Tuesday 24 May 2016

O.S.

"No, you're not listening," Dr. Clementine had lost all patience, perhaps it was easier to do over the phone, but he did feel that the woman sobbing at him at the other end of the line was irretrievably stupid, hence his need to take control of the situation, "Your husband died because he'd routinely failed to update his firmware, we offer a reasonably priced firmware service at the clinic, or, as we always remind our customers, you can update at home if you connect to your wifi."

She blubbered something incomprehensible, then hung up, which was exactly as he had hoped, and, to be honest, he had half a mind just to put the phone down on her anyway.

He had two more calls to make before lunch, the first was to order his lunch, which he'd been daydreaming about during the preceding call, which is why he'd mispronounced the words 'heart bypass' as 'ham bypass' and 'insurance' as 'insandwich', she hadn't noticed, she was too busy crying.

The second call was to a notoriously difficult patient, Mr. Groan, who needed a new artificial rib cage.

"But why?" Groan bloated, "I feel like I only got it put in last month."

"It was three years ago," the good doctor corrected him, satisfied to be so readily armed with the facts.

"There's nothing wrong with it though, I'm in no pain..."

"But it's out of date, it's an old model, the CentriCage has moved on at least four generations since then, honestly it's embarrassing to think about you walking around with that old thing in there, not to mention dangerous."

"Dangerous? What do you mean?"

"Oh, those old models, liable to lock up after a few years, in some cases constricting upon the lungs..."

"Well, why the bloody hell did you put the thing in if that was the case?"

"State of the art at the time Mr. Groan, we wouldn't mess you around there, but all things have a life span, products need to be renewed."

"But I'm in good health, I've had my eyes, my brain, my heart since I was born, and they haven't failed me."

"Yet," added Dr. Clementine with a pleasingly theatrical air of menace. "Have you looked into our ocular replacement options, or our brain failsafes, guaranteed to extend functionality in the event of stroke, and we have a very good deal on artificial hearts at the moment, the PumpPerfect series comes with glowing customer testimonials..."

"No, I don't want you to replace anything else, I wish I had just torn up those gift tokens my son got me and never bought the pesky ribs in the first place. Now if you don't mind..."

"Mr. Groan, I do mind, I care very greatly about my patients and I must stress that the warranty on your ribs expires in two days and, you know how it is with these things, it'll be three days and that's when they malfunction."

"Malfunction?! They're ribs, not a bloody car engine, what could possibly... No, don't tell me, I don't want to know."

"A lot of people take something like their ribs for granted, they're surprisingly complex, you'd be impressed by the amount of research and development that goes into our upgrades, they're government approved and better than the real thing for a reason."

"How much?" there was a wearied, battled tone, very different to the strident Groan of earlier.
Clementine honestly hadn't anticipated this and stammered whilst he scrabbled for the appropriate paperwork.

"As an existing customer you do get a discounted price for upgrading, so, for the latest model it'd be £12,000 plus surgical fees, which we can discuss in more detail at your examination."

"But... That's a fortune... What about another model, not the latest one..."

"Oh, I'm legally unable to retail anything other than the most up to date..."

"Fine," Groan sighed.

Dr. Clementine smiled, impressed with himself, and heard the reassuring sound of the delivery drone dropping his ham sandwich off at reception.

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