Corporate Clarke's Fiction

[~1,400 words | 6 minute read]

I haven’t slept. It’s 4.30am. The pain is in a small part of my sinuses. The size of two credit cards, side by side, in front of my eyes. Pressure and rawness — like someone is trying to pump up a yoga ball behind my eyes while pulling barbed wire through my nostrils.  I have been debilitated for 48 hours by this tiny part of my face.

I have to get a doctor’s appointment. I have left it too long. Now I have to do this in excruciating pain. Either play the NHS roulette of ringing at exactly 8.00am and seeing what happens or figure out how to use the BUPA app I get access to through work. I haven’t used it since I set it up a few years ago.

I don’t fancy my chances with NHS Ticket Master. If I stay awake until 8.00am and if I get through to the receptionist, I can’t string a sentence together. You can’t run that gauntlet if you’re genuinely ill. It filters out the people who need it. Dump them in A&E instead. The NHS is the best system in the world. The only other option is Logan’s Run.

I open the BUPA app. Naturally, it needs to update. Naturally, I am not logged in. I have to open my password manager. It’s my work email not my personal email. I copy the password onto the clipboard and go back to the app. I haven’t used the app for months so I have to reset the password. Every second of looking at the screen inflates the yoga ball in my skull a bit more.

Once I am within the labyrinth of salary sacrifice private healthcare, the treasure is impressive. Appointments at 6.00am and 6.15am — less than an hour away now. Just stay awake and tolerate the pain a little longer.

I choose an appointment but the app needs more information. An open text field asking me what my symptoms are. Am I currently taking any medication? Do I have any allergies? How do you spell pen-a-sil-in? 

They offer a clinical nurse instead of a GP — healthcare inflation. Every peasant in the UK used to be able to access a GP on the same day, sometimes they’d even come to your home. Now you need private healthcare cover for the privilege of a video call with a nurse at a time of your choosing.

But she’s sympathetic and professional in reassuring proportions. Maybe she’ll solve it before I lose sight in my right eye. She hasn’t read the open text box I toiled over this morning. Editing it like Gordon Lish down to the 2,000 character limit. How many words is 2,000 characters? Completely unhelpful information. Designed by a Silicon Valley incel who writes in Python, not English.

She tries to prescribe me pen-a-si… whatever. I tell her I’m allergic. She gives me a substitute prescription. It must be worse or it wouldn’t be the substitute. It won’t work, my sinuses will push through the front of my skull. I will become sinus Akira. 

My NHS doctor fiancée drives me and the 8-month-old to Boots, which is in an enormous retail park. The pharmacy is upstairs. I’ve had no sleep. It’s approaching 30 degrees Celsius. I am so photosensitive I have to wear my sunglasses inside.

When I get to the desk the woman behind it is on the phone. She asks me to wait a minute.

I spend a few seconds wondering what will happen first. Will the front of my skull crack open from the pressure or will I fall asleep on my feet.

Then, with the phone still attached to her ear, she asks me, “Are you alright?”

I assume she is asking me this because of my horrifying appearance. “No,” I say. Then, from the way she looks at me, I realise she is not speaking literally, she is asking, “may I help you?”

I struggle to put a sentence together. “I have a private prescription.” I show her the email on my phone.

“Let me write down the code and get that sorted.” Thank Christ she knows what the code means. There is a section in the email describing what to do if the pharmacist can’t process the code. It involves calling a helpline. No way am I doing that, just euthanise me.

She says something to the phone, then back to me, “It’s going to be half an hour.”

“I will walk across the retail park, buy a drill and bore holes into my skull if you make me wait half an hour,” is what I want to say.

She must see the desperation in what’s left of an expression on my face. She explains, “The pharmacist has a couple of vaccinations booked, then he can dispense the medication.”

“But those people aren’t in pain. Those people don’t want to put a power tool in their face. Those people need their vaccine so they can go on their triple-lock funded cruise to wherever. They can wait. Have you heard of the concept of triage?” is what I want to say. But she is not the pharmacist. She is the gatekeeper of the pharmacist. Her skills are: accurately writing down codes from emails; balancing a phone in the crook of her neck; and regurgitating the agreed phraseology to manage the moderate demand for their services. There is no point fighting. They do not accept abusive behaviour towards the staff — the sign says so. Of course it takes half an hour. This is the best health system in the world. The only other option is The Hunger Games.

A few minutes later I am sitting in McDonald’s on the other side of the scorching retail park with the unsympathetic fiancée and the eight-month-old. Hard chairs and tables. LED lights that are slightly dimmer than a quasar. Perfect.

I know it could be much worse. I could be in an oblast being chased by drones piloted by fifteen-year-olds whose reflexes were trained on ten-thousand hours of Rocket League. I know it could be that bad. But my universe is currently the size of two credit cards. It’s hard to believe that anything outside this Schwarzschild radius of pain is real.

“I told you it would take half an hour,” the fiancée says.

She did say that. But knowing about the absurdity does not make it less absurd. “Why does it take so long?” I ask, not really caring for the answer.

“They have to dispense the medicine.”

“You mean putting the pills in a box?”

“No. They have to check the prescription, they have to check the dosage, check it is the right number of pills, check the label is right, check you’re the right person…”

Oh, I didn’t appreciate the pharmacist has to read and count to six.

“Sometimes at the hospital, it can take twenty-four hours to dispense. Older people who have those pill boxes, who have to take different pills or multiple pills a day,” she says.

“Twenty-four hours?”

“Yes. It’s part of the reason why there are no beds.”

It’s the best healthcare system in the world and if you disagree you want the poor to die. 

My daughter squeals with happiness, enjoying another bite of her first ever hash brown. I smile.

It could be much worse.

When I return to the pharmacy over thirty minutes later, they still haven’t counted the pills and put them in the box.

While I wait I browse the general cold and flu medicines. There is a box of chemical pucks that you put on the floor of your shower. They dissolve and release a menthol to relieve a blocked nose. The back of the box is covered in warnings about the dangers to wildlife and threats to drinking water. But you’re supposed to put it in the shower. CONTAINS CAMPHOR, the box screams. Isn’t that something they use in weapons and insecticides? AVOID CONTACT WITH SKIN. But it’s for the shower.

I can just buy this off the shelf, but someone needs over half-an-hour to count my six antibiotic tablets.

The gatekeeper gives me a nod and I go back to the desk. “So you’re supposed to be getting doxycycline, six tablets?” she asks, the final check of the process.

I have no idea. It’s not the one I am allergic to, so I just say, “Yes.”

She gives me the box.

END.