Doctor Highlane
Alexander Lurikov
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 by Alexander Lurikov
Doctor Highlane
I visited Dr. Highlane because I hadn’t been feeling well for several weeks. When I stepped into his office he stared at me with mild amusement.
“I haven’t seen you since you were a boy, isn’t that right?”
“A boy? No, I don’t think it’s been that long.” I had barely been in the room for ten seconds and already I was embarrassed.
He nodded and continued to stare at me over the rims of his silver glasses. “Well, I most certainly wouldn’t have recognized you.”
He, on the other hand, was perfectly recognizable. It was as though he hadn’t changed at all since the last time I’d seen him. He had the same neatly-combed white hair, the same slender, slightly stooped form, the same expectant face and clear eyes—it even seemed to me that he was wearing the very same pair of glasses he had worn at our last meeting.
We talked for a while about trivial things. He picked up a clipboard now and then to scribble notes onto a bright yellow sheet of paper. I found myself repeatedly remarking—to myself, of course—that he appeared to be ageless. Many years had gone by in my life since our last meeting, but in his life, it seemed, barely a day had passed.
The small talk came to an awkward end. He stepped closer to me with a new expression on his face, a doctorly expression, as if to say—without speaking a single word—that the fun had come to an end and business was about to begin. He extracted several instruments from the pocket of his white coat and began to perform various routines. I submitted to an assortment of odd positions; at one point, if I remember correctly, I found myself standing completely naked in front of him, my arms raised above my head and my left foot resting on my right knee.
After half an hour or so, these uncomfortable (and utterly indecipherable) rituals came to an end. He stared at me suspiciously, with squinted eyes, challenging my claim of sickness.
“Tell me,” he said in his doctor’s voice, “what do you think is wrong with you?”
What a question! I could have let a thousand things tumble forth, all of my various conditions and perversions, my abnormalities and curiosities. But instead I began to stutter, unable to find an adequate description for how I felt.
“Well?” he demanded. “What is it?”
I tried to describe to him some of my symptoms: apathy, misanthropy…
He shook his head at once. The doctorly expression flickered, revealing for an instant a much more sensitive face. “I think you’ve come to the wrong kind of doctor,” he whispered.
I acted as though I hadn’t heard him and continued to list my symptoms. Each new claim I made was more exaggerated than the last. He let me carry on in this way for a few minutes before interrupting me with a smile.
“It’s a miracle you made it here!” he said, laughing gently.
“You don’t think I’m being serious?” I asked, and though it seems silly now, I felt like I was going to cry.
“As far as I can tell,” he said, “there is nothing wrong with your health. Physically, that is.”
“What are you suggesting?”
He ignored my question. By this time he had exchanged his professional demeanor for the amused meekness with which he had greeted me. He peered at me expectantly over the rims of his glasses, as though waiting for me to deliver the punch line of a joke.
“What did you say you do for a living?” he asked after an uncomfortable stretch of silence.
“I don’t see how that—”
“You’re a writer?”
“Yes, sometimes.”