“What’s up, Lost Boy, bad day at the office?” I opened, giving him a chance to tell me what was on his mind.
He looked pensive for a moment, then his eyes focussed back on me.
“It’s nothing, Tink, really, just… odd.”
I quirked an eyebrow at him, indicating he should go on, so he did.
“It’s just something strange that happened in the pub at lunchtime. I walked over to ‘The Colston Arms’ pub near the Bristol Royal Infirmary to get a pub lunch, and I was just about to bite into my sandwich when this guy slapped me on the back, calling me ‘Darryl’, and asking how someone called ‘Lena’ was, then he took a good look at me and went all red and embarrassed and apologised profusely; obviously he’d mistaken me for someone else, but it got me thinking.”
I waited, as he was still ravelling a thread, but I didn’t see what he was so disturbed about. He put his arm around me and held me closer, chewing his lip distractedly while staring at nothing.
“And…” I prompted, breaking him out of his reverie.
“This is not the first time, either; I usually eat in one or other of the pubs around the Bristol Royal Infirmary, because the office is on St. Michael’s Street, just behind the hospital, and this has happened at least half a dozen times over the last couple of years; it’s not just people doing a double-take or something, either; they’ve been literally nose to nose before they realise I’m not this ‘Darryl’ person.”
He shivered, and I pulled myself closer to him.
“It’s weird, Tink, and it’s starting to freak me out; there’s someone wandering around Clifton with my face, and it’s an eerie feeling. Supposing I turn a corner and walk right into this guy; aren’t you supposed to die when you meet your doppelganger? What do they call it? Your ‘Fetch’ that was it; it was a story I read in a book of folklore when I was a kid, and it scared the shit out of me, it still does. What if it’s true?”
I stared at him, but bit back the sarcastic comment; he was really freaked by this, so instead I grinned and bit his ear.
“You better hope there isn’t another one of you out there; otherwise I might be tempted to look him up, just to see if he got the same bits you did!” As I said that, I tweaked his cock, making him jump and grin, and bore in, that light in his eyes that told me he was going to tickle me.
He did, for a while, but then he discovered something even more interesting to do, and tired me out in the best possible way. Funny thing, though, as he was ramming that lovely thick cock of his deep into me, I had a momentary image, or vision, of him sitting in a waiting room or office with his double, both of them talking animatedly, then both of them looking at me, but his double was older than him, with green eyes; it was only a momentary flash, but it put me off my stride for a second; why had I imagined Mark’s double with my eyes? Mark noticed my distraction and chose to concentrate me by slipping a finger into my bum and frigging it, something guaranteed to get my attention!
I slept late the next morning, not even stirring when Mark took the girls over to Mummy-Anh’s house so she and Dada Morrison could spoil them for a while, and to give Mark and me some time to play as well.
*
DARRYL:
I was almost late for work this morning; I suppose I could have made an extra-special effort, but when you have a wife like Lena needing “just one more hug, baby, pleeaase!” who can really blame me? I didn’t blame her at all for clinging a little; we were two surgeons down on the board, with another due to retire, so everyone was backing and filling to try and prevent an unacceptable backlog building up.
These days all we ever had were lectures from the Hospital Trust about ‘Cumulative Targets’, costs per patient unit, Clinical Excellence, Core Competencies, Priority Categories, and care at the Point of Need, but no mention of getting in additional surgical staff to relieve the stress the Trust was putting the remaining staff under to try and offset government targets on waiting times. So we worked longer hours, and added more and more cases to each of our boards, and tried to work our way through, while still trying to have some semblance of family life.
Lena knew I was tired, that there were days I was so dog-tired and dispirited I really just considered packing it all in and applying for a post at a local General Practice surgery; sometimes the thought of handing out prescriptions for ointment to haemorrhoidal old women seemed infinitely more attractive than standing in the Operating Theatre for fourteen hours a day, with more of the same the following day, and no end in sight.
Then I remembered why I was doing this; it was for Lena, like everything I did, because she’d believed in me, and loved me enough to put up with it, and for our children, our little boy, David, and our baby daughter, Maureen, little Mo-Mo, an adorable miniature of Lena as I remember her when she was tiny, only with white-blonde hair, not chestnut, and green eyes, not blue, genetic traits from my side of the family.
And how do I remember Lena when she was tiny, you may well ask? Because I grew up with her, that’s why; we grew up together thinking she was my little sister; in actuality she was my aunt, but now she’s my wife, pure and simple, nothing else, the love of my life, and the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.
So I slogged on, on my feet most of that long, long day, but when I walked into the Operating Theatre, and the next patient was rolled in for the team, prepped and ready, the weariness and disillusionment fell away, and the training kicked-in.