Working in Out-Patients

Sent in by Terri Pattrick
September 16, 2001
- London, England

Having spent some time travelling around India, Terri returned to England with a rather urgent need to find work and pay off the credit cards that had supported her so well. She was, therefore, overjoyed to be awarded a job helping out at a local Centre for Mental Health (as they are sometimes referred to). Her degree in psychology helped, of course.

One of the out-patients (Mary) at the centre had an obsession with one of the psychiatrists (Dr Dave), i.e. one of Terri's bosses. To put it mildly, Mary was completely bonkers, umm… mentally ill. She was absolutely besotted with Dave, much to his horror. In her vivid, highly erotic dreams (that she would often recount at the top of her voice to anyone that happened to be in the room) she repeatedly lived the fantasy that she and Dr Dave were to marry. Unfortunately, she had a certain difficulty in separating dreams from reality.

Every day, Mary would come to the clinic and hang around, trying to get into Dave's clinic rooms and the wards. These attempts were largely unsuccessful, as Dave had wised up to her lustful affections, and spent most of his day taking steps to avoid her, ducking behind filing cabinets, running out of one room and doubling back through the hospital's maze of corridors. Increasingly frustrated at the continued absence of her "fiancée", Mary hounded and hounded poor Terri and the other out-patient staff all day, in a desperate attempt to catch a glimpse or tell the doctor that she loved him and wanted to have his babies immediately. He, meanwhile, at the mention of her name, would shrink and visibly shudder.

And yet, he was still her allocated psychiatrist.

On this particular day, Mary surpassed herself - but then, so did he...

She arrived in the clinic and started hounding Terri to contact the doctor. She refused - gently of course, because Mary was 6 feet tall as well as wide!

Then, since Dr Dave had clinic that afternoon, he arrived to collect his case notes. Whether it was accurate timing, luck or Karma, this woman ran into Terri's office and tried to kiss the horrified doctor. All his years of medical training had prepared him for this moment. He had been warned that there would be moments like these that would test him to the limit: the moment when everything else just fades out, time seems to stand still, and there is just you and your nemesis, facing one another. This was the moment of truth, when he could finally stand proud and justify the thousands of pounds that his disgruntled parents had ploughed into his expensive training - the moment when he could prove his worth, his skill, his manliness.

Panicking, he dropped his case notes in a big pile and turned, slipping on the shiny pieces of paper, and ran for the door, stumbling as he went.

Terri, meanwhile, was left to pick up the pieces. She managed to calm the highly confused Mary down. Mary was understandably distraught, as (in her mind at least) she had just been horribly, coldly spurned by the dear love of her live. Faced with his, she did the only thing she could do: locked herself in the toilet and refused to come out.

Meanwhile, the doctor's clinic had started and the other patients were arriving thick and fast. Terri called the doctor to inform him of this. However, he refused to take his clinic until the nutter woman had left. Time pressing, she convinced him to come down and see his scheduled patients, and in time, still shaking, he did.

During his clinic the nutter woman sat in the surgery and hounded his patients. For one second Terri turned her back, and with lightning fast reactions and the precision of a Samurai (jeep), Mary dived into his office. Like a fox in a chicken coop, there were shrieks, sounds of things crashing into other things, bits and pieces flying around.

Worried for his safety, Terri rang him and asked if he needed any help. Surprisingly calmly (as a six foot woman was on his back, planting him with amorous love bites), he confirmed that yes indeed, he was rather in need of assistance, if Terri would be so kind. She immediately ran in there, and found Mary crawling all over poor Dave, trying to kiss him again whilst he cowered in his chair, shielding himself with his arms. Terri pulled this hefty woman off him and finally managed to get her out of the office and the clinic.

Umm… he's the learned man, the one who has taken years and years to become a psychiatrist, and yet he didn't deal with this situation at all - and never mind that the woman in question is not getting quality care.