Bockety

Dr. Sparebawn came through the door of room 101668, in St. Sebastian’s. Parnassus, who had made this room his own in his time there as a patient, would normally see him on the cover of the hospital’s newsletter shaking hands with men in suits more than at his bedside, even though Sparebawn was his supervising specialist in oncology. He had heard of people who travel up from deep in the country for an hour with this doctor. That might’ve explained his absenteeism if he knew no better.

The television in the corner instantly caught the doctor’s attention.
- Poor woman. So young.

He stared for a while at the news headlines on the screen underneath the image of the bald woman’s face. Goody or something, Parnassus must’ve thought.
Now turning attention to his phone, he began to address his patient.
- How are we today?
- I’ve been worse, doctor.
- Good weekend?
- In here, same as last weekend.
- My son was baptised on Saturday. Who’s this...? Ah, Parn... Parnassus, right, before I can proceed with the treatment I think we should do one more bout of tests.
- Dr. Kennedy did tests on Friday.
- That was Friday, this is Monday, and I think we should do a few more. I’ll schedule a biopsy for this afternoon.
- Can we give them a skip today, please? I haven’t the energy and Dr. Kennedy said we could start today with...

Dr. Sparebawn, his phone finally in his pocket, interrupted quickly stating:
- Dr. Kennedy is no longer with us from today. Your biopsy will be this afternoon. Also I don’t appreciate you speaking to me with such arrogance in front of the faculty. I take pride in my work here. Can you please give my patient and I some privacy please, librarian?

Before Parnassus could interject, Horace, who had been sitting nearly out of view, by the patient’s bed, bluntly said: “Alright, I have work to do anyway”, and the reply he got was a snort from the throat of Sparebawn, and rightly so, because it was a lie.
Televisions in hospitals had made his job a near obsolete one, and with redundancies happening left, right and centre in Dublin, Horace may find himself in his fiftieth year, joining the already lengthy dole queues.
He thought he was making a difference, but was twenty years too late.

The only one now who made him feel good about himself in his post in St. Sebastian’s, was Parnassus, a breath of fresh air in this stale fuselage. But he, like the others, will be discharged or die.

He remembered his youth rosily, as he pushed his trolley back into his wainscoted office; the days spent in his local library, in his room when raining, and during the summer, under the shade of sessile oaks by the Owencurra River from breakfast through to tea time.
It seemed he had lived most of his life between the titles and epilogues of old, no one could’ve told him how harsh the world can be to a shy man with a mind filled with stories.

And he never wrote that novel he had planned to either, gazing at the framed sepia family photograph, he would have dedicated it “Mum and Dad” and they would’ve been proud, touching her small face with his forefinger.
Those chapters of his life dog-eared but long finished.

Turning the key clockwise, he locked his office, wafting the smoke that no one would smell, and felt obliged to say goodnight to Parnassus, who in two short months had taught Horace to feel that bit happier. With that infectious grin, he felt changed, and somehow looked forward to pushing his trolley up the hospital and back down again tomorrow. His near pointless task obtaining a meaning.

Thinking about the trolley, he wondered who in this hospital could fix that bockety left wheel, waddling past the nurses’ station and making his slow self down to the bottom of the corridor, to St. Sebastian’s number 101668, welcomed but a half open door.

Like in the film, a female voice came from inside, speaking quietly to her patient. Naturally, Horace did not want to intrude on another doctor today, he gets talked down to enough at home, but couldn’t help himself but to listen to their dialogue.

- It is not your skills as a surgeon in question, Dr. Kennedy; you are just not suited to private hospitals like St. Sebastian’s, he said to me. Then he went on to say something like there was no “meeting of minds” in my contract, and that I was only on a probationary period.
- He can’t just do that can he? Surely Sparebawn is... You’re the only one who's keeping me sane around here Mary.
- I can still visit you from...

And at that, all fell silent, doctor, patient and listener, all holding their breath. Horace took this opportunity to interrupt quickly and quietly:

- Excuse me Dr. Kennedy. I’ll see you tomorrow Parnassus, I'm clocking off for the evening.

“Bye” was the only reply he got. What he needed right now was fresh air.

* * *

The automatic doors rumbled apart for Horace, who zipped up his anorak to the neck with two jerks of his wrist. Another day, another story, he thought.
In this wind, he did not want to walk to the bus stop on the main road, so he made his way to the set down area where a taxi door had just been slammed by a young girl about Parnassus’ age. It was getting dark too.

- See-ya Katie…Here, buddy, I'm not taking fares today, we’re striking, ya know?
- But you have the plates on your roof. They have the light on.
- Ah, it makes no difference, I only have ‘em up so I can drive in the bus lanes. I'm only dropping my sister off here before I picket.
- Look it is very windy and cold, it’s snowing in places this week and I would like to get home from work without catching anything because I don’t get paid sick leave. I will give you double the fare back to Drumcondra. You’ll need the money if you’re sister is going here.
- .....’Sake, get in would ya? You're looking at €40 in this traffic.
- Fine.
- And I have to take these plates down now.

As he opened the boot of his car, Horace closed the passenger’s seat door, reading the name Fiachra O’ Ryan of his taxi license on the dashboard, and smelling the pine-esque, taxi smell from the green piece of pine-shaped cardboard hanging to the right of his head.
Taking his glasses off, Horace rubbed his forehead in the face of an oncoming migraine as they drove out St. Sebastian’s speed-bumped gate.

- So you sick?
- No. I work there.
- Ah, that must be nice. Cushy job. Public sector, with private sector perks, that hospital. Protected from government cutbacks.
These fellas in the Dáil are really selling us down shit creek at the moment. Bunch of wankers if you ask me, taking taxis and buses off the roads when they still have their personal drivers. Did you know that not one of them was ever in business themselves? Bar Whatshisname, but he was only a bicycle shop assistant. I would laugh at the whole yoke if I wasn’t so tired. Would ya know I was taking fares all night, outside picket hours so I wouldn’t be caught. You are right, I need the money, and I’ll be doing the same tonight. C’mere, you’re a doctor arn’t ya? Help us for a sec and try and get this word in the Sunday Crosaire for me. I think its twenty-six down: “suffering biblical character”, three words. You’d think I’d know my bible lads after going to a Jesuit school years ago, and a three letter one as well. Ach, I’m just not meself lately. Knackered so I am. The word is probably one of those easy ones that’ll make me crash if I hear it. It’s there in the backseat.

Horace twisted his arm backwards to pick up the copy of the Irish Times, dated yesterday, and unfolded it to write the answer with the pen clipped to it.
- I think its Job, from the Book of Job.
- Ah, that’s the one, tax collector wasn’t he? Scribble it in, and if ya can get any others, fair dues to ya, I’ve been at it hours now and got sweet Fanny Adams of ‘em. I blame my schooling, total waste of my time, ‘men for otters’ me hole, they’re only ever seen looking after themselves. Wassit James Joyce said? ‘Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art’...?

- ‘And the part the schools cannot recognise’.
- That’s the one, good man yerself. Wouldn’t it be grand being an artist like himself, no tax to pay, and it beats hiding in the Algarve for half the year. C’mere, you watch the football?
- No
- Oh...

And they were only crossing the river, Horace thought as he sighed heavily, folding his arms. It was the stink of that air freshener that was giving him this headache.

Until they reached the G.P.O., the two unlikely companions sat in the traffic staying silent, bar a yawn preceding the rhetorical question posed by the driver:

- Terrible traffic isn’t it? .....Since this technically isn’t a taxi, would ya mind if I had a smoke?
- Only if I can have one too.
- Grand so, I’ll crack the window now...
- Do you have a light?
- Sure, under the armrest, there ya go. It’s not often you find a doctor who smokes nowadays.
- I’m not a doctor.
- Oh... I thought from...
- It’s alright, I work in the library there.
- A hospital with a library? Do yis not have T.V.’s?
- We do.
- Oh...

They flicked their butts out the window outside the Rotunda and taking a right turn Horace noticed beeping as well as some signposts bobbing in the air above the hedges of a public park. A protest maybe?
- Ah fuck.
No, a picket.

The driver kept eyes forward on the street ahead, not even moving to wipe the sweat from the tip of his nose.
One voice rose above the others from the group of maybe hundreds, to the widening of Fiachra’s eyes.

- SHIT! Figs’ takin’ fares! Scab!
- Scab! Scaaab! SCAAAB!

And then the light turned green.

- That was my cousin. Fuck. I knew you’d get me in shit. Ah, they’ll have me head now. Fuck. It’s really not my week. First my sister Katie, ya the one you saw earlier, well she tells me she’s a bun in the oven. Can’t get pregnant your first time, me hole. Then after I’ve cooled down she add that the father’s pulled a runner down to some shithole in Roscommon. And then she asks to borrow a few grand so she can go to England to get rid of the yoke, and now this. Ya know? It really isn’t easy and I amn’t in the best of form, tired as fuck. It isn’t your fault either, it’s all those ugly-up-their-arses wankers up in Leinster House fucking it up for us down here on planet Dublin. ‘When the rich make war, it’s the poor that die’. ‘Cept it’s not war because there’s no one fighting for anything yet, ya know?
And if I ever get my hands on the father I’ll tear him a new one, so I will.

Indicating left with his forefinger, pointing at a Georgian building torn apart by fire.

- Did ya see that on the news? The lad who won the Christmas Lotto just burnt it down Sunday night. They deserve it too, posh politician’s kids. Might give us down here a chance, am I right? Am I right?
In fact, they were talking about all that on Adrian Kennedy last night. Wankers, excuse me, they never take my call. A man should always have somewhere to vent, and where better then the radio.

Passing a few B’n’B’s before the Dorset St. junction, Horace asked him to stop the car.
- Where? The church??
- Yes
- Ya know, you’re the second person in the last few hours who asked to stop here, other was some mess of a teenager, just had one of those looks, ya know? Ya, that’ll be forty. You sure you won’t go the full way? No? Pity, I live out beyond Drumcondra meself, could’ve done with the banter. Alright, best of luck doctor…I mean librarian!

Horace used to know this church, every curve and golden swirl in the ceiling, the faces in all the stations, the songs. The beautiful songs and music that came from inside in earlier days. He reminisced passing through the pews, and coming to where He fell for the first time, took a left, and pulling back the curtain he began.

- Bless me father for I have sinned, it’s been six years since my last confession.
- Go on my child.
- Uh. I’m in love with a boy half my age. Ya know?
- Oh...