Will You Read This, Please? by Joanna Cannon

Author:Joanna Cannon [Cannon, Joanna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2023-03-15T17:00:00+00:00

Of Sound Mind. Mostly.

Joyia Fitch

Working with Clare Mackintosh

The GP

London, 2016

I’m at the doctor’s for a sore throat.

‘What were you doing in Bali all this time?’ Perhaps he can see my thousand-yard stare, maybe he’s spotted my weight loss. I’m thinner, leaner; maybe weaker, maybe stronger, I can’t really tell. I try not to flinch as he examines my neck glands, his fingers prodding around.

What were you doing in Bali? His question smudges me like an eraser, my reply tiny scuffs of rolled rubber. ‘Yoga … this woman … jungle …’ The scuffs fall across his desk and into the old black keyboard his chubby fingers tap away on.

Scuff, scuff, scuff. Tap, tap, tap.

He turns from his screen, clasps his hands and looks me in the eye. ‘I think you have PTSD.’ I can’t run anywhere, any more.

I’m unblurred, for a moment. How someone can tell that in a ten-minute appointment, I’ll never know. Post-traumatic stress disorder – isn’t that what war-torn soldiers get?

I go to the doctor’s for a sore throat. I walk out with a mental health referral.

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