The sun was streaming into the waiting room. It warmed Wilberforce Scops’s back on that crisp autumn morning. He had been seated there for an hour, patients had come and gone, all sick-looking and nervous. Wil was nervous too. He fidgeted for a while then tried whistling, but soon abandoned this folly – it really wasn’t his sort of thing. He tried letting out soft little hoots every so often and found this more agreeable. He persisted with this for a while until a greying man with a zimmer frame asked him to stop.
Wil returned to fidgeting.
He thought about his coat for a while. It was thick and long, if he turned 180 degrees quick enough, it would flow behind him like a cape. He’d purchased it for his 25th birthday as he wanted to be more enigmatic in order to impress a nice girl. It hadn’t worked. It didn’t even really fit, but then no clothes ever fitted Wil – he’d never been able to work out why.
Whilst he was engaged in this flurry of coat-thought, patients came and went – crying, smiling or blank-faced. Children screamed, old men guffawed, some of these guffaws morphed into unpleasant rasping coughs. Wil ruffled himself and frowned – he had now been waiting a considerable time indeed.
To pass the time he thought about the woods at dusk, but it was a stunted daydream – every creak of a chair raised him from his reverie.
At last he heard the right creak:
‘Mr Scops? Dr Findlay will see you now.’
Wil jumped up in such a hurry that he trapped the bottom of his coat under his shoe and stumbled a little. He murmured agitatedly to those around him and shuffled to the doctor’s office.
The doctor, seated on a swivel chair, had a rumpled brow – suggesting a level of consternation with which Wil was not at all comfortable.
‘Have a seat Mr. Scops.’ The doctor said, indicating to one of those chairs that always looks more comfortable than it is. Mindful of this (he’d been stung by this sort of thing before) Wil perched himself gently.
The doctor swivelled to fix Wil directly with his gaze and made a conscious, and very obvious, attempt to straighten out his frown. It didn’t work.
‘Mr. Scops, we have the test results…’ began the doctor, pausing in order to inject tension, ‘we have the test results and they’re not exactly surprising.’ The doctor now began fiddling with some paper.
Wil switched his weight from side to and shook a little.
‘Mr. Scops, there’s no easy way to tell you this. You’re an owl.’
Wil’s face fell. He hadn’t expected this.
‘I really don’t know how you didn’t notice.’ Said the doctor, unable to hide the slight incredulity in his voice.
‘Hoot?’ Hooted Wil, stunned.
No comments:
Post a Comment