The Watchful Eye Read Online Free PDF Page B

summon his patient, running the gauntlet of people angry at the waiting time extending with every one of them who wanted more than their allocated ten minutes.
    Guy Malkin was his next patient. An odd misfit of a boy. Not entirely his own fault. Guy had Marfan’s Syndrome, a disease of the connective tissue, which accounted for some of his oddness: long, spidery fingers, hyper-extending joints, arms that dangled at his side as long as an ape’s. He sat down awkwardly, untidy, all bony limbs, fidgety hands and knees that constantly bounced up and down nervously. Guy was long and skinny, with hunched shoulders. Today he was wearing ill-fitting jeans, huge and too long for him so the flares formed puddles at his feet. The jeans were grubby and worn with a rip, which afforded Daniel a glimpse of a very narrow knee. Guy’s eyes were looking all around the room, everywhere but at him. How old was he, Daniel wondered? Fifteen? The computer screen insisted seventeen.
    Daniel smiled encouragingly at the gauche youth but the smile seemed to have the effect of making the youth shrink.
    Daniel was aware that the time was ticking away.
    He needed to hurry him along.
    ‘What can I do for you, Guy?’
    He was unprepared for the look of panic which froze the boy’s face. Eyes wide, mouth a frightened ‘O’, sweat glistening his forehead, a blotchy, embarrassing rash spreading across his face and down his neck.
    ‘Guy?’ he prompted gently.
    ‘I don’t think I’m normal, Doctor.’
    The million dollar question. What is normal? Guy had Marfan’s.
    ‘We-ell,’ he began, but Guy interrupted – almost impatiently.
    ‘I don’t mean the Marfan’s, Doctor.’
    ‘Then in what way?’
    The eyes lifted – just for a second then fell away again.
    ‘Sexually, I mean,’ he muttered to the floor.
    Daniel smiled at the youth and deliberately veered away from sounding patronising. ‘I wish I had a pound for every seventeen-year-old who thinks he’s abnormal sexually,’ he said casually, trying to convey the message that this was no unusual encounter, that the youth was not that dreadful word – different.
    Guy swallowed and seemed unable to continue.
    Gently Daniel repeated his question. ‘In what way, Guy?’
    ‘I find it…’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘I can’t…I’ve never been with a girl but I want to. I know the girl I want and she wants me. I can tell.’
    For all of us there is a match. However strange, unique or unusual, there is someone. For Guy Malkin, for him.
    The eyes crept back up towards him.
    ‘You know?’
    It came out all of a rush then. ‘Can I have some Viagra?’
    Daniel was taken aback. A seventeen-year-old virgin asking for the designer sex drug? To prescribe him this would set him up for life, always dependent on a drug to ensure normal activity.
    But how could he explain this in ten minutes?
    ‘You’ve never been with a girl?’
    More dropping of the head together with a firm shake.
    Daniel tried to make a joke of it. ‘So what are you planning to do when you’ve swallowed a load of Viagra?’
    A shrug.
    It was scary
.
    ‘Look, Guy,’ he said finally. ‘I’ll tell you what. Just go out with girls normally. Don’t think too much about sex. Make friends of them.’ He grinned at him. ‘Most blokes of your age tell whopping big lies about it anyway. Half of them are in the same boat as you. They haven’t done it. What’s more – they’re scared of it. You don’t need a drug. Just let it happen in your own time.’
    ‘You don’t understand, Doc.’ Guy was desperate. ‘I really need to be with a girl
normally
. Otherwise…’
    Daniel caught the note of panic in the youth’s face. It alarmed him.
    ‘What don’t I understand, Guy? Why is this need so…’
    Guy pressed his lips together, started to hyperventilate with rapid, deep sucking breaths, shot desperate glances towards the door. ‘I got to go, Doc.’ He was already out of his seat.
    And what was called the ‘window of opportunity’