My clairvoyant GP

‘Willie or bum?’ I said to Catriona on the motorway. Everything in my recent medical career has been introduced via the former: cameras, cutters, stents. I naturally assumed it would be the same choice of pathways for exploring and snipping off three pieces of my liver. At the wheel, Catriona laughed at my idiocy and explained where my liver was and that there was not a pathway from it to either of those entrances. ‘They’ll go straight in through the side with a needle,’ she said. ‘Ow,’ I said.

While I undressed in front of her, the admissions nurse scanned my written forms. ‘Anglais? I only take cash,’ she said, proudly enunciating her one English phrase. She was stout and very Marseillaise in that she joked with a tough face. I could keep my pants on, she said. I hopped up on the trolley and she pulled up the sheet.