"What exactly is it you'd like to know, Mr Alan?" Sarah asked politely. The man on the other end of the line cleared his throat uncomfortably. Sarah suppressed a sigh and got up from her desk. This was going to be something stupid, she could already tell.
"Well it's...I don't know if I should really bother you with it, but...um..."
"It's okay Mr Alan, please do say," she encouraged, as she turned to stare out of the window. Just last week she'd had a phone call from a man who'd got a drinking straw stuck in his urethra and it had begun just the same as this one. If this wasn't somehow related to an embarrassing genital issue, she'd be the Queen of bloody Sheba.
"Umm...well, I've got my arm in a cast, you see..."
"Yes Mr Alan, I see from your records. Broken about two weeks ago now, yes? Are you experiencing any pain? Have you had any problems with the cast?"
If he'd somehow managed to get his bits stuck in his cast, she was going to cry.
Out in the waiting room she heard raised, angry voices, two men. Julia, the receptionist, shouted something at them and they quietened down.
"Well, it's my friend. He did something to the cast and I'm trying to fix it."
"Alright then, what did he do?" Sarah asked.
"Umm..."
The same two voices suddenly flared up again in the waiting room and she could hear Julia talking agitatedly to the two arguing men. Sarah felt a twinge of worry; their surgery was usually fairly quiet, but there was a fight on occasion. Olufemi, the big burly nurse who usually broke up such things, was on his holiday leave right now. Sarah bit her lip and decided to hurry Mr Alan along, get out there herself.
"Mr Alan, is your cast damaged? Has it come off?"
"No, nothing like that. Only, I wanted to know if it was okay to put Tippex on it."
"Uh...Tippex?" This was new.
The shouting was getting louder, more raucous now, and somebody else had joined in too. She was starting to get seriously worried.
"He drew...okay, he drew a cock on my cast, alright? I just...how do I get rid of it?"
There was a crash in the waiting room and Sarah gasped.
"I mean, will Tippex make the plaster flake off or something?"
"Um-"
Across the corridor, she heard the door of the office John used open and his soft, brisk footsteps as he went out to the waiting room. She winced; John was going to get his backside handed to him.
"Doctor?" Mr Alan said.
"Ah, just one-"
The argument outside crescendoed with a tremendous crash and, almost in the same instant, Sarah heard John's voice.
"QUIET! YOU! SIT down there. YOU! GET in that office NOW!"
There was a thud in the waiting room and the following silence was broken only by the sound of somebody shuffling rapidly along the corridor. John's familiar footsteps followed, then the door of his office closed.
It was only then that Sarah noticed she had sat back down in her chair. She hadn't meant to, she was sure of it. But when John had barked like that...
"Um." she said.
"Can...am I allowed to talk now?" Mr Alan whispered nervously on the other end of the line. "What was that?"
"It was just one of my colleagues, nothing to worry about."
"Oh...right."
::
I used to work in a public library and one of the most fun reference desk phone enquiries I ever had was when a guy had fallen asleep on the sofa and his little brother had drawn a cock on his arm cast. He had a job in a restaurant and had a short sleeved uniform, so he had to get it off before he went in to work, and needed me to find out how. Oh it was such a laugh!