The Water-Method Man

'The water method?'

'Failed. Utterly.'

'I see, Mr ... ?'

'Trumper.'

'Do you have pain, Mr Trumper?' I sense that the mother with the swollen child is anxious; the girl in leather grips her paper tight.

'Some ...' A mysterious answer, the waiting room is on edge.

'Would you tell me, please, just what ...'

'It's stuck.'

'Stuck?'

'Stuck shut.'

'I see. Shut...' She looks through my record, a long history of being stuck shut. 'And you've had this trouble before?'

'The world over. Austria to Iowa!' The waiting room is impressed by this worldly disease.

'I see. It's what you saw Dr Vigneron about before?'

'Yes.' Incurable, the waiting room decides. Poor fellow.

'And have you been taking anything?'

'Water.' The nurse looks up; the water method is clearly unknown to her.

'I see,' she says. 'If you'll have a seat, Dr Vigneron will see you in a moment.'

Crossing the waiting room to Tulpen, I saw the mother smile kindly at me, the child stare, the stunning young girl cross her legs, thinking, If it's stuck shut, stay away from me. But the poor old man with his faulty tubes did not respond; hard of hearing, perhaps, or totally deaf, or peeing through his ear.

'I should think,' Tulpen whispered, 'that you've had enough of this.'

'Enough of what?' I said too loudly. The mother tensed; the girl flapped her paper; the old man shifted uncomfortably in his chair, his terrible insides sloshing.

'This,' Tulpen hissed, tapping her fist in her lap. 'This,' she said with a careful gesture taking in this collection of the urinary-wounded. There's always a rare fraternity in doctors' offices, but in the office of a specialist the intimacy is worse. There are clubs for veterans, for people with high IQs, for lesbians, for alumni, for mothers who give birth to triplets, persons in favor of saving the elm, Rotarians, Republicans and Neo-Maoists, but here was a forced association; people who have problems peeing. Call us Vigneronists! We could meet once a week, have contests and exhibitions - a kind of track and field meet of urinary events.

Then Dr Jean Claude Vigneron came into the waiting room from the secret innards of his office, wafting over us the swarthy smell of Gauloises. We Vigneronists sat in great awe: Which of us would be called?

'Mrs Cullen?' Vigneron said. The mother stood up nervously and cautioned her child to be good while she was gone.

Vigneron smiled at Tulpen. The untrustworthy French! 'You waiting to see me?' he asked her. An outsider among these assembled Vigneronists, Tulpen stared back at him, unanswering.

'No, she's with me,' I told Vigneron. He and Tulpen smiled.

When the doctor went off with Mrs Cullen, Tulpen whispered, 'I didn't think he'd look like that.'

'Look like what?' I asked. 'What should urologists look like? Bladders?'

'He doesn't look like a bladder,' Tulpen answered, impressed.

The child sat there timidly listening to us. If her mother was the patient, I thought, why did the child look so swollen and yellow? I determined that her appearance was the result of not being allowed to pee. About Colm's age, I thought. She was worried about being alone, and restless too; she peeked at the nurse and watched the old man. She was getting upset, so I tried some reassuring conversation. 'Do you go to school?'

But it was the stunning young girl in leather who looked up. Tulpen simply stared at me and the child ignored the question.