Lost souls

“Sit down, Mr. Wit­ness. Your pic­tures are back from the X-ray depart­ment. I’ll be with you in one wee moment.”

This is wrong. All wrong. A doctor’s tone is not sup­posed to be this psychot­ic­ally cheery. The addi­tion of a sing-song Scot­tish accent only serves to add to the impres­sion that I am about to be told dread­ful news by Lor­raine Kelly, live on break­fast tele­vi­sion in front of a glassy-eyed nation of hun­gover stu­dents, creak­ing pen­sion­ers and the long-term unemployed.

“Och, well, you may have only six months to live, but it’s not all bad news. We’ve arranged for you to have a com­plete fash­ion makeover with our res­id­ent styl­ist, Nicky, so that you’ll look reet bonny going to your grave. Isn’t that grand? And our make-up expert will also be here with some handy hints on how to cover up your deathly pal­lor so you don’t depress your nearest and dearest. You don’t want to be leav­ing every­one down in the glums just because you’re a little under the weather, do you? Och, no you don’t, you don’t. But first, here’s a report on how our exer­cise guru, the always bouncy Joanne, is bring­ing new hope to those poor folks so tra­gic­ally affected by the Rwandan gen­o­cide with a wee spot of vig­or­ous aerobics …”

“I’m sorry?”

Warped ima­gin­ings brought on by the throb­bing ache insinu­at­ing its way across the left side of my chest, that’s all.

The doc­tor swiv­els her chair towards her mon­itor and begins tra­cing sweep­ing arcs across the blurred neg­at­ives with the tip of her ball­point pen. I’m less than reas­sured by the way in which she nar­rows her eyes and squints at the screen in an attempt to make out any finer detail.

“Noth­ing broken! Noth­ing frac­tured! Ribs all very much in place. You’ll be tip top in no time, young man. I’ll pre­scribe you some Ibupro­fen for the pain. Bet­ter than the stuff in the shops: these tab­lets are pink, which means they’re stronger. Mr. Wit­ness? Mr. Witness?”

Once again, I’m not listen­ing. I’ve become trans­fixed by the image of my chest on the screen. Hav­ing never pre­vi­ously had the oppor­tun­ity to gaze inside this part of my body, I can’t help but moment­ar­ily admire my finely honed frame­work. Shame about the sur­feit of flesh and flaky skin that cov­ers this art­ful structure.

“Doc­tor, it all seems very dark in there. My ribs are very unclear. So much black, black, black­ness. Shouldn’t I be see­ing …” — what little med­ical ter­min­o­logy I pos­sess deserts me before I’ve even man­aged to dredge up a single phrase that I might at one time have glimpsed in some long-forgotten ana­tomy text­book — “… well, more? More bones and things?”

Her eyes shift uneas­ily across her paper­work. Any­where, in fact, save for my wide-eyed, enquir­ing stare.

“Don’t you be wor­ry­ing your wee head about that. All you need to know is that there’s noth­ing broken. Most likely is that you just have some internal bruis­ing. Gone in a week or so, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“But those enorm­ous gap­ing voids between my ribs. Cav­ernous. That’s not right, surely?”

She takes a steady­ing, pla­cat­ing breath, places her hands together on the desk in front of her, and fixes me with a gaze that simply oozes professionally-crafted pity. I’m going to need a lot of pink pills for this one, I can tell.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Wit­ness. Let me be hon­est with you. It appears … it would seem that you don’t have a soul.”

I fill my chest with a rush of air and crease up from the res­ult­ing pain.

“You see, those huge gaps in your rib­cage aren’t nor­mal. In a sense, the ribs act as prison bars keep­ing our souls in place. No time off for good beha­viour here — that’s just my little joke, you under­stand. Silly me. Where was I? Oh yes. Well, judging from your X-rays, it looks like your tired old soul finally reached the end of its tether and decided to stage a death-defying break­out, pulling the bars — by which I mean the bones — apart with brute force. Your soul must have been unima­gin­ably des­per­ate to take such decis­ive action, poor bas­tard. Par­don my French.”

“When do you think this might have occurred, doc­tor? A long time ago?”

“Och, I would nae say so. If you look at the dis­tinct bend­ing in the line of your ribs here, here and here …” — she wafts her pen in front of the X-ray once more, like a par­tic­u­larly innoc­u­ous TV weather fore­caster pre­dict­ing a slowly mov­ing warm front — “… this happened very recently. It didn’t leave you a ‘Dear John’ on the man­tel­piece, I sup­pose? They some­times do, if they’re espe­cially thought­ful and considerate.”

“No, I think I would have remembered that. But listen, can I sur­vive without a soul? Should I give up the ghost right here on your anti­sep­tic floor? This is surely rather an unusual con­di­tion, isn’t it?”

“You’d be sur­prised. There’s a very healthy — that’s the wrong choice of words, isn’t it? — a very act­ive sup­port group for fel­low suf­fer­ers, and if you’ve got an accur­ate descrip­tion of your soul — rough dimen­sions, how much use and abuse it had exper­i­enced, whether it was suf­fer­ing any irre­voc­able scar­ring at the time of its dis­ap­pear­ance — you can send it to the Miss­ing Souls Hot­line and they can cir­cu­late it to all the usual places your aver­age home­less soul might seek refuge: churches, jumble sales, soup kit­chens, night bus routes, sub­urban mul­ti­plex cinemas on week­day after­noons, other dis­rep­ut­able dens of iniquity too ghastly to mention.”

I’m bent double now, hug­ging my chest and almost nuzz­ling my lap, the words no longer seep­ing into my sens­ib­il­it­ies as the pain surges towards a sear­ing intens­ity. The doc­tor is effi­ciently scrib­bling in my patient file as she con­tin­ues to cheer­ily dis­pense her homespun advice.

“Avoid alco­hol, because it only leads to bouts of intro­spec­tion and self-pity, which is a remark­ably point­less and exhaust­ing trial without a soul. You’ll find it dif­fi­cult to main­tain any sort of con­science, but don’t let that worry you, as some suf­fer­ers report almost pos­it­ive effects on that score. Try to avoid any over­whelm­ing human emo­tions — love, hate, desire, des­pair — although there’s no harm in activ­it­ies such as see­ing a kit­ten and say­ing ‘Och, what a lovely wee puss cat!’ But noth­ing more extreme than that. Cau­tion at all times: your life may depend on it.”

“And the Ibupro­fen, doctor?”

“Com­pletely and utterly use­less, I’m afraid. But the pink tab­lets are so per­fect and pretty in their shiny sil­ver cas­ing, don’t you think? That’ll make you feel bet­ter, even if noth­ing else does, ever again.”