‘Yes, I am, but I think we actually met some years ago. You’ve a sister called Jeanette and she was going out with my friend Pete for a bit.’
‘Yeah, that’s right,’ she said. Her face lit up, clearly remembering Pete, but then she frowned as she looked me up and down, still having no clue at all as to where I fitted in.
This was getting really painful. I waited a bit, hoping that Sarah would remember me without further prompting, but unable to bear the awkwardness any longer I started to fill in the gaps.
‘I used to live with Pete and we met a few times …’
Suddenly, Sarah threw her hand over her mouth as the penny finally dropped.
‘Oh my god. You’re that bloke who tried to … and then you vomited in my … and then you tried again to …’
By this point Sarah was clearly remembering me with some horror. If she was trying to conceal her overwhelming feeling of disgust, she was doing an extremely poor job.
‘And they let you become a doctor?’ she added finally, with a combination of surprise and dismay.
‘Er, yeah … I mean, well, that was a long time ago, wasn’t it?’
Thankfully, drunken vomiting in inappropriate places and failed attempts at seduction are not considered exclusion criteria for graduating from medical school. If they were I think there would be a massive world shortage of doctors and absolutely no orthopaedic surgeons whatsoever.
When I was simply the anonymous new doctor, Sarah had been only too happy to describe to me her bowel movements in bewildering detail and had no qualms about presenting to me the haemorrhoids protruding from her backside. Now that I had been exposed as the drunken idiot who once tried to chat her up after vomiting in her bathtub, she seemed less enamoured with the idea.
‘Maybe it would be better if I waited for Dr Bailey to come back. I mean, I’ve known him for years. You know, as like a doctor rather than someone who … well, you know.’
By this point, I already knew that Dr Bailey wasn’t coming back, but before I had the chance to explain that, Sarah was out the door. In fact, her getaway was almost as quick as the one she’d made 15 years ago when we last met.
It was 4 a.m. and I had just given myself a little hit of coffee and chocolate in an attempt to help drag myself through those last few painful hours of an A&E night shift. The caffeine was giving me palpitations and an odd buzzing sensation, but not successfully eradicating the overwhelming hazy blur of exhaustion. It had only been an hour since I had necked two cans of Red Bull, but I just needed one more coffee to help me muster the energy to see my next patient.
Despite having one wrist handcuffed to a prison officer and the other hand chained to the metal frame of the trolley, Kenny was, metaphorically, bouncing off the ceiling. The prison officer’s grey and expressionless face was in stark contrast to his prisoner’s, whose beaming grin and intense shining eyes were almost mesmerising. It was apparent that the drugs market within our local prison could provide stimulants considerably stronger than my vending-machine coffee and out-of-date Twix bar.
Kenny reached out his cuffed hand, but I paused. There is something about someone being handcuffed that makes me automatically think he must be horrendously dangerous. If I took his hand would he somehow be able to slip out of his cuffs and take me hostage? Being taken hostage by a drug-crazed prisoner is a scenario I would handle particularly badly. Looking Kenny up and down, I realised that my sleep deprivation was making me paranoid. Kenny really didn’t look very dangerous. He was scruffy and scrawny, but his missing teeth didn’t inhibit his childlike smile. I reached out my hand and he gave me a warm and enthusiastic handshake.
‘I’m Kenny, but all my friends call me Crackhead Kenny.’
‘I’m Dr Ben, but all my friends call me Big Nose Benny.’
I instantly regretted the informality of my response, but I often find myself slightly less reserved during the early hours of the morning. It’s as if patient-doctor etiquette has a vaguely different set of rules at night. Either that or I simply become increasingly inappropriate the more sleep deprived I become.
‘I reckon my nickname trumps yours,’ Kenny declared triumphantly.
‘I suppose, but you’ll have to change yours when you stop taking crack. I’ll always have a big nose.’
‘True,’ he nodded. ‘But I reckon I’ll always be Crackhead Kenny,’ he added ruefully
I wanted to ask Kenny why he was in prison, but it was none of my business really, so instead I stuck with the more conventional question of why he was in hospital.
‘Well, I fell over and these clowns are covering their arses, so they wanted me in here for a check over.’
I looked over to the prison officer for some sort of response but his face remained expressionless. I wondered exactly what it would take to prise any sort of emotion out of him.
I started scanning Kenny’s medical record and noticed with some surprise his date of birth.
‘We’ve got exactly the same birthday.’
Kenny looked at me oddly.
‘We were both born on 6 March 1977.’
‘We’re time twins!’ Kenny shouted enthusiastically.
‘Yes, we are,’ I replied smiling, unable not to be caught up in Kenny’s infectious drug-induced gusto.
‘I tell you another thing we’ve got in common, Dr Ben. As a boy I always dreamed of being a doctor. I wanted to do something good with my life. I really wanted to help people and make them better. I also liked the idea of driving a nice car and flirting with lots of sexy nurses.’ He gave me a wink. ‘Although I think I might have left it a little late now,’ he added ruefully.
‘It’s never too late to flirt with the nurses, Kenny, but I’d give our charge nurse Barry a wide birth. He’s a grumpy old bugger.’
‘Yeah, I spotted him on my way in. Perhaps a career in medicine isn’t for me after all.’
Maybe it was just too much emotion caused by lack of sleep, but I couldn’t help but feel a connection with Kenny. Sharing a date of birth is fairly insignificant really, in the big scheme of things, but at four in the morning during our peculiar substance-enhanced encounter, it seemed to hold some meaning.
I imagined us both as small babies, beginning our lives on that same day. We would have started off similarly enough as two equally innocent infant boys, new and full of potential. Our first steps and first words would have coincided and at some point during our childhoods we both decided that we wanted to be doctors. What had ebbed away at Kenny’s potential while mine was being steadfastly encouraged?
After giving Kenny a quick check over, I wandered out to the nurses’ station where Barry the charge nurse was slumped in his chair looking unshakably miserable. I told him about the connection I’d made with my time twin and reflected on why and how our lives had taken such different paths.
‘He’s just a smack head who happens to share your birthday. Stop being a sentimental twat and get some work done. Most importantly, get him discharged before he comes down off whatever he’s taken and starts kicking off.’
As I finished writing up his notes, the prison officer walked Kenny out of the department to his waiting van. ‘My carriage awaits!’ he exclaimed giving me a regal wave with his non-cuffed hand. ‘See ya later, Big Nose Benny.’
‘Nice meeting you, Crackhead Kenny.’