The doctor’s house is a mile from the play-park. I don’t ask why you are driving me there and not to hospital, or how you know where a doctor lives, or why you did your make-up in the rear-view mirror. You say to keep my ankle raised on the back seat as the Morris stammers along the lanes and I cry out with each gear change.

I wait in the car while you knock on the front door, my foot da-dum da-dum-ing as if it has its own heart. The doctor’s wife helps you to take my weight, says they are only just back from church, emphasising the word before leaving the room. The study is cool and smells of leather and stationery, but it’s the display cases of stuffed creatures lining two of the walls that make me forget my ankle: fox, badger, weasel, an animal I don’t recognise, glassed eyes lancing into us.

The doctor enters yet the only noise is the tock-tock of the tall clock in the corner. He sits at his desk, back to us, rolls his shirt sleeves up. Finally, you fill the silence with Please – which I think is for me but isn’t – and when you say it again it sounds as if you might cry. He ignores you and attends to my leg, his hand, although huge as it holds my foot, as soft as yours. You fetch the tissue from beneath your sleeve, dab your face, explain how I am always doing stuff like this. Again, there is no response and you scrunch up the edges of your dress, look around the room. You see the animals for the first time since we arrived and for a moment I think you’ll pick up something heavy and smash the glass, freeing them all.

The doctor lowers my ankle and calls to his wife. You do as the woman asks and hold ice wrapped in a towel against my leg while he fetches a bandage from a drawer. And then in silence the two of them attach it, the doctor winding the gauze as she presses lightly on one end with a finger, then holds the other as he pins it. At no point do they meet your eyes. And so the creatures watch me watching you watching the doctor and his wife.

Years later the doctor will take his life in the field below the house and you will wear black for a week.

About Tom Vowler

Tom Vowler is the author of 3 novels and 2 short story collections. He lectures in creative writing and holds a PhD from Plymouth University. Represented by Brotherstone Creative Management, Tom's fiction has featured on Radio 4 and has been translated into numerous languages. He recently won the V.S Pritchett Short Story Prize.

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