If symptoms

persist.. .

FROM THE purely aesthetic point of view, there is not much to commend a slashed wrist: even the least sensitive are quite likely to feel faint at the sight of one. Last week while I was on duty, the prison warders hustled a prisoner into my room who had slashed his wrist quite deeply. One of the warders held his arm aloft to reduce the blood flow, while another pressed hard on the wound itself.

I have to confess that my first thought was how to keep the blood off my dou- ble-breasted suit, which was very expen- sive. Do they still manufacture that stuff called Dabitoff, I wondered, which I remember from my childhood, and which came in a little bottle with a pad which removed the stains from your clothes? Or has it been banned since seven-year-olds were discovered sniffing it on a council estate (I was quite partial to it myself)?

'Why did you cut your wrist?' I asked the prisoner.

`Because I was bored,' he replied.

'And why were you bored?' I asked further.

'Well, it was like this: I'm quality con- troller for the underpants production line and the machine broke down and I had nothing to do.'

I recalled a passage from Oscar Wilde's fairy story, The Remarkable Rocket, which I quoted (more or less): 'Indeed, I have always been of the opin- ion that hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing whatever to do.' He looked at me as if I, not he, were the madman.

It had been a bad week at the prison, all in all. There was a stabbing there, and a prisoner was taken to our hospital with a knife embedded in his chest. He was what is known technically as DOA Dead on Arrival. The doctor who received him in the casualty department announced his death to the two warders who accompanied him. They looked at each other.

'I suppose that means we can remove the handcuffs,' said one of them.

I was leaving the prison on the evening of the slashed wrist, crossing that little patch of green which doctors call the lawn, when I heard a prisoner's voice behind me.

`Cunt,' it said.

I turned round.

'Nothing,' replied a man whose arms were tattooed all the colours of the rain- bow, and quite a few besides.

'Yes, you did, you said "cunt".'

'No, I didn't.'

I pondered whether to stand on my dignity and have him disciplined for gross disrespect and insubordination. I decided against: I couldn't face the forms I would have to fill in, and I was already late for dinner.

A few days later, he turned up in the clinic. When he saw that it was I who was on duty, he apologised.

'I'm sorry I called you a cunt, doctor,' he said.

'That's quite all right,' I said, rejoicing over the repentance of a sinner. 'I'm used to it.'

'Only I get like that sometimes, I don't know why. By the way, I can't sleep. Can I have some sleepers?'

'No, you can't,' I replied.

'Cunt,' he said.

Theodore Dalrymple