Keppelberg by Stan Mason

feeling?’
    â€˜Fine,’ I told him sitting in the chair opposite him. ‘I should explain that I had a full medical check-up a week ago when I left the army. I’m as fit as a fiddle.’
    â€˜Good,’ he said flatly. ‘But we have our own methods here. Let’s start with taking a blood sample.’
    I was surprised that he didn’t want to check my pulse, my breathing, my heart or anything else. He simply asked for a blood sample. He produced a hypodermic needle and asked me to roll up the shirt sleeve of my left arm. Without hesitation, he injected the needle into my vein and withdrew a small amount of blood which surged into a phial. He then placed some cotton-wool over the wound and stuck a plaster over it before calling for the receptionist who came quickly into the room. He passed the phial of blood to her as though it was precious.
    â€˜Get this checked out immediately,’ he ordered curtly.
    She nodded, taking it from him before disappearing through the doorway. The doctor then went on to give me a thorough examination. As he did so, I looked around the surgery at the blank walls. There were no framed certificates hanging there to prove that the man was actually a doctor.
    â€˜Where did you do your doctorate?’ I asked inquisitively.
    â€˜I grew up in this village,’ he informed me candidly. ‘I studied hard and became the doctor here.’
    â€˜Without taking the examinations of the medical institutions?’ I posed with concern, my heart beating a little faster.
    â€˜If you’re thinking about a medical certificate to prove my qualifications, forget it,’ he returned bluntly. ‘It’s only a piece of paper. It’s the same if you get married... the marriage certificate’s only a piece of paper. It doesn’t prove that a person’s going to be a good husband or wife. The same applies to the medical profession. Just because you’re passed as a doctor by a medical board doesn’t mean you’re a good doctor.’
    I was appalled to learn that he had never passed a test with an authorised medical board. Nonetheless, I believed that he was a physician who knew what he was doing. After all, he was the only doctor to eleven hundred people in the village so he had to be good.
    â€˜What happens if someone needs an operation?’ I asked him. ‘Do you call an ambulance to take them to a nearby hospital?’
    â€˜No one goes out of this village to a hospital,’ he told me adamantly. ‘I do all the operations myself.’
    â€˜And clearly you’re successful,’ I ventured, ‘because there are no burial sites of failures in the church graveyard,’
    He dismissed the comment out of hand and I wondered how he was able to cope with an operation that took four or five hours on his own and yet still deal with patients who came to see him at the surgery. However, it was a hypothetical notion and it was his problem not mine. When he had finished, he made some notes, placing them in a new folder, before looking up at me.
    â€˜Well you seem unusually fit,’ he told me with a slight smile touching his lips. ‘Is there anything you wish to ask me with regard to your health or your diet?’
    I shook my head slowly. ‘I don’t think so, I replied.
    At that moment, the door opened and the receptionist came in waving a sheet of paper in her hand which she handed to the doctor. He glanced at it, nodded, and she left the room.
    His jaw moved slightly from side to side as he looked directly at me. ‘It appears that you have more iron in your blood than is deemed necessary,’ he told me seriously. ‘Iron’s a metallic element normally found in red pigment or haemoglobin of the blood. It enables the blood to absorb and carry oxygen to the cells in the body. However, it cannot be removed through normal means of disposal and, if left to accumulate, it can shorten a person’s