The Doctor of Unhappened Things
This won't hurt. It already did.
A physician who treats illnesses that have not happened yet. Patients are healed in advance, and carry scars from events still to come.
- Code
- VN-067
- Kind
- person
- Where it is met
- institutional
- Scale
- human
- Leaves you with
- dread
What it looks like, and what it does
A tall figure in a pressed white coat in a clinic where every chair faces the door. A chart of a patient's body with no marks. The patient's hands bandaged around nothing. A tray of instruments laid ready. A wall clock with the date left blank.
Sees patients on Thursdays. Speaks gently. Never asks what is wrong. Records the date the patient will be grateful.
What is known
Dr. Haldane receives referrals from no hospital. Patients arrive with a card that reads PREVENTION. They leave with no symptoms and a dressing.
The scars show later: a thin line under a breast, a missing finger joint, a mark on the throat where a tube would have gone. The events never happen. The scars remain.
What it can do
- Treats an illness or injury before it occurs
- Leaves the scar of what he prevented
Where it stops
- Cannot treat what has already begun
- Cannot treat the same body twice for the same event
An encounter
Faulks was told she would not need her appendix. She left with a small dressing and no appendix. Two years later a stranger on her train collapsed, and Faulks, who is a nurse, found herself unfolding a blanket without a plan. Over the months she realised how many times she had been spared something, and that each had left a mark.
Imogen Faulks, patient, Consulting room, 9 Haldane Place, A Thursday morning
What is established, and what is only said
- established: Twenty-three patients bear scars whose causes were not later recorded as occurring.
- incomplete: Six patients have been unable to identify what was prevented.
- interpretation: A world in which things do not happen is not a world without cost. The scars may be the invoice.
Still unresolved
His own chart lists a procedure dated tomorrow. It is signed “completed.”
Where it has been recorded
- Haldane Place (confirmed) — Recorded by Imogen Faulks, patient.
Connected entities
- The Meter Reader — Both act ahead of the event. The Meter Reader announces the count. The Doctor cuts before it starts.