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I
’m waiting, and I’m waiting, and I’m
waiting. And as I wait, I start to
wonder: how much could we achieve
if we were handed back all the hours
we’ve ever spent in waiting rooms? And
how many hours would that be? Two
hundred? Three hundred? More?
‘Imagine,’ my bored but wired brain
comments, ‘what you could do with two
hundred hours! Write another novel.
Become uent in Mandarin. Finally nd a
solution that would prevent women from
having to spend the entire theatre interval
queuing for the toilets while men sail in
and out and still have time for a drink at
t h e b a r...’
I’m bumped out of my musings by a- well, by a bump. The waiting room I’m in
today belongs to a Frauenarzt – a so-called
‘women’s doctor’ (bless the Germans’
literal hearts), which in other countries
would be called a gynecologist. Over the
many years I’ve been with him, my gyno
has become the go-to doctor for young,
rich, glossy, pregnant Berliners. Hence the
baby bump that knocks me sideways, out of
my reverie and into the large Louis Vuitton
handbag beside me.
“Sorry,” I mumble to the bag-owner,
although the bump-owner hasn’t said sorry
to me. (These women belong to Generation
Entitled, and ‘sorry’ doesn’t feature highly
in their vocabulary.)
The glossy, pregnant Fraulein Number
Two snatches her bag away and holds it
protectively to her, as if she’s already had
her baby and it happens to have LV
Sarah’s nervous about a visit to the
gynaecologist, but the exam isn’t
what’s making her feel awkward
I NEED
ADV ICE
DIVORCE DIARIES
by Sarah Quigley
‘As he snaps on the rubber
gloves, I go into a sort of trance’
Baby,
stamped all over it. How out of place I feel!
Every time I endure an hour of waiting
here, I become increasingly aware of being
an island in a sea of burgeoning fertile girls
bearing big bellies and even bigger
designer totes. And then there’s me, a pale
little child-less (‘child-free’, my gay friend
Tiny corrects sharply in my head) stick
gure who – in an unconscious gesture of
de ance – has chosen to carry a crumpled
canvas shopper decorated by wisps of carrot
fronds from its last supermarket outing.
“Frau Quigley?” snaps the savagely
grumpy receptionist, who’s also my poor
gyno’s wife. With pity in my heart (he has
to go home with her every night?) I push
open the door to the examination chamber- and then, as always, feel pity for myself at
the sight of the Chair of Horror with its
frightening stirrups. German medical
check-ups are not for the faint-hearted.
As the years have passed and I’ve grown
older, my gyno has grown larger. Today he
lies back in his huge leather chair like
a king seal and we go through the usual
routine: he asks me about my latest book,
I ask him about his latest holiday, and then
we get down to business.
As he snaps on the rubber gloves, I go
into a sort of nervous trance – although mynervousness today isn’t actually related to
myself. What I desperately want to ask my
friendly Seal, who – like an accountant or a
priest – knows pretty much everything
about my life, is whether there’s a chance in
hell that Mr Stable will be able to overcome
his long-standing psychological hang-ups
with the help of pharmaceuticals or
counselling so we can nally have a sex life.
Speedily, thankfully, we’re done. “Is
there anything else?” asks the Seal, lolling
back in his reclining chair, tapping my
results into his computer with one ipper.
“Do you know anything about ED?”
I blurt out.
“ED? You have a problem with that?” He
looks immensely puzzled, and his question
puzzles me in turn. Is it that, as he’s nota ‘men’s doctor’, he doesn’t even know what
erectile dysfunction is? Or is it that his wife
is so fearsome that anything preventing
one from having sex with one’s partner is
like manna from heaven?
‘I need help...’ But before I can begin to
of oad, my time is up. The wife is snapping
at the door, and other Waiters are queuing,
with more assertive demeanours and better
bags. “Never mind,” I mumble, and
I shuf e out with my carrot bag, feeling
more lost than ever.
*SEPTEMBER 2019 / NEXT 151