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Every Friday I’m going to post a new chapter of my novel, featuring the adventures of Dr Sean Ferguson. I’d be really glad if you read the stuff and let me know what you think.


This first story is as long as a short novel – it’s got 54 chapters (so we’ll be e-talking to each other for a year) and I hope it’ll make you laugh (as well as keep you interested).


Here we go, the story is called….


JUST A LITTLE PRICK WITH A NEEDLE


A NOVEL

BY

DR ROBERT BUCKMAN



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Friday

CHAPTER SIX: A COUNTER-PHOBIC COFFEE BREAK

(WEDNESDAY MAY 28TH 11.45)

OK.

So now here I am in Houston, four weeks into my temporary job at St Helen’s, sitting in the cafeteria waiting to tell Dr Beadle about my brilliant clinical acumen, when I suddenly find myself in the cross-hairs of Dr Bernard Hoffbrand, Chief of Medical Staff. This is not good. As I see him – and instantly see that he sees me, too - my anxiety level shoots up to astronomic heights. That’s not just the effect he has on me: he has the same effect on everyone. But speaking for myself, when Dr Hoffbrand is anywhere within a radius of about ten yards, I become so flustered that I know for certain that I am about to fall victim to an outburst of counter-phobic behaviour.

As you read this, you probably don’t know what counter-phobic behaviour is, do you?

That’s all right, neither did I, until a psychiatrist explained it to me.

Counter-phobic behaviour is the phrase that psychiatrists use to describe what happens when people try so hard not to say or do something that they involuntarily end up saying or doing exactly that thing anyway.

In plain language it’s usually termed ‘blurting’. A classic and widely used example (and I heard this from a real practicing psychiatrist, so it must be true) is what happened when a family invited the local church minister for Sunday tea.

This particular minister had an extremely large, long and prominent nose. It was a combination of beak and beacon, apparently. So, before he arrived, the children were all sternly told by their parents not to mention anything to do with noses, snouts, beaks, nozzles, elephants’ trunks, hoses, ant-eaters, or anything that could be construed as having reference to or analogy with noses. Otherwise there would Serious Consequences for the child who broke this rule e.g. the stopping of the weekly allowance, being grounded for the next six years etc etc

So everybody was on their Best Behaviour, and the Minister had just been given his tea in the Best China cup, when the very nervous youngest son proffered the sugar bowl and said “Would you.. erm.. like some.. umm.. sugar in your nose, Minister?”

That, so I was told by the psychiatrist, is an illustration of counter-phobic behaviour at its rolling, destructive best.

Unfortunately, Bernard Hoffbrand is precisely the kind of person who puts everyone he meets into counter-phobic mode. He is one of those people who talks and moves so fast and is so brusque and bossy and almost manic that you are always one step behind and out-of-sync. Without exception, everyone around him becomes flustered and behaves self-consciously – counter-phobically - while trying to keep up.

Furthermore, he is so toxic and so busy firing on all cylinders in all directions that you never get the feeling that you’re having an actual conversation with him. You feel more as if you are a member of his audience at a private performance. Without sounding too psycho-social about this, there is never any dialogue - no interaction, no actual connection. Talking to Bernard about anything that matters to you is like having a philosophical discussion about humanistic philosophy during the Renaissance with a billiard-ball. Only less fun.

Basically, he is what is called ‘a Type AA personality’. As you may recall, the Type A personality is a competitive, multi-tasking, over-achieving, and obsessionally time-constrained person: the kind of man who would flush the toilet before finishing peeing. The Type AA personality is twice as fast as the Type A, and twice as intense. In fact, Bernard Hoffbrand would probably have flushed the toilet before he even got into the washroom, if he could.

To make matters worse, he mistakenly thinks that’s he is a brilliant team-maker and leader, and is an enormously skilled people-person. Apparently he spent a year on a management course and came back with an MBA and a whole bunch of catch-phrases like “Let’s play ball” or “What’s the deal here?” or “Talk to me” or “Let’s get down and dirty on this one” and even a winsome “Tell Uncle Bernard.”

He clearly believes – and is completely mistaken in that belief – that these catch-phrases are a type of charming and winning aw-gee-shucks slogans which will instantly enchant anyone who hears them, and turn them into willing recruits and disciples.

Mind you, it has to be said that his ability to say these things – even though they mis-fire – did undoubtedly facilitate his rise to the top of the medico-political tree at St. Helen’s. Right now, as Chief of Medical Staff, he basically tells everyone else what to do and when to do it: a task made much easier by the fact that he oversees all the departmental budgets.

He is not a tall person, but moves fast and waves his hands a lot, so that people tend to pay less attention to his height. In short, he is quite short. And the fact that he is quite short only seems to give him a stronger urge to appear ultra-dynamic. In other words, I think he has a mild form of the Short Man Syndrome, but even if he doesn't, his general rapid-fire speech and movement is somehow more pronounced because he is a tad vertically challenged.

Apparently this syndrome – of reduced size and above-average energy and speed – is comparable to what goes on with planetary bodies, i.e. stars and suns, in most galaxies as they get older.

It seems that many stars get very big and go through a phase in which they are called Red Giant stars. I’m informed that this will happen to our very own sun (the big star of our own solar system of course), which will expand and get hotter and hotter and eventually scorch all of its planets, including Earth, to cinders before swallowing them up entirely. The good news is that this will not happen for a few billion years, so you don’t need to rush out and buy sun lotion with a Sun Protection Factor of 68,000,000 yet.

Anyway, after stars have been Red Giants for a few billion years, they then start shrinking into White Dwarf stars: a process that involves their becoming smaller, faster and denser as time goes on.

Hoffbrand is very definitely into the White Dwarf star phase, though it is not certain whether he ever was a Red Giant.

Perhaps one of his most off-putting attributes is the way he treats his own opinions and pronouncements (he’s an endocrinologist) as if they were the words of the Gospel - only more widely known, a bit more reliable and more respected.

I was initially taken in by his manner of speaking and I really wondered whether he was some worldwide respected authority in endocrinology. So, after I’d been at St. Helen’s for a week or two, I Googled his name, searching for his academic publications. I expected to find that he had published very few landmark papers in his area, but was astonished to find nearly two hundred major articles listed.

Which is when I realized I had inadvertently typed in ‘Bernard Hoffbrann’ in the Google search box. It turned out that Bernard Hoffbrann is apparently a leading gastroenterologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, and has published very many scholarly articles mostly about diarrhea and serum citrate levels. When I corrected that error, and typed in ‘Bernard Hoffbrand’ I got nothing.

Those problems aside, it is actually his private life that really generated major interest and hostility at St Helen’s.

As I heard it from one or two long-term staff members (well, all of them actually) Bernard’s first wife, Catherine, was a demure dark-eyed paediatric social worker who left him after four years of marriage basically because of Bernard’s other major character flaw: infidelity. In fact, according to local legend, Bernard would pursue and seduce anyone with two X chromosomes (the female genotype): human if possible, but other primate species would be considered (so it was said) if it was a slow night.

His current wife, Jacqueline, is, so I was told, an exceptionally beautiful woman who is more than twenty years younger than him, i.e. in her late thirties, and she works part-time as a personal trainer. Everyone agreed that she is also a very nice person. Too nice for Bernard, it is universally agreed.

In summary then, Bernard Hoffbrand is a big fish (admittedly a short-but-big fish) in a small pond. As has been said of many local dictators and small-town Stalins, or parochial Pol Pots, Nowheresville Napoleons, regional Robespierres etc etc Hoffbrand has an international reputation that extends over a radius of more than two hundred yards. All the way from the out-patients’ entrance at St Helen’s over to the visitors’ car park.

To make things even worse from my vantage point, it was also known that he particularly resented any form of change to the status quo. To be specific, he disliked New People. Among whom of course he would include the newest recruit to the E.R. team i.e. me.

Which is why, as Hoffbrand headed towards my table undoubtedly in order to talk at me for as long as he wanted, I felt my anxiety rise and I prepared for a surge of some type of counter-phobic behaviour to overwhelm me. Which is exactly what happened.

He sat down and did his characteristic opening line:

“Right. Ferguson. So. Fine. What’s going on? Talk to me. Start now.”

I was absolutely determined not to talk about Roger’s case (I wanted to save that for Dr Beadle) but Hoffbrand so unnerved me that the counter-phobic urge hit me like a water-cannon and I heard myself blurt:

“Well actually Dr Hoffbrand, since you ask, I think I’ve just seen a case of a possible phaeochromocytoma.”

Despite the fact that this wasn’t the topic he had decided to talk about, he was clearly a bit interested – particularly since he is an endocrinologist and a phaeo is a tumour that definitely belongs in the endocrine category.

“Right. OK. So what makes you think that? Talk.”

“Well, actually he’s a forty-five year old Australian who got a headache after sex this morning, and the pain got worse when he was peeing. Of course I've ordered a CT which he’s having right now to rule out a sub-arachnoid, but I’m also doing the tests for a phaeo – the urinary VMA and catecholamines.” (These are the correct tests needed to make the diagnosis of a phaeo. As every nerdy medical Sherlock knows.)

Hoffbrand was clearly troubled by something in this story, and narrowed his eyes and said ‘hmmm’ but in a huffy kind of way. I immediately assumed that I’d done something wrong in handling the case, and quickly said that I’d arranged to get the tests done as soon as Roger came back from the CT department.

Somehow even that didn’t make Hoffbrand any more tranquil.

He mused for a moment:

“Australian, you say. About 45. Having sex mid morning. Today.”

Then he seemed to collect his thoughts.

“Yes. Right. That’s it then. Fine. I agree. It could be a phaeo. Possibly. Yes. I like the thinking there, Ferguson. Good job.”

Did he just say ‘good job’? And to me, a New Person? Goodness gracious, would wonders never cease?

But they did cease. At that moment.

Bernard snapped back into his Type AA mode, quickly looked at his watch, “Right. Enough chit-chat. Medical executive committee meeting now. (Looks at wrist-watch.) And I mean now. Nice talking to you. Have to run.” Then he got up and ran.

I finished my coffee and, since there was still no sign of Dr Beadle, I left the cafeteria and went back to the E.R.

When I got back to the E.R., the result of Roger’s CT scan was back: it was completely normal.

For some reason, we medics always call a normal result a ‘negative’ result – which, as many patients have pointed out, gives entirely the wrong impression. Anyway, Roger’s scan was negative and normal, and it showed clearly that he had not had any form of stroke or haemorrhage.

This was actually very good news all round, and it meant that the tests I was now going to organize to see if he had a phaeochromocytoma – the urinary VMA and catecholamines - were going to be even more relevant. Perhaps.

But when I got back to Roger’s cubicle in the E.R. to tell him the glad tidings, to my surprise, Roger had already left the hospital. Probably to have some more sex.

I must say that his abrupt departure was a bit of a downer. The potential proof of my whole brilliant theory had basically just disappeared. It was like being a fledgeling Sherlock Holmes, and then having the murder victim get up from the library floor saying “See? I wasn’t really dead after all”.

The light of my true genius would obviously have to remain under a bushel. For the moment, anyway.

1 comment:

  1. I love your writing and can't wait to read the whole story! :) Mariel
    http://dragonladymerryhell.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete