Sucker Punch by Ray Banks

attention. “Here, mate, is it alright if I take prescription pills in here or are you going to point to another sign?”
    The bartender gives me a full on Colgate grin. “No rules against pills, sir.”
    “Good.”
    I should've guessed. I'm sitting in the Valley of the Dolls.

10
    These pills. Dihydrocodeine. Ibuprofen. Prozac. A couple of others to take the edge off, names I can't spell, can't pronounce without taking a concentrated look at the little brown bottle. And every time I needed a repeat script, I had to see my doctor. Which wouldn't bother me, but my GP was a bastard.
    The first prescription I had, I needed more than air. Dr Dick scrawled it out for me up in Newcastle after a high speed run-in with a Fiesta. Dick was a tall slab of Milk Tray hunk, a friend of a friend, looked like he belonged on the front cover of a Mills and Boon. Watching him, I thought he was more than just a friend, but I wasn't about to turn down medication because I was jealous. I was positive I was paralysed from the waist down. Something like that happens, you don't care if they start fucking in front of you and you certainly don't give a shit where the pills come from.
    But my back was still killing me when I came back to Manchester. And without Dr Dick at my beck and call, I had to trust my friendly neighbourhood doctor. The whole situation was sapping my will to live. Even more than being stuck in the waiting room, thumbing through an ancient copy of Hello! .
    “Mr Innes?”
    I looked up. My name was scrolling across the board, started flashing. Very posh. The receptionist had a face on, like what the fuck did I think I was doing reading when I should've been watching the board? Maybe because I wasn't that desperate? I didn't think I was, anyway. I'd been trying to ignore the dull ache, throwing myself into a world of celebrities the country'd long stopped caring about.
    “Sorry,” I said. I got up, dropped the magazine on my seat and headed down the corridor to where Dr Choudrey was waiting for me. I knocked on his door and stepped inside.
    Choudrey didn't look up. “How are you feeling, Mr Innes?”
    A lot worse for entering his office. The place was a dead air zone, the windows permanently shut. Choudrey was adamant that any sickness would be confined to those four walls.
    “Not so good,” I said.
    Dr Choudrey was a lump of greyish fat in a bad suit, the shoulders dusted with dandruff. Or it could well have been ash — Choudrey had the look and hacking cough of a diehard smoker. A perfect advertisment for Nicorette. And to be fair to the man, he was the only doctor who hadn't collared me about my smoking. No, he had far more to nag me about.
    “Your back still playing you up?” he said.
    “It's still murdering me slowly, yeah.”
    Choudrey smiled at the notes in front of him. Another one who'd rather look at paper than me. “I don't think it's going to kill you, Mr Innes.”
    “Well, you're not living with it, Doctor.”
    “Right enough. I've been looking through your notes.”
    “Anything interesting?”
    “Mm.” Which I took for a yes. Choudrey removed his glasses, looked at me directly. Obviously grown a pair of balls. That was nice to see. “I think we'll ease off on your prescription.”
    I didn't say anything for a moment. Let it sink in. He looked like he was waiting for a reply. So I said, “Right.”
    “I don't think the codeine's working as well as it should.”
    “It's working fine.”
    He shook his head. “I'm not convinced medication's the answer here.”
    “I think I'd disagree.”
    “I knew you would.” Choudrey shifted position in his chair. “You've been on the painkillers for a while, Mr Innes. And yet you still have pain.”
    “You don't know the half of it.”
    “So the medication is not solving the problem.”
    “It's solving most of the pain.”
    Choudrey sniffed. “It's temporary relief, I'm afraid. Medication isn't a long term fix. It's not a long term fix I'm comfortable with