I had no family to think of, and no friends who really cared. I had myself and a bike, and a house with a crap front door that I couldn’t live in because… Yeah. The sale hadn’t come through, and instead, I was handing out the last of my savings to a hotel I was starting to detest.
“Yo, mate,” I called across the room, trying to get the guy’s attention.
“Ahh, Mr Gilbert,” he said, standing up with a smile.
He walked over, his whole demeanour warm and genuine. Younger than me, I observed, with a mop of silky ginger locks and freckled skin, wearing a red plaid shirt and too many pieces of jewellery. There were rings in his ears, another through his nostril, lines and lines of leather straps around his wrists, and a string of wooden pearls around his slim neck. He also had a battered old nametag pinned on his shirt, simply reading: Charlie.
He looked nothing like a hotel receptionist. Just a dude with a smile, who took my bike from my hands and put it away in the baggage room, locking the door behind him as he wiped his now-soiled hands on his jeans.
“Did you have a nice day out? The weather was nice today. Did you go up the Havershill pass? It’s a really fun ride once you are up there. Gentle hills and little bridges where you cross the streams. Used to be my favourite. Now, what are you having? We have a new guest ale on, a nice local amber brew, not too heavy. Or we have Guinness on tap and today’s lager is Stella Artois. Cheap and cheerful but will do the trick if that’s your poison. I would go for the guest ale. At least it won’t give you heartburn.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, being roped into a drink by a punk with a nose ring.
I had planned on a long, hot shower and perhaps a shave, then an early night with a bit of Netflix. Instead, I was reeking of sweat and my hands were cold and dirty as this guy poured me a beer and sat it down in front of me. Then he moved his books over and took a seat opposite my dishevelled self as I took a gulp of the beer.
“You’re our only guest tonight. Business is slow this time of year when you haven’t got a proper bar or restaurant. Nobody wants to have their Christmas party here. The rooms are fully booked over Christmas, but that’s just because we put on this dirt-cheap deal. That’s about it. A few people arriving for weekend breaks, and then the shit hits the fan on the 23rd. Easy.”
I was quite sure he wasn’t supposed to share the hotel’s future bookings or financial gripes with me, but I smiled and sipped my beer, complimenting him on his choice of ale and hoping he would just go away. He didn’t. Just kept chatting about nothing and everything, making me smile as he got up and poured himself a glass of coke from the tap.
“Might as well dose myself up on caffeine,” he laughed. “Need to stay here until eleven, and then I am going to collapse in my bed for a few hours before my next shift.”
“You working tomorrow morning? Here?” I questioned stupidly as he smiled.
“Nah, I work mornings somewhere else. Then I go home, sleep for a few hours and come back to do the evening shift here. Then it all starts again. I study part-time, too, so it works well. I can get most of my work done here because it’s so damn quiet.
“Don’t mind me,” I said, waving my hand around. “You need to study.”
“I’d rather talk to you.” He smiled.
He smiled a lot, this Charlie. I learned that over the evening that followed, where he told me about philosophy and the degree he was working on.
I told him he should be a teacher.
He told me to go fuck myself.
I laughed out loud at his descriptions of life in Ancient Greece, and he asked me questions about the weirdest illnesses I had ever encountered.
I told him as well, spilling embarrassing stories of people with household items in crevices where no household items should ever go. I told him stories of life and death, of sickness and pain. I told him of the time a woman gave birth in the hallway outside my office, and the time someone died on my desk. I also boasted that someone named their child after me because I was, apparently, the nicest doctor they had ever met.
“You are nice,” Charlie said, pouring me a cup of hot water from the posh-looking machine behind us. He cut up a lemon and sucked the juice from his finger before putting a slice in the cup, alongside a ginger teabag. “Even if you are a doctor.”
It’s what I had asked for when he offered, and I jokingly scolded him for serving me his germs on the lemon—since I was a doctor and all that.
He laughed and said he could have served me much worse.
I blushed and didn’t know why. Instead, I grabbed my cup of germs and bade him goodnight.
I lay in my bed an hour later, my head still unable to settle down. For the first time in weeks, after only a few hours of talking about nothing with a man who had made me smile, I felt a little human again. I drained the last of my ginger tea and curled up under the sheets with a sigh.
I went to sleep and woke up the next morning. I threw a tie around my crisp, ironed shirt and combed the hair on my head. I walked through the town that I would have to somehow make my peace with and nodded at the line of people outside as I entered the rundown Health Centre that was now my place of work.
If I doubted myself before, I definitely doubted myself now as I got stuck with patients whose accents I barely understood and children with snotty noses who would no doubt make me ill before the end of the week.
I realised that nothing had changed, and nothing ever would. Little did I know that life as I knew it was truly over.
This thing with Charlie strangely became the highlight of the following week. I would stumble into the hotel lobby, exhausted from humans I barely remembered, from colleagues with questioning faces and curious smiles. Then there were the terrifying ladies who manned the clinic reception desk. The two of them made me feel about five years old every time they stared at me, dressing me down with passive-aggressive comments and fake-looking smiles. That wasn’t anything new; every health centre I had ever worked at had their own scary reception staff, burly stern people who ruled the local community with an iron fist.
In Chistleworth, the health centre was held hostage by Mrs Hallet and Mrs Pasankar. Both of them frightened me with their good cop, bad cop management of the appointment system. And Mrs Pasankar, especially, had me running for Clinic Room 3 with my tail between my legs every time she opened her mouth. This morning, I’d made the horrific mistake of asking her for a cup of tea after a particularly strenuous few hours, which saw me covering both the diabetic clinic and the sexual health clinic, alongside the weight-loss support group. They were apparently all my responsibility. She reminded me, after pointing towards the kettle in the corner, that I should provide my own teabags and milk. I hadn’t, and I needed to somehow muster up enough bravery to ask her to reschedule those clinics onto different days before I developed an ulcer and put myself into an early grave. I grumbled and said something about scheduling conflicts, to which Mrs Pasankar swiftly put me right, pushing a laminated sheet of rules in my face, explaining the dos and don’ts for GPs and nursing staff.
I backed away, stumbling back into the waiting room, tripping over both the threadbare carpet and my own feet in fear. One day, I would fall over and break my neck. Something that no doubt would please both Mrs Hallet and Mrs Pasankar, judging by the stern looks they were sending my way every time I nipped out to the waiting room to call my next patient. I had been told to use the public announcement system, but I couldn’t make it work. I was sure they were laughing behind my back as I slunk back into my hideaway at the end of the day, hoping they would both have left by the time I got my coat on and my computer shut down.