Читать книгу The Three of U.S.: A New Life in New York - Peter Godwin - Страница 12

My period is now two weeks late, though every day it feels as if it’s about to start. I can’t face the uncertainty of another home test, so I am sitting in the offices of my Murray Hill gynaecologist. I am thirty-six and this is the first time I have ever visited a gynaecologist. At home, in England, I relied on the GP for everything, but in New York everyone has a different doctor for every part of the body. Americans recommend them to each other as a sign of trust and friendship, like hot stock-market tips. I remember asking Kelly, shortly after we’d met and we were sitting in Bar Pitti on Sixth Avenue, if she could suggest a good doctor.

‘What sort?’

‘Well, you know, a good family doctor, a generalist.’

‘You know, that’s kinda hard and I really wouldn’t recommend mine,’ she said, pushing a manicured index finger around the salt-fringed rim of her margarita so it made a dry, squeaking noise. ‘I really don’t think he’s very good. He won’t diagnose over the phone, so you have to go to his office every time you need him. But I do have a very good dermatologist, my gynaecologist is excellent and I have a truly excellent podiatrist. But he may be full, I was lucky, he was mentioned in New York magazine’s top ten doctors, and now he’s got a waiting list longer than the Coney Island boardwalk …’

‘Honey, you should tell her about our neurologist too,’ interrupted Jeff, her husband. ‘And somewhere’, he added, fishing out his Palm Pilot and whipping the stylus over the screen, ‘I have the number of a very good orthopediologist. How much do you pay for insurance?’

‘Three hundred and eighty-nine dollars a month. Each.’

‘What? Are you nuts? Three eighty nine! We only pay two hundred and fifty each.’

‘It was the cheapest I could find that would take us on,’ I protested.

‘Health care in this country is screwed,’ said Jeff, tapping his margarita glass and mouthing ‘Three more, please’ to the bartender. ‘Hey, is that Madonna over there?’ Outside the bar a white stretch limo had pulled up and the singer, accompanied by another woman, got out and disappeared into the bar next door.

‘Well screw her,’ said Jeff, who, I have noticed recently, can get pretty angry over nothing much at all. ‘Screw her and her slutty friends. We don’t want them in here anyway.’

‘Doctors?’ I murmured trying to bring the subject back.

He shook his head. ‘You want a general doctor, right?’

‘Yes,’ I said, thinking back to Dr O’Reilly in Notting Hill, whom I had chosen because, like every other GP I have ever been to in my life, she was the nearest.

‘Well, it all depends. Do you self-medicate?’ he demanded.

‘Self what?’

‘Self-medicate. You know, self-diagnose, call your doctor and self-prescribe?’

I confessed this was not a common practice in Britain.

‘Oh it should be, it saves them time and you can just pick up the prescription … I mean three years ago I was going through a bad time – before I met you, honey,’ he grinned at Kelly. ‘And I knew I was having a depression. So I phoned up and self-prescribed Prozac.’

‘Really?’ I exclaimed, imagining how Dr O’Reilly – a taciturn Irish woman whose sole driving force appeared to come from resisting local pressure to become a GP fundholder – would have reacted if I had phoned and casually self-prescribed Prozac.

‘Yeah, well, as it turned out I didn’t suit Prozac at all, in fact it made me a little paranoid. But then I did go to see my doctor and she switched me to Zoloft, which has been great. It’s a much better drug for me in fact. Still is.

‘Whatever, you’ll love my doctor,’ he added, retrieving a pen from his wife’s Prada Kelly bag. ‘Give her a call and say I recommended you. Leah Falzone, she’s over on Union Square.’