'Parallelism' : A Serial : Part One

Marcus Jones sat cross-legged in the surgery waiting room.  He smiled and nodded as Marge, Dr Fenwick's heavy-lidded receptionist, exited shaking her head while trying to suppress a wry grin.  Marcus looked around this now familiar room: the “look after your heart” poster featuring a cartoon of a matronly old woman feeding hot soup to a bed-ridden cartoon heart and, just below it, the grinning photo of a man who looked very much like him (early thirties, a thatch of unkempt hair, ludicrously thick glasses) greeting the tag-line “have you checked your testicles recently?” with a triumphant thumbs up gesture.   Marcus surveyed the random magazines arranged neatly on a side table and thought the subscriber a very poor judge of periodicals.  Finally he opted for a well-thumbed copy of Boy's Stuff, a magazine which appeared to be partly concerned with the latest gadgets, yet mostly with models in various states of undress.  He knew he was alone in the room but still cast a furtive glance around before turning to a special feature on the Apple iPhone – pictured nestling between the enormous assets of a blonde twenty year old.

      'Mr Jones...' began Dr Fenwick, '...what a surprise.  Won't you step into my office, please?'

      Dr Fenwick appeared as tired as his receptionist.  His dusty grey hair packed still tightly into suggestive curls, a generation on from their jet black heyday, but his skin and stomach had long since welcomed in gravity.  Marcus followed him across the hall to the usual office – a desk, a chair, a couch and a wall of framed certificates.  Marcus scanned them, as he did every time, looking for Second Prize in the Sack Race or a humourous World's Greatest Lover.

     'Mr Jones.  Some time ago, in fact I have it here...' sighed Dr Fenwick fishing through back appointments, 'Ah yes. Six weeks ago you came to see me for the first time, telling me in the process that you have not been registered with a GP for a decade.  Can you tell me why it is then that this is your fourteenth visit to my surgery since that time?'

     'You could say I was making up for lost opportunities.' said Marcus, his gaze drifting back to the physician.

     'But there is no need to keep making appointments.  In fact, I really make a stand here and insist  you keep away from here until there's actually something wrong with you or I will recommend you are removed from my patient list.'

     'Doc, I'm thinking of referring myself to a psychiatrist.'

     'What the devil for man?  You told me six weeks ago you had no psychiatric history, your family had no history of disorder and the few cognitive tests we did do showed nothing untoward.'

     'I've been reading.  I'm worried.  Seems everyone and their dog is a crackpot nowadays.  They catch it early you see, they catch it in schools now.  They name them after Europeans with big beards.  But they didn't test us back in my time at school.  We were just “highly strung” or “quiet” or “prone to absent mindedness” and some poor buggers were “disruptive” and sent home.'

     Dr Fenwick sighed, 'It's true that the diagnosis and categorisation of psychiatric disorders continues to move forward, but if you were in serious danger from yourself then it would have been picked up a long time ago.  Very few of us are not affected by neuroses in some small manner.  I myself suffer from an irrational fear of mirrors – spectrophobia it's known as.  But you have my leave to pester a psychiatrist the same way you have me.'

    Marcus thanked Dr Fenwick and turned to leave, Fenwick coughed causing his generous jowls to shudder.  'I'm not surprised you're so scared of mirrors.' thought Marcus.