18 NOVEMBER 1995, Page 22

If symptoms persist. .

THE COURSE of true love never did run smooth, but the going has been espe- cially rough round here of late. Some- times I wonder whether it is all worth it — sex, I mean — and whether it really wouldn't be better if we reproduced like that old favourite of school biology class- es, the hydra. It would save an awful lot of time and trouble.

Take last Thursday, for example. A young Muslim girl attended out-patients not because there was anything wrong with her, but because coming to the hos- pital was the only way she could make an assignation with the boyfriend she was not supposed to have. Each time we try to discharge her from the clinic, she begs us not to; but on this occasion her family had grown suspicious of her frequent attendance, and had sent her brother, who looked like an ayatollah of the Rushdie fatwa school, with her.

In order to deceive him, we had to keep the patient — if that is what she was — in a room for over an hour, for on previous occasions her visits to the hos- pital had always taken at least that long. For if the family found out about the boyfriend, they would lock her up, force her on to a plane to Pakistan, and there marry her at gunpoint to a brutal villager — if she were lucky. If not — well, then it might be murder.

I'm sure the young man in question wasn't worth it — he never is.

And talking of young men, that very Thursday an example of the species was brought to casualty by his step-grand- mother, who had found him trying to electrocute himself in the bath. Earlier in the day, she had found him trying to plug himself into the light socket, and had decided enough was enough. Over to the medical profession.

He was dressed in those baggy jeans fashionable among joy-riders and young burglars; and his face bore the mark of Cain, namely the indian-ink tattooed blue spot on the cheek, which pro- claimed him a graduate of what used to be called Borstal.

He could see no point in continuing his existence (I am paraphrasing) because his 14-year-old girlfriend had thrown him over. Not only did she not wish to see him, she wished not to see him.

`Why is that?' I asked, smelling a rat.

`When I'm out of my head, I hit her.'

Further questioning elicited the fact that he was as frequently out of as in his head, and that only the week before she had attended hospital with a broken cheekbone.

`Can't you phone her, doctor, and tell her how much I love her?'

Clearly, there was romance in the air that day, because a couple of hours later a man appeared with gashes in his left wrist. He had done it because his fiancée had thrown her engagement ring at him. They had had a quarrel at a bus-stop, and he had head-butted her. Apparently, her dress was ruined by the blood from her nose.

`I can see her point of view,' I said, as mildly as I could.

`But it was only a one-off, doctor. I told her I'd never do it again, I love her too much for that.'

Theodore Dalrymple