The GP’s waiting room had the defeated hush of a chapel where nobody quite believed in salvation anymore. Alan sat among the magazines and flu posters, feeling as though he were awaiting a verdict rather than an appointment. When the nurse finally called his name, he rose with the solemnity of a man volunteering for conscription.
Dr. Hanley greeted him with professional warmth — the low-voltage kind, dispensed in equal measure to every patient. Hanley was in his fifties, with the air of someone who had seen too much human frailty to be moved by any particular example of it.
“So, Alan,” he said, folding himself into the chair. “What brings you in today?”
And Alan — who had rehearsed a breezy, minimal explanation — instead found himself spilling.
It all came out: the anxious mornings, the heaviness, the sense that life had no central beam holding it up. And then he told Hanley the part he had promised himself he wouldn’t tell anyone — the conversation with Melinda.
“She tells me,” Alan said, incredulous even in the retelling, “that Sally has divorced Graham. I ask why — expecting something serious — and she says, all casual as you like, ‘Oh, he lost his job.’ And that it's understandable, poor Sally, she’s had to make a difficult decision. Can you believe it?”
Hanley raised an eyebrow, which for him counted as an emotional outburst.
Alan went on. “My wife says this stuff like it’s the weather. She’s so… unself-aware at times. Does she not see how that makes me feel? What if I lose my job? What then? I mean, my friend Paul is obsessed with retiring early, and I’m obsessed with making it to my pension. I’m terrified. Absolutely terrified of losing my job.”
He exhaled, trembling faintly.
Hanley cleared his throat. “Alan, allow me - can I play Devil’s advocate here?”
“Oh come on,” Alan cut in. “You agree with my wife?”
Hanley steepled his fingers, the way GPs do when preparing to utter something monstrously reasonable.
“She’s not wrong, you know. These patterns run deep. Men have been resource providers for millennia. It’s a dimorphic reality of the human species.”
Alan stared at him. “Jesus Christ, doc. Please just give me the antidepressants and stop making me feel worse.”
For the first time this week, Dr. Hanley laughed in his office — not cruelly, but with the weary fondness of someone who had finally been handed a line worth laughing at.
“Well, you still have your sense of humour. That’s good. But you’re also clearly anxious, Alan. And I’m sorry — truly — I’m not one to hand out medication like candy. For a man like you, I’d suggest hitting the local swimming pool. Buy a push bike. Run around the park. It’ll tamp down the anxiety in a healthier way.”
Alan stared at him as though he’d just been prescribed a stone tablet and a loincloth.
“That’s it? Exercise? I came here to listen to you agree with my wife and then recommend I run around the local park?”
Hanley offered a sympathetic smile — the medical equivalent of a shrug — and ushered him out with a promise to “review things in eight weeks.”
Outside, the air felt colder, sharper, almost vindictive. Alan drove home with the defeated solemnity of a man returning from a pilgrimage only to discover the shrine was closed for lunch.
As he turned onto his street, he saw it: the same battered hatchback parked outside the neighbour’s house. Same angle, same condensation on the windows. The man inside was half-silhouette, half-statistic.
A flare of irritation rose in Alan — quick, sour, pointless.
And yet, as he pulled into his drive, he muttered the same line he always did.
“Well… it could be worse.”
He wasn’t sure who he was trying to convince.
He went inside. The door clicked shut. The man in the car remained.