My Life as a Man by Frederic Lindsay

and put his tongue out at the side of his mouth to help him concentrate as he dialled. Being angry
with Mrs Morton didn’t mean I didn’t want to protect her. Before he could open his mouth, I put my phone down and hurried off. He had no choice but to follow, hopefully before he could
call for reinforcements.
    I went into Reception and sat on one of the benches. He came and sat behind me. When I turned, he scowled at me. I had a feeling I’d turned a chore for him into something personal.
He’d decided not to like me. Irritating him hadn’t been a good idea.
    After an hour or so, I began to feel exposed. The numbers on the benches were thinning out. Minute by minute, people were called and got up and went off. There were three receptionists, then
two, then one of them disappeared into the back office behind the desk. I felt a hot breath on my neck and a voice like sandpaper on rust muttered, ‘On your feet. If you fucking make me,
I’ll carry you out.’
    I looked both ways. At the end of the bench, a woman sat with a little girl on her lap. Opposite, an old man was blowing his nose into his hankie and taking an interest in the result.
    I turned and asked politely, ‘What?’
    ‘I need a shit,’ he said, as if appealing to my better nature.
    That’s what his breath had reminded me of; another puzzle solved.
    ‘If you’re hungry, you’d be better with a sandwich.’
    While he was thinking about that, I got up and went to the reception desk. The nurse didn’t look up.
    ‘Here, you,’ I said.
    She was putting a card into a box with a long row of them. I reached over and took it from her. When I turned it upside-down the cards poured out across the desk.
    She must have had a button under there. Help came quickly.
    Very impressive, but, of course, the Evening Times had run an article on how much security had been improved after the latest assault on a nurse.

 
    CHAPTER SIXTEEN
    S ecurity told me calling the police would be the usual routine. I told them I was getting over a nervous breakdown.
    ‘At your age,’ the older one said with a frown. Mental trouble in his book was obviously something they’d have called malingering when he was defending his country from the
Hun; or maybe just lack of moral fibre, as my old headmaster would have put it.
    The younger one was more sympathetic. ‘You stopped your medication?’ he asked. He had ginger hair and pop eyes and, ungratefully, I wondered if he was talking from personal
experience.
    At the end of the day, I hadn’t stolen anything or hit anybody. Spilling record cards over a desk went more with having a screw loose than being a master criminal. And it was probably
coming up to their tea break. They told me to push off. ‘It’s a kick up the arse you need,’ the older one explained.
    Left to myself, I’d have found an obscure side exit. Like all old city hospitals this place was built like a rabbit warren, and unless an army was looking for me they couldn’t be
watching all of them. Mutt and Jeff, however, insisted on seeing me out the front door.
    Fortunately, there was no sign of the big man in the blue suit. Maybe he’d given up, or maybe he was wandering around the building looking for side exits. Maybe he couldn’t wait any
longer for his shit. To my shame I didn’t check the car park. Mrs Morton, I told myself, must be long gone.
    I walked for a long time, and came out of my daze near a bus stop with a familiar number on display. Not long afterwards, the right bus came along and I did what I’d done for most of my
life. I got on and went, for want of a better word, home.
    Going back there wasn’t a bad plan. I thought about it as I watched the tenements turn into the familiar scabby houses of the scheme. Hairy Alec was in hospital. His girl might be grateful
for word of how he was doing. Assuming she’d got over her opinion of me as a four-letter type, there might be a bed in it for the night. For sure, I didn’t have anywhere else