Chapter 99

‘Well then, I doubt you’ll need a tour of the place all over again,’ says the acting receptionist, an elegant Malaysian girl with a friendly attitude, shining long black hair and a bodily silhouette Matilda can’t help but notice is packed with curves. It’s a Monday morning, now one week since accepting the job offer. ‘You would be familiar with this place already from your time with Doctor Goodwynn?’ she asks, opening a door leading from the common area into a small room with two desks joined together in the middle of the floor.

‘Oh– no, I was interning at her other practice,’ Matilda responds.

‘Wait, for real? Why does no one ever tell me anything…’ The girl closes the door behind them. ‘I’m Quinn, by the way.’

They shake each other’s hands and exchange smiles. The sky outside the windows is oppressed by blankets of overcast clouds, but the dopamine in Matilda’s system makes it all seem so bright and fresh.

‘This is the prep room,’ Quinn explains. Filing cabinets line two whole walls, and shelves with drawers and hatches full of inventory items fill the walls opposite. Stepping forward, Quinn reaches for a small white piece of plastic and hands it to Matilda. It’s a name-tag with her name printed in bold upper-case letters. ‘Here’s all you’ll need for today. They’ll get you a proper one tomorrow.’

‘I get a “proper” one?’ she asks, astounded, already feeling high on the sense of official importance and duty bestowed upon her.

Quinn laughs. ‘Yes. A proper one. You’ll have to get a lanyard with a keypass on it and whatnot, like this one.’ She lifts her own lanyard to dangle an object the size of a credit card. ‘You have to wait until your trial shifts are over, though. For some reason they don’t want to give out these ones until you do all your shadow shifts–” pausing to roll her eyes “–it’s a policy and rules thing or something, I don’t know. Follow me!’

Quinn leads her back out into the common area and around into the hallway towards the front desk; a long, red oak counter with a matte finish that gives the foyer the high-end modernised ambiance of some embassy of international affairs.

‘Well then,’ Quinn smiles, ‘welcome to the team. It’s just me here this morning, so I think you’ll be doing your first shadow-shift with me. Yay! That’s the computer where I sit,’ pointing at two screens at the far end of the service desk, up against the wall. The computer in front of you is where you can do some work once we get you going, but Desi will sit there when she comes in for the midday shift later. We only tend to need one of us for the early morning shift– it’s usually the least busy part of the day.’ She grabs a small wrapped chocolate from a clear plastic bowl tucked behind the upper partition of the desk and begins to unwrap its foil coating. ‘Want one?’ she asks.

‘Oh. Oh, no, I shouldn’t.’

‘Understandable. I might get off my fat ass and be responsible one day.’ She laughs, then sits down at her computer, gesturing towards the chair at the other end of the desk. ‘Bring that chair over and have a seat next to me so you can see what I’m doing.’

The office chair is a large, advanced-looking piece of furniture, with a tall back, deep padding, and armrests that look like black clouds. Lowering herself down into its plush hold, Matilda simpers with awe at the obscene levels of comfort that encase her body, even as she feels the buttons of her white office shirt tighten across her waist. She had to steal the shirt from Carlile’s wardrobe when assembling an outfit for her first day on the job, because her own shirt had kept letting her belly button show itself from a gap between two extremely stressed buttons.

Quinn, however, is dressed all in black, much like a waitress, which tells Matilda that she might not have to worry about buttoned shirts ever again.

She spends the morning watching Quinn greet patients, receive their details and offer relevant instructions. Everything Quinn does on the computer system, she demonstrates a second time for Matilda to observe, breaking it down step by step; she enters data into the system, calls through to a practitioner’s office, answers a call to receive a booking, edits existing booking details on the database, sorts through emails, shows Matilda which ones are relevant and which ones aren’t for various reasons…

Later on in the day, who else should come through the foyer to retrieve something she’d left in her car, but for Dr Rupi Goodwynn herself, her silken black hair held up in a swirled bun, and the ends of her long, light sundress trailing along behind her as she stops with a smile of recognition on her face. Her cheeks look softer, maybe by a trick of the lighting, and the waist of her dress conforms to the outward swell of what might just be menstrual bloating – or might not be.

‘Matilda!’ she cheers, clasping her hands in front of her chest. ‘How are you? So you accepted the work!?’

Matilda can only nod abashedly.

‘Oh my goodness, I am so happy to hear this. It is so lovely to see you again, it really is so lovely.’

‘Yeah!’ Matilda beams with a lopsided grin as she glances at Quinn, unsure how to respond from beneath the pressure of all her gratitude towards Dr Goodwynn, without coming off as excessively thankful, subservient, or indebted.

Fuck, has she started losing her confidence already? She only quit sports three or so weeks ago.

‘It’s good to be here,’ she replies, feeling awfully plain about herself.

‘Excellent, excellent, I like to hear that very much. And you have been looking after yourself, I hope?’

‘Certainly have!’ she laughs, knowing she hasn’t been. The self-punishing, the lingering sickness of failure, the intentional starving in desperate faith that her ballooned body will continue to diminish.

‘Good, good,’ smiles the doctor. ‘Well, I look forward to seeing you around more often here. You take care, please. And have fun. I am needing to go, now, but I will see you soon. Goodbye. And goodbye to you too, Quinn.’ Dr Goodwynn grins and waves, making her way out the sliding doors at the entrance.

‘She’s so nice, isn’t she?’ Quinn observes.

Staring with unfocused eyes at the glass sliding doors through which Dr Goodwynn just vanished, Matilda nods, wistful, for some reason unable to escape from a sense of remorse she doesn’t want to feel.

. . .