A Doctor's Life

Chloe Mayfield pressed the intercom to talk to her receptionist and good friend, Tony Miller.

‘Can you send the next patient in please, Tony?’

Chloe was in her second year of owning her own practice, and she was reading through Mrs Rose’s medical. She had come for a test last week, having not had her period for over two months. After taking a pregnancy test, Chloe had called her in to inform her that she was not pregnant and to discuss other possibilities. The door opened and closed, and the patient sat in front of her. To Chloe’s surprise, the patient sitting before her was not Mrs Rose. She saw a man with brown eyes and dark hair who stood about six-foot-four. She snapped the file shut while she looked into his eyes, mesmerised by him.

‘Is everything okay, doctor?’ he finally spoke after what seemed like an hour-long silence.

She smiled at him and said, ‘I’m terribly sorry. This is very unprofessional, but I seem to have the wrong file. Can I just ask your name and address so I get the correct one?’

He looked at her, almost like he was studying every part of her face. It made her feel slightly uncomfortable and nervous.

Feeling her discomfort, he smiled and said, ‘My name is Adrian Rose of 15 Baxter Street.’

‘Oh, it’s Mrs Rose’s husband,’ Chloe thought. ‘It’s a good job he didn’t see the file on my desk.’

Mrs Rose had made it quite clear that she didn’t want this getting out to her husband. She was obviously not familiar with the ethics of being a doctor. Doctors were not to discuss patients with another patient, even if it were the patient’s partner.

Besides, before today, Chloe had never met her husband. Chloe thought about that for a moment.

‘Why had Mrs Rose been so adamant that her husband not know?’ she thought. ‘Is she thinking of a termination without telling him?’

But Chloe was just her doctor. She could only advise Mrs Rose what to do. It was her decision at the end of the day.

Snapping back to the current matter in hand, she picked up the file, looked at Mr Rose, and said, ‘Thank you. Please accept my apologies. I do not appear to have your file here. If you hold on, I’ll locate it for you. I’ll just be a minute.’

Chloe stood up from her chair and walked past him. She could feel his eyes burning the back of her neck, watching her exit through the private door that led behind the reception desk.

The reception desk was located directly opposite the entrance of the waiting room. It was quite a large waiting room, compared to some surgeries, with potted plants and pictures all around. Chloe liked the personal touch along with the normal posters about various illness and advice help lines, flu jabs, and so forth. She felt a homey feel to the waiting room would put her patients as ease. Apart from the odd hypochondriac, no one liked going to the doctors. She wanted the whole experience to be less stressful, especially for