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this one will prod and push. He does. Quite hard, especially round her neck, digging his fingers in. He keeps saying good, good, fine, fine, but she is ignoring him, distancing herself. He asks her to sit up. She sits. His face is very near. He’d used aftershave liberally, a gingery scent coming off him. She closes her eyes, not wanting to meet his.
    He is finished with her neck and armpits. He tells her to lie down again while he feels her tummy. She hasn’t much of a tummy. She is slim and, lying down, her stomach is almostconcave between her hip-bones. She thinks of the big fat woman who’d sat beside her. Her tummy would be vast, how could anything be felt in such a mass of flesh? A doctor would need big hands, thick fingers to examine it, he would need to prod and push. Right, he says, everything seems fine. Seems? Why does he have to be so equivocal, sowing doubt in her mind? Well, she knows why. They can never be certain. They have to cover themselves. He is picking up her notes again. He says he wants her to have a blood test. He says she should have had it before he saw her, but that everything is topsy-turvy today, nobody has been sent for their blood tests, but it doesn’t matter, he is sure it will be fine, he’ll only contact her if there is any cause for alarm, all right? No. It is not all right, but she is afraid to say so. Letters could go astray, phone calls fail to be made. She needs to know the result of all tests, whatever they are for. But he is still talking, talking and looking at his watch. He is saying something else important. He is saying that next time, next year, she is due for an X-ray, and then if everything is fine, as he expects it will be, she will be discharged.
Discharged
? She is shocked. The shock sounds in her voice. He looks puzzled, says yes, discharged. She would be reckoned to be clear of cancer after ten years without any further trouble. Doesn’t that please her, doesn’t it please her to think she wouldn’t need to come to this clinic again, or does she love it so much that she can’t keep away? He says the last bit teasingly, but she won’t be teased, she ignores his flippant remark. She sits on the edge of the bed clutching her robe and asks, her voice tremulous, how, if, in a year’s time, she is discharged, she isn’t seen at this clinic after that, how will she know? He frowns, looks again at his watch, and says know what? That nothing is wrong, she says, that it hasn’t started again, because I’m not cured, am I? I’m in remission. He looks embarrassed. He doesn’t know what to say. Finally, not meeting her stare, he explains that ten years is a long time. Her tumour had been tiny and of a low malignancy with no spread. She was one of their success stories. ‘But that doesn’t mean I’m cured,’ she repeats, timidly, ‘does it?’ He hesitates. She’d got him there. What will he say? What has he been taught to say? He hadn’t been prepared for her question. ‘You’re asgood as cured,’ he says, sounding irritated. Where this disease is concerned long-term remission counts as a cure. ‘It doesn’t,’ she says, quietly, shaking her head. He’s had enough. ‘Look,’ he says, ‘maybe you should talk to your GP.’ ‘Why would I do that,’ she says, almost in tears, ‘he knows nothing, he didn’t even find the lump, he wasn’t even going to refer me, I had to insist. I need to be checked out here, at this clinic.’ He says he is sorry but that they can’t go on checking patients who are perfectly healthy and symptom-free after ten years, there isn’t time, there aren’t the resources, and there is no need. He says he has to go, he has other patients.
    *
    She didn’t thank him. He left. She sat quite still. She heard him pull the curtain aside in the next cubicle. She heard talking, low and indistinct. A