Port Brokeferry's Doctor

DOCTOR KERR’S GLADSTONE BAG

He is old now. Grey in his hair more than not. He makes noises when he gets up from a chair, like it is a great and greater effort. He catches himself sometimes, a small complaint in his sighs and his groans, a sound made at the back of his throat as he stretches for a pen on his desk or a book from a shelf above his head.

Between patients he closes his eyes. Marjory knows. She has caught him out enough times, entering the consulting room to find him asleep or suddenly startled awake and not immediately knowing where he is. Now she moves on quieter feet. Gives him time to catch his breath. Bids those waiting to be a little more patient. ‘Doctor Kerr will be with you directly,’ she assures them, smiling all the while.

He forgets things too: the pen behind his ear, where he has put his glasses, the cup of tea that turns to cold on the edge of his desk. That is another sign, he thinks. Of his age.

There is a joke that he makes. About his bag. It is leather with a brass lock on the front. The brass key has long been lost. It is the same bag he has always had. A brown Gladstone bag. The joke is that it is an original. ‘The original,’ he laughs. ‘Once owned by Gladstone himself.’ He laughs to himself more and more, and that, he thinks, is something to do with his age too.

Behind his chair, on the wall, are pictures of all the Port Brokeferry babies he has ever delivered. Mostly they go to the hospital forty miles away. But some don’t make it. He has delivered thirty-eight. He has their names written on the front of the photographs. Some of them still send him letters to tell him what they are doing now, or postcards from far off places. On another wall he has wedding photographs of the same babies grown to men and women. It is a game matching up the babies to the brides and the grooms. There are small wedding favours pinned to the same wall.

Doctor Kerr walks with a stick these days. And even in summer he wears a coat and a scarf. He has removed the books from his Gladstone bag. Not because the Medical dictionary and the hospital directory are not useful on the housecalls he still makes, but because they are too heavy for him to be carrying from place to place.

He had planned to retire three years back, but does not know what else he would do to fill his days. So he continues, taking longer than before to make his rounds. Cutting back on his hours. Taking more short breaks. Patients now ask if he is in when they call, and if he isn’t they put off their appointments until he returns.

Doctor Kerr, pronounced like ‘care’.  The only doctor at the Port Brokeferry Surgery for longer than anyone remembers.