The Patient by Mohamed Khadra Page B

made it quicker? You can’t wait that long!’
    â€˜I know, it’s nuts. Do you have Brian’s phone number?’ he asked. They’d met Brian, a radiologist, at a party some months ago and had gone to dinner with him a couple of times since. He was more than a radiologist: he was the head of the radiology department at another big hospital.
    â€˜Good idea. He might know how to get you in sooner.’ Tracy gave him the number, and Jonathan called straightaway and related his story.
    â€˜Oh, God. You don’t want to see that doctor anyway,’ said Brian. ‘She’s hopeless. They’ll only have referred you to her because she’s on call this week, so she automatically gets all the Emergency patients with urological problems. Let me make a call and get back to you. I know a good urologist: Derek Johnson. Let me see if I can pull a few strings for you.’
    An hour later, Brian rang back. ‘I’ve got you an appointment next Monday at ten o’clock. Make sure you tell Derek you’re a friend of mine.’
    â€˜Thank you so much, Brian. I don’t know how to repay you.’
    He was genuinely grateful to Brian for helping him get an earlier appointment; a feeling of relief washed over him. Leaning back in his chair, he thought to himself that the health system was quite corrupt. It was about who you knew. Well, he was glad that he knew someone who could steer him through it.
    The rest of the day, and throughout each of the ensuing days, he tried to get on with his work, but his mind kept returning to the blood, the hospital and the doctor’s words: ‘Maybe tumour, maybe stone.’ So it really could be a tumour , he thought, and then quickly told himself, but tumours aren’t always malignant . The sites he found on the internet, though, all featured the word ‘carcinoma’. What did that mean? Wasn’t that cancer?

8
    Jonathan sat in the doctor’s waiting room enjoying the classical music coming from the CD player in the corner. It was soothing – just what he needed. He loved music and had an eclectic taste, acquired almost entirely after he’d left home and was no longer under the control of his father. He remembered the trouble he got into at home once for buying a record, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon . It was as if Jonathan had taken up devil worship. Even classical music was not tolerated by his father.
    â€˜God made music so that we can worship him with it, not give ourselves pleasure!’ his father had declared after he had belted the boy and confiscated the LP. Jonathan had grown up in the shadow of his tyrannical father. Staunchly religious, his father had no time for anything other than working hard and praying hard. The only songs they played at home were hymnal songs of praise. The only art was devotional. It was not until Jonathan, an only child, rebelled at the age of 16 and left home that he was able to make his own life. To this day, Jonathan and his father had not talked about the conflict. They had started seeing eachother again after the birth of Jonathan’s first child, Emma, and were now cordial, if terse and tense.
    It was not that Jonathan was anti-religious, more that he didn’t believe in the God that his father espoused: a fearsome God who destroys towns that do not obey his decrees; a vengeful God; a jealous God. Surely this was just man-made religion. Surely, infinite wisdom, mercy and grace did not come from a judge sitting on a throne deciding whether, on the basis of your conduct, you should spend eternity having your flesh burnt off your body or surrounded by angels playing harps. This was not a God that Jonathan could believe in, could pray to, could ask for help.
    â€˜Brewster? Mr Jonathan Brewster?’
    Jonathan looked up from the old magazine he was reading to see the doctor standing beside the reception desk with a file in his hand. He was a middle-aged balding man