We used to have a doctor in the Chelsea. I needed a flu shot one fall, and, since I had seen his fliers in the elevator, I went to his office, on the first floor. It was eleven in the morning. It took him a long time to answer the door, and when he did, a cloud of pungent, exotic smoke wafted from the room. The doctor wore army pants and a t-shirt, and spoke in a southern drawl. Classic rock was playing on his stereo. Though his office hours began at nine, he said he had just got out of bed.
I believe I must have been one of his first patients, and he showed me around the office proudly. He had remodeled the place to look like an old-time doctor’s office, complete with antique equipment, like apothecary cabinets and examining tables from the fifties, all very cool. (There’s a particular Chelsea aesthetic that many residents seem to share: grandly trashy, worn chic, whatever you want to call it, and he had that down.) I was impressed.
I told him I was a writer and he said he’d written a novel: a sort of combination of star wars and the occult, and I lied and said I’d like to read it. I got the flu shot, and he called me back several times afterwards to make sure I hadn’t had a bad reaction.
Soon after that, somebody took to defacing the fliers he had put up in the elevators, writing “Cowboy Doc” all over them, among other things. I thought that sucked. (There’s a dark side to the Chelsea: wherever you have a lot of creative people, there are bound to be some who are bitter about their careers not quite panning out.) The flu shot worked, however: I didn’t get sick all winter.
I kept meaning to go back and visit him, but I never go to the doctor unless I absolutely have to, and so it wasn’t until the next fall that I ventured back to his office. He wasn’t there, but the door of his office was open and movers were carrying out all of his antique doctor’s equipment. He just never got enough business. Though to my mind he fit right in, probably for a lot of people he didn’t really inspire confidence as a doctor.
I remember our conversation the day I got the flu shot. He said he had been trained as an all-purpose doctor by the army, and he gave me a long list of specialties in which he had attained competence. The one I remember was “Emergency Psychiatric Intervention,” and I told him that sounded like it should go over pretty well at the Chelsea.
Copyright 2006 Ed Hamilton
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