“Have a seat on the table”, said the horse with a stethoscope dangling from his mane…
“Now what seems to be the problem today?”, the horse asked, in a voice that apparently sounds exactly like what a horse might sound like if a horse could talk.
“You’re a horse.”
“Yes. Now, what can I do for you?”
“…Is this some kind of joke?”
“I don’t joke about my work, sir. Now, please, tell me what’s the matter.”
“…I’ve been getting headaches.”
“I see. And how long has this been going on…?”
“Off and on the past couple of weeks.”
“And you don’t think it’s stress related.”
“No, I
“Oh. Well, just so we can rule it out, tell me… what do you do for a living?”
“I’m…I’m a jockey…”
The silence lasted some time.
“But I don’t think it has anything to do with that…”
“I see. So, on a scale from one to ten, how painful are these headaches?”
“It varies. Sometimes it’s just a mild irritation, and sometimes it’s totally debilitating. One time the pain struck me in the middle of work and it hurt so bad, I fell of my… doctor.”
The silence returned, even more quiet than the previous one.
“Well, there could be any number of causes besides stress. Are you sleeping well?”
“Not really. I’ve always been a bit of an insomniac.”
“Well, sleep gives your body a chance to recover. Lack of sleep could very easily be feeding into your health problems. I’m going to write a prescription for a mild sedative–”
“–Horse tranquilizers…?”
“I just call them tranquilizers, sir…”
And so Mr. Hawkins walked out of that office with a prescription for Ambien and a newfound confusion about some basic assumptions he had made about the way the world works. Deep, troublng confusions that would never, ever go away. And to the end of his days, he would never know, would never even suspect that he had gotten the address mixed up and had wound up at the wrong building, going to a farm instead of his recently relocated primary care facility.
It is highly unlikely that knowing this would have comforted him…
Pryorball. 