amazing speed the results were printed out and I was ushered into an even smaller room behind where a man was sitting at a desk: Andreas Andreopoulos, Consultant.

He was Greek and spoke with great emphasis on particular words, as if treats to be savoured.  He was filled with enthusiasm for my case. 

“Tell me all about yourself, please, where have you been?”, cocking his head to one side like a cat.

“Well I went to the seaside”, I began. “Yes the seaside- I read that here.  But before? Perhaps you were in the Congo, Borneo, somewhere tropical? More exotic?”

I told him about my visit to the Pantanal, and the plans for the giant factory and how we would soon be able to produce sufficient vacuum cleaners to hoover the entire Amazon rainforest.

“That is wonderful. Progress. We Greeks,” he continued, with a somewhat philosophical expression, “how would you say?, we laid the foundations of civilisation. Now it is the turn of the new countries. The future is always with youth, is it not?”

I smiled.

He looked down to the scans on his desk: “ We do not often get such interesting cases.”

“Look!” He beamed, indicating with a pen on the scan. “It is like this. There is a fly, a burrowing fly, found only in tropical regions. It loves dark places. Look! It fly into your ear! And see...” He pointed to a channel deep in my ear. “It began here, and now!” - he tapped with his pen, at an area that had been circled with a thick red marker- “It has got all the way... here!” It was a point deep inside my cranium. “ It is making a little home! Home sweet home!, as you English say”

He began giggling, then saw my appalled expression.

“We will cut it out. Not to worry. We will cut it out on… ” - he consulted a computer screen- “Thursday!” And he began laughing again. 

“I am glad this is so very amusing,” I said.

“Oh, you will be fine,” he said dismissively, but then his merry smile fell with unusual speed to one of despondency.

“Be cheerful. There is a sickness, there is a cure! It could be worse, look at me: I am shrinking.”

He stood up, and I could see how his clothes hung in swags like theatre curtains, his trousers bagging round his shoes, how he had rolled up the sleeves of his white coat.

“Every year I have to buy new clothes, a complete set. It is...it is ridiculous. Humiliating. My wife won’t even go to the shops with me. She is ashamed. It is shameful.  Of course she is embarrassed. The nurses make jokes. I hear them laughing on the other side” He gestured to the door and whispered ,“They pretend to care but I hear their laughter when the door closes.”

He fell into silence.

The surgery came, I convalesced and left the hospital: the scratching sound was no more. 

And I didn`t see the consultant until a year later.

 I was walking down Wimpole Street with my new girlfriend- a tall slender woman, an ex-model for la Perla with a phD in Astro Physics from Harvard. We were so very much in love that even strolling aimlessly was a joy. A tender sun sent shimmers to the spring trees.

 A figure hurried along the pavement in our direction: at first I thought it a small boy, albeit one oddly dressed in a white coat. 

I caught his face: it was the consultant. "Doctor!" He stopped. 

 "Alessia. This is the wonderful doctor I told you about!" She bent to shake his hand, but he ignored it. “Ah...you are well I see. I'm so glad for you!”

And off he toddled, somewhere towards Portland Street.

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Read to the Detroit Metro Writer's Workshop, March, 2021 and Edinburgh Creative Writers' Club 13 April 2021

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