Sunday, December 07, 2008

Dr. Salcedo’s Surgery

Dr. Ragama delivers enemas with a hose and a tin nozzle. The muscles in the shamble leg man’s rectum swung like hanged men. ‘…stop clenching…’ said Dr. Ragama squinting. ‘…tomorrow is another day…’. Dr. Bolzaño’s hours are 3-4 Monday to Friday and all day Saturday. He runs his autoclave Thursdays and Fridays. He lives in Los Distrito Federal Metropolitana with his gibbering father and poleax mother, Dr. Ragama prescribing an oil of castor enema and daily scrubbings. Dr. Salcedo’s surgery is open on days that end with the letter y. Dr. Abidjan of Cote d'Ivoire performs terminations from his surgery overlooking the Hubei Wuhan LTR. Dr. Mudstone practices naturopathic medicine at Poyang National University. The internist Dr. Salcedo, Dr. Ragama, Dr. Bolzaño, Dr. Abidjan (of Cote d'Ivoire) and the naturopath Dr. Mudstone run their autoclaves on Thursdays and Fridays. Dr. Kilcrohane of Rinn Mhuintir Bháire straightens bent and twisted legs. He attends to the disfugured in the burn ward of the hospital at Coláiste Cliath, staying overnight on Wednesdays and Friday evenings.

The legless man met Dr. Mudstone on Ships Day 1978. Dr. Mudstones sitting on his hands, the legless man, the stumps of his legs scalding hot, the noontime sun blistering, fiddling aimlessly. ‘…I know a wonderful salve for stump scabs…’ said Dr. Mudstone, the legless man looking up startlingly. ‘…softens the scabs...’. ‘…I beg your pardon…’ said the legless man squinting. ‘…scabs...’ said the doctor, pointing at his stumps ends. ‘…soft as a baby’s bottom…’. ‘…get away from me you quack…’ With that the legless man dragged himself off like a wounded dog, Dr. Mudstone waving his finger like an angry schoolmarm. As there had been no internist in the settlement for years, the townsfolk had to travel by oxcart to the next county where Dr. Bergson saw patients in his surgery overlooking the Mormon Distillery. Dr. Bergson used a trephine to relieved persistent headaches, working the trephine like a barrel churn dasher.

Dr. Mudstone was in cahoots with Dr. Bergson, both men having a vested interest in the Mormon Distillery. The Mormon Distillery filched potatoes and yeast from the Corker Brothers. The Corker Brothers brewed yellow ale and lager fermented in oil barrels bunged with rubber gaskets. The head Mormon was a cheat and a swindler, willing to steal anything that wasn’t his. The Witness could smell the head Mormon from a fair distance; his stench bunging the air with dead rotten things. The legless man knew the head Mormon, having met him at a pall-mall match in 1967. Off in the far corner of the pitch, sitting under a fiery red elm, sat the head Mormon, his head fallen into his chest. He sat for almost three hours, never once raising his chin off his chest. The legless man, finding it rather amusing, threw a pebble at the Mormon, nicking the stone off his head. When he didn’t budge, he threw a second and a third, bouncing them off his chin and forehead. Finally, after a salvo of pebbles, 37 in total, the head Mormon slowly raised his chin from his chest, exclaiming ‘…enough already, enough…’.

2 comments:

John MacDonald said...

i quite enjoyed reading this. thanks for writing it.

Stephen Rowntree said...

Thanks John, my pleasure. Its ever so nice to know that the drudgery that can be my writing is enjoyable.

Stephen

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"Poetry is the short-circuiting of meaning between words, the impetuous regeneration of primordial myth". Bruno Schulz
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