How Long is Too Long?

Four days later, Thomas is in the bathroom pressing his middle finger up to the mirror, squinting at the sliver of crimson along the damaged cuticle. On Sunday he’d trimmed the nail wrong, snipped the side off too sharp and ripped into the skin. The pain was immediate, more searing than he expected. There was a burning that seemed to start at the tip and trail all the way down to the knuckle. On Monday the sting was still fresh and consuming. On Tuesday he bumped it on a chair, and the pang was so electric that he felt it in his elbow and almost dropped to a knee. And here it was Wednesday, and why the hell was it still so tender? It doesn’t look that serious. He can hardly even see anything. Maybe some clotting around the ridge, a slight swelling… The damn thing was on fire!

There is a knock at the door. “Come on out. You won’t find any cures in there.”

“You wouldn’t be the one to know, mother,” Thomas says. “It’s only been a few minutes.”

“Ha! There isn’t enough time in the world,” she groans.

***

On Thursday Thomas drives to his doctor. When, jobless, he was dropped from his mother’s insurance, it took him several years to find a physician who suited him. His lack of ambition and initiative drove her insane. He preferred female practitioners. They had to be knowledgeable but not arrogant about it. They should be serious but not overly so like his father, and they should be comforting to the point of excess. That ability to never tire of comforting was his number one criterion for a first-rate doctor. He fixated so much on their capacity to sooth and dismiss in the face of unlikely fears, that he sometimes wondered if he’d overcorrected. Had he gone and found himself a doctor who erred on the side of nonchalance only because she hadn’t the competence to decipher more complicated conditions or symptoms? What if he accidentally managed to choose someone who hadn’t the acumen to diagnose severe ailments and only deflected out of mere inadequacy? What if he’d actually been sick the entire time, and Dr. Horton hadn’t been able to see it or was just too tired of his antics to go through with telling him the hard truth?

***

Doctor Elizabeth Horton sits on a metal stool across from where Thomas sits in his wooden chair. They are so close to one another that their knees almost touch. Thomas’s are only an inch higher than hers, which miffs him a bit. She clamps his hand in her palm and twists it a little, the way someone might check the time on a cellular phone.

Thomas grimaces and emits a little snake-like, Sssssss through his teeth. “That hurts.”

“Ooooh,” she gripes, chiding him for his ridiculousness.

She’s in her mid-forties with hair that is still blonde, a white coat that fits snug around her narrow shoulders and the kind of malleable jaw that is ready to curl into a smile at the faintest hint of worry.

“You cut yourself,” she says, dropping the hand back into his own lap.

“I already know that,” Thomas says.

“Then what do you need me for?”

“It’s been hurting for five days now,” he says.

“It could take a few more,” she says.

“For a fingernail clipper injury? How is that possible? It should’ve hurt for maybe three days tops. And the pain. The pain is out of proportion. You’ll agree with me there, won’t you? This is day two pain I’m dealing with here, not five. That’s concerning, right?”

“You have a lot of rules, don’t you, Thomas?”

“Rules?” he asks.

“Yes, in February you were certain that the lump behind your ear had turned gangrenous at the two-week mark for no other reason than it fit the arbitrary timetable you’d set in your head. You were positive in April that the dull ache in your ribs was pancreatic cancer because there was a specific kind of throbbing that you said ‘wasn’t behaving properly.’”

 “I’m intuitive,” Thomas says.

“Is that it?” she asks. “You are the opposite of most of my patients.”

“How so?”

“Most of them wait too long to come in. You’re in here every other month with another phantom case of tuberculosis or appendicitis.”

Thomas stands up from his chair. It makes a horrible neighing sound against the tiles. “Maybe others are too imperceptive or thickheaded,” he says. “I’m not some dimwit.” He puts the thumb of his good hand into his mouth and bites down on it. He paces the small room, back and forth from hazardous waste basket to heartrate monitor.

“No,” Dr. Horton says, “you’re not that.” Her stool is on wheels so when she pushes off with her heels against the floor she goes sailing back to the sink where she gets up and begins washing her hands. “They have their own issues.”

“They do?”

“Please. Nobody’s without them. Yours are different, not special.” She has her hands all lathered with soap, and it’s hard to hear her over the faucet. “You know, it could be infected.”

“Could be?” Thomas says. “Don’t say that. Not you.”

“It’s open to interpretation. Could be something waaaaay down deep inside,” she says, tearing a paper towel off the roll and drying her hands. She turns the water off with her elbow. “I could tell you that it is or isn’t. Most people would just try to ignore it, put it out of their minds. But you came all the way here, so I’ll let you decide. Which would you prefer?”

Thomas stops pacing. He puts his whole hand over his mouth and breathes into it. It sounds a little like a balloon popping. “I’m going to have to think about this one,” he says, leaning his forehead against the door with a thunk. “I’ll have to think about this for a while.”

Simon A. Smith teaches English and debate to high school students. He holds a BA in creative writing and an MAT in secondary education. His stories have appeared in many journals and media outlets, including Hobart, PANK, Whiskey Island and Chicago Public Radio. He is the author of two novels, Son of Soothsayer (2018) and Wellton County Hunters: Book One of The Search Team Trilogy (2021). He lives in Chicago with his wife and son. http://www.simonasmith.com/