Ben Read online

  Ben

  by

  Cody Young

  Ebook Edition

  Copyright 2014 by Cody Young

  This book is also available in print.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  Prologue

  First Time

  Asthma

  Layla

  Seven More Minutes

  Phone Call

  Decision

  Rook’s Nest

  Paperwork

  Makeup

  Restaurant

  Taking Her Home

  Doubts

  The Flower Market

  Mr. Birch

  Prison

  First Kiss

  Rumbled

  Stabbed

  Gone

  Tracey

  Fizz Club

  Beaten

  Old Geezer

  Hard Sell

  His Place

  Richmond

  Ben’s Girl

  Independence

  Charity Dinner

  Baby

  Weekend in the Country

  Ben’s Room

  Fatherly Advice

  Dinner Gong

  Trust

  Cheating

  Pleasure

  Honolulu

  No Return

  The Meeting

  Birch Boys

  Jimmy

  Gunshot

  Get a Room

  Waking Up

  Ambulance

  Bad News

  Dirty Work

  Confusion

  Last Straw

  Epilogue

  Read more by Cody Young

  Prologue

  Two young doctors breezed through the waiting room like rising stars from the Screen Actors Guild. Both of them were tall, with smartly-styled dark hair and traditional white coats. One of them was rather attractive and the other, indecently good-looking.

  Men like that turn girls’ heads, thought the man sitting near the door, as a dozen people looked up from their battered copies of Hello magazine. Curiosity piqued inside him as the pair went by, capturing hearts like some people pick up fleas. Women love men like that. He glanced jealously at the girl sitting next to him, to see if she was doing a double take instead of reading her magazine like he had told her to.

  And yes, she was looking, like everyone else.

  “Layla!” he scolded. “Mind your own business, not theirs.”

  But her gaze followed the doctors and her head turned as she tuned in to what they were saying. He couldn’t slap her – not here with all these other people watching. “Layla!”

  Dr Better-than-Average was showing Dr Male Model the layout of the reception area. He seemed to be showing him the ropes – pointing out features of special interest like the new computer and the receptionist who would bring you a coffee if you asked her nicely.

  “As you can see, it’s a full house here on a Monday,” said Better-than-Average, waving a smooth hand in the direction of the waiting room – which was packed with people, young and old, nursing all kinds of injuries and ailments. “It’s important to buy into our general rule that consultations should take about seven minutes.”

  Dr Male Model must be the new boy, because he looked up and said, “Seven minutes?”

  Ah, an idealist, maybe? A man with a conscience, wanting to do his best and give a bit more? Never mind, Doctor, you’ll soon be cured of that, working here.

  “A great deal can be achieved in seven minutes,” said Better-than-Average, handing his new colleague a patient’s file. “I find it adequate in most cases. Of course, you can take a little more if you need to make a referral to a specialist, and a little less if you get something easy. Chicken pox, for example, can often be diagnosed before the patient’s bottom lands in the seat.”

  He spoke in a loud confident voice and didn’t seem to care that he was breaking some illusions.

  “Hear that?” whispered the man to the girl. “Seven minutes. That’s all you’ll get with him, if you’re lucky. So don’t mess it up. Understand?”

  And the girl nodded. And then she looked again at the young doctor – the new boy, with the smart dark hair and the promise of a kind heart – and her face changed. She put a hand over her eyes like she wanted to run and hide.

  “Can’t do it,” she said. “Don’t make me.”

  And then she got up and tried to head for the door.

  “Come here!” said the man, grasping her skinny arm and trying to make her sit down again. But she twisted and squirmed until she was free, and darted out of the door and into the street.

  First Time

  Ben had almost made it through his first day. He was aware that working in the East End of London would be a challenge, but he was young and he valued the experience. He’d had a full day, packed with difficult decisions. Who needed his help and who didn’t? Who genuinely wanted pain relief and who just needed a fix? Who was lying about their symptoms and who was here for a chat and a gawk at the new doctor, that kind of thing. He picked up the manila folder. The last one for the day. He looked at the name of the patient. Last name: Gilbert. First name: Layla.

  He walked to the doorway of the waiting room, as he had done more than forty times today.

  “Layla,” he said, and two people looked up, only one of whom could be the owner of the name. So for extra clarity he added, “Layla Gilbert.”

  A man – grey and paunchy – rose to his feet and made the girl sitting next to him get up too. “Come on, girl. It’s your turn now.”

  She was skinny and shy. She wore a pale blue sweatshirt with the hood pulled up over her head and the sleeves pulled down over her wrists. She was cold. Or scared. Or both. The man was much older – he could have been fifty, even. Ben had the definite impression that he’d seen this pair earlier this morning – they were the ones who’d disappeared before the girl’s name was called. He frowned. He was in no mood for patients who couldn’t make up their minds, when it was so hard to fit them all in.

  Ben said, “Come with me.”

  “Good of you to accommodate us, doctor,” said the man.

  The three of them went into the consulting room, and they all sat down in the usual formation. The doctor at his desk, with the manila folder in front of him, and the patient and the chaperone on a pair of plastic seats nearby.

  “I’m Dr Stein,” Ben explained. “I’m taking over Dr Barrymore’s caseload.”

  The man sniffed. “Gone to pastures new, has he?”

  “Edinburgh.”

  The man accepted this without further comment. “This is my step-daughter, Layla. She needs to get tested. ASAP.”

  “Tested for what?”

  “Everything. I want to know she’s clean, see?”

  The girl looked up at this point. She had big, grey eyes, and she looked like she might have been crying. “I am clean.”

  Ben frowned. “I’m not sure I know what we’re talking about, here.”

  “New to the Rookeries, are you?” said the man, with a smile that revealed missing teeth.

  “As I said, I’m taking over from Dr Barrymore.”

  The man laughed. A laugh that turned into a cough. Ben had his suspicions about that cough, but then he dismissed that problem. The girl was supposed to be the patient. He was giving her the benefit of his wisdom for the next seven minutes. Or six, or whatever was left. So he addressed his next question to her, “What seems to be the problem?”

  “I’ll be forthright with you, Doctor,” said the man, answering for her. “She’s sixteen, almost. And you know what they’re lik
e at that age, don’t you? Well. We need to find out if she’s caught anything. Want to do our best by her, if you know what I mean. Make sure she’s being a good girl.”

  Best to call a spade a spade, thought Ben. “Are we talking about sexually transmitted diseases?”

  “Yeah. Can we get her tested today?”

  Ben looked at the girl. Questioningly. She looked straight back at him and he thought he saw her shake her head, almost imperceptibly, inside her hood. He frowned. He glanced down at her case notes, lying on the table. He studied the details written there, as if that might help him. This was an unusual request.

  “I think we’ll start with blood pressure,” he said, playing for time – which he didn’t really have.

  The girl still hadn’t said a word. He got out the blood pressure cuff and asked her to push up her sleeve. She obeyed, wordlessly. He put on the cuff. Did up the Velcro around the patient’s arm as he had done many thousands of times. Her skin was very pale. Very soft. Very smooth.

  While he was pumping up the cuff he looked at her and asked, “Is there any reason why we should test for STDs, Layla? Any symptoms I need to know about?”

  “No,” she whispered.

  “Now, Layla,” the stepfather said. “You promised you wouldn’t be difficult.”

  Ben turned to the man. “Mr…Gilbert? Oh, you said step-father, didn’t you? Would you mind stepping outside for a moment? I’d like to speak to Layla on her own.”

  “I would mind. I’m her guardian, see. And she’s underage. She needs someone with her.”

  The girl looked harrowed, Ben could see that, but somehow he doubted she was only fifteen.

  “She’s old enough to speak for herself, surely?” He glanced down at the notes, and for the first time he spotted a mistake. Her age. Her date of birth. It did not tally with what the man was saying. She was almost two years older than he’d been told. Almost eighteen. “Um…it says here under date of birth−”

  “Doctor, I can’t breathe!” The girl put her hand on the case notes, obscuring the information he was referring to. “Please! I get asthma. I can’t breathe.”

  She stood up, gasping and holding a hand to her chest. Ben had seen plenty of asthma in his time, and this particular attack had a certain theatrical quality.

  “Oh. Okay. Steady now. Sit back in your seat and try to relax.”

  The girl wouldn’t obey him, not this time. She flailed her arms, gasping, and the blood pressure cuff and its plastic tube flailed with her.

  “Let’s get this off, shall we?” Ben said, reaching over to try and undo the cuff for her, before she pulled the whole thing off the desk. He realized as he did so, that he had no idea what the reading was.

  The girl was already ripping off the Velcro that held the cuff, continuing to take impressive but not especially asthmatic gasps. She pulled down her sleeve and rubbed her arm as if the presence of the cuff had hurt her. Then, in her agitation, she pushed back her hood, revealing blonde hair – choppy and uneven like she’d cut it herself. She had an appealing face like a pixie, delicate bone structure, and a pale shapely neck. Ben stared. In other circumstances he might have thought she was pretty, but she was his patient. And she was in a terrible state about something – anyone could see that.

  “Right,” he said, trying to invest his voice with more authority than he commanded, just at that present moment. “I’d like to get this asthma under control, first.”

  The girl looked at him, with what seemed like scared gratitude.

  “Oh, come on, Layla,” the stepfather said. “Stop pissing about. She ain’t got asthma. She needs a good kick up the backside. That’s what she needs.”

  Ben turned on the man. “I’m sorry but I must ask you to let me do the diagnosis, if you don’t mind.” He turned to the girl. “Can you come and sit on the edge of my consulting couch. I want to get this breathing sorted out.”

  She went and sat on the edge of the high couch thing, as instructed, and Ben went over there and swept the blue curtain across behind him with a flourish, shielding the girl from that hideous beast of a stepfather for a moment. It was the best he could do.

  But now Ben had to play along with the pantomime. He cleared his throat. “I’m just going to listen to your chest for a moment. Is that alright?”

  She nodded. She put her hand on the front of her hoodie. “Do I need to take this off?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  So she did. She hauled it up and over her head.

  And revealed that she was wearing some kind of vicious elastic device around her torso. The purpose of which seemed to be to flatten her breasts. Ben stared at it. This was completely beyond the realm of his medical studies. No wonder she couldn’t breathe with that thing on. It must be suffocating her.

  But Layla put a finger to her lips, and her big grey eyes begged him not to comment on it. So Ben said nothing. There was a line of hooks and eyes down the front of the elastic thing, and she struggled to get the hooks undone.

  Ben fingered the end of his stethoscope, nervously.

  She got it open and her breasts tumbled out. She looked up at him like she felt utterly mortified, having to do this, for no real reason. But he was at a loss to know what other tactic he could have tried. She’d thrown the fake asthma attack, after all. And she’d thrown him into complete confusion.

  He approached her and laid the end of the stethoscope on her skin, right between her breasts.

  “Big breaths,” he said, and almost immediately wished he hadn’t. He cleared his throat. “I meant to say… breathe naturally.”

  The girl took a couple of breaths and her perfect curves moved with her. Ben tried to take refuge in his professionalism. She wasn’t the first pretty girl he’d ever examined. He moved his stethoscope slightly, listening intently to her chest. It was, as he could have predicted, perfectly clear. “It’s okay, Layla. It’s okay.”

  And she looked at him, with her big grey eyes almost brimming with tears. And then she whispered two words. Two words that seemed to change everything.

  “Help me.”

  Asthma

  Help her? He was trying to help her. He wasn’t sure exactly how many minutes they’d already had together, but he had a feeling they were into extra time.

  “Please. I don’t want the tests.” She mouthed the words almost silently. But he could hear them. “Bad things will happen to me...”

  He cleared his throat and moved his stethoscope again. Her desperate request and the bizarre intimacy of the moment almost floored him. He was pretty sure the man on the other side of the blue curtain wasn’t her stepfather – since he didn’t even know how old his ‘daughter’ was.

  Ben tried to think fast. “You have a history of asthma,” he said, in a loud voice, for the benefit of the man on the other side of the curtain. It was a safe bet; he’d read it in her case notes. “Do you use a preventer?”

  “Y-yes. Sometimes,” she said. Her voice was shaky but also loud enough for the so-called stepdad to hear. “I think I’ve run out…”

  “I’ll write you a script. Put your clothes back on, please.” Ben was careful not to dislodge the curtain as he returned to his desk. He sensed that Layla didn’t want a spectator while she struggled back into her extraordinary underwear.

  The man sitting by the desk looked angry. “There’s nothing wrong with her, is there, Doc? Just kicking up a fuss, ain’t she?”

  Ben sat down, picked up his pen and made a few important-looking squiggles on her case file, and then turned to the man. He spoke with exaggerated gravity. “You were quite right to bring Layla to see me today. Many a parent would have missed the signs of the asthma developing. I’m most impressed, Mr…”

  “Leach.”

  Ah, the name of a blood-sucker. How appropriate. “Mr. Leach. Well, as I say, you’ve done well to spot the signs. It’s dangerous to ignore asthma. She’s quite agitated, too, which makes it difficult to assess her condition accurately. I’d like to see her again on We
dnesday. When she’s been on the preventer for a couple of days.”

  “What about the tests?”

  “We can go into that in greater detail then. Can you be here when the surgery opens, do you think?”

  “What? You want me to bring her here at nine o’clock in the morning?”

  Ben almost smiled inside, but managed to maintain his gravitas. Men like Mr. Leach never wanted the early appointments. “Eight. We open at eight.”

  The man sank back in his chair and let out a long breath. “Eight o’clock in the ruddy morning?”

  The girl, fully clothed now, slipped back into her chair. “I’ll come down, Ray, and get the tests done if you want me to.”

  Ben nodded, gravely. “Good, good.” He reached for his prescription pad and squiggled on it some more. He ripped the sheet from the pad and handed it to the girl with a flourish.

  “Why can’t you do the tests now?” said the man, with a flush of irritation rising behind the sparse grey stubble on his face.

  “I can only treat the presenting symptom, I’m afraid,” said Ben, and looked at the man as if they shared deep common sympathies. “Blame the NHS.”

  Mr Leach looked angry, but Ben knew he’d have to buy it.

  Ben stood up, to indicate that the consultation was over. Reluctantly, the man stood up too, and so did Layla. Ben opened the door of the consulting room for them. The man went out first. Then the girl – glancing up at Ben as she went past. From the look in her eyes, you’d think Ben had either made medical history or pulled off an act of extraordinary heroism and bravery.

  * * *

  Crossing the car park, Ben was heading gratefully towards his car, needing to get home. He was looking forward to taking off his shoes, his tie, his leather belt and crisply-pressed trousers - all the outward trappings of being a London doctor. A bowl of rice crispies in front of the television was looking inexplicably attractive.

  “You survived your first day!”

  Ben turned and saw Ravi, the doctor who had shown him the ropes this morning. “Yes. Interesting.”