LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER 5

       Amsterdam, Van den Bergen’s doctor’s surgery, 4 October

      The display beeped, flashing up the name of the next patient in red digital letters. But it wasn’t ‘Paul v. d. Bergen’. Instead, an Indonesian woman snatched up her bag with a harried look on her face and marched briskly from the waiting room to the doctors’ surgeries beyond. She certainly didn’t look that bloody ill.

      Van den Bergen clutched at his throat as a hot jet of acid spurted upwards into his gullet. He exhaled heavily, all thoughts of the Syrian refugees and the racist produce farmer pushed to the back of his mind while the prospect of throat cancer took precedence. Yet again. Rising from his uncomfortable chair, he approached the reception desk.

      ‘Am I next?’ he asked the bouffant-haired woman behind the counter. He spoke mainly to the wart on her chin – though he tried not to.

      She checked her computer screen. ‘Sorry. Doctor’s running late this morning. There’s two in first and then you.’

      Leaning forward, he tried to invoke an air of secrecy between them. ‘I might have…throat cancer.’

      He expected her to rearrange her disappointing features into a look of sympathy or horror, but the receptionist’s impassive expression didn’t alter.

      ‘Two more and then you’re in.’ She smiled, revealing teeth like a horse. ‘There’s a new magazine about cars knocking around on one of the tables.’ As if that was any compensation for being made to wait when he was almost certain that his slow, painful demise had already begun inside his burning throat. Just because the gastroscopy hadn’t found cancer yesterday didn’t mean it hadn’t conquered his healthy cells today.

      Sitting back down, Van den Bergen folded his long right leg over his left. Thought about deep-vein thrombosis and uncrossed them swiftly. Sitting opposite him was a beautiful blonde young mother, wrestling with a yowling and stout-looking toddler, whose chubby little fists, when he wasn’t clutching his ear, pounded her repeatedly on the shoulder. The fraught scene put him in mind of his own daughter, Tamara, and his granddaughter, Eva. Ah, parenthood. All the joys of making another human being with your own DNA, but the crippling burden of worrying if they’ll make it to adulthood and fearing what kind of person they might become. He was silently thankful that Tamara hadn’t turned out a nagging, self-obsessed harridan like her mother, Andrea. His daughter had inherited his quiet stoicism, but had he passed on his weak genes? Would she too possibly be prone to the Big C that had taken his father; definitely destined for digestive rebellion and constant anxiety?

      Batting the thought away, he turned his attention to an old, old man two seats along, who was gazing blankly ahead. Though the man was smartly dressed in a tailored dark jacket that didn’t quite match his navy gabardine trousers, the ring of unkempt white hair around his bald head lent him an air of institutional neglect. Given the rash of freckles on his hairless pate and the translucence of his deeply furrowed skin that revealed the blue web of veins beneath, he couldn’t have been far off a century. The old guy didn’t look too good. He lolled in his chair, his pale face sweaty under the unforgiving strip light of the waiting room. Van den Bergen watched with growing concern as saliva started to spool out of his mouth onto his smart trousers. The angry toddler had fallen silent and suddenly all that was audible above the thrum of electricity from the lights was the man’s rapid, shallow breathing. His colour changed to a sickly grey.

      ‘Sir! Are you okay?’ Van den Bergen asked.

      The elderly patient didn’t respond. His eyes had taken on a vacant glaze. Water began to drip from the seat. Van den Bergen realised the man was urinating.

      ‘Help!’ he shouted, lurching from his chair and propping up the old man just as he started to tumble forward. His own hands were shaking; a prickling sensation as the blood drained from his own face. ‘Come quickly! This man is very ill.’ Craning his neck to locate the receptionist, he saw nothing but the blonde mother, edging away with her child in her arms, covering the toddler’s eyes. His heart thudded violently against his ribcage.

      Alone with the dying man, unable to decide in his panic if he should try to administer mouth-to-mouth or not, Van den Bergen was relieved when his own doctor ran from the consulting rooms to the scene of the emergency. She knelt by the old man’s side, feeling for a pulse.

      ‘Inneke!’ she called towards reception, with the calm tone of a medical professional. Smoothed her hijab at her temples as though this were nothing more than a routine examination. ‘Bring the defibrillator, please.’

      Finally, the receptionist emerged from behind her desk, carrying the life-saving equipment. Van den Bergen was ushered aside as they manoeuvred the old man gently to the floor and the doctor started to work on him.

      The panic rose further inside Van den Bergen along with his stomach acid, encasing his chest in an iron grip. The old guy’s colour was all but gone now. He knew that those eyes, now bloodshot and deadened like cod in

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