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I turned the car around and made my way back to the GP. I don’t know what I was doing; all I knew was that my ear was about to drop off. The place was packed, it was obviously futile and yet as I stood in front of the receptionist looking wretched she smiled, ‘As luck would have it, someone’s just cancelled. The doctor will see you now. Go straight in.’ You can imagine how disorientated these words left me. I pretty much fell through the door.
‘I can’t tell you how grateful I am,’ I gushed as he looked up from his computer. ‘I’m in such paaaaain…’
‘Who told you to come in?’ he snapped. I looked behind me in case a tramp waving a broken bottle had also wandered in. But there was only me. ‘Er, the receptionist.’
‘Well, you shouldn’t have come in. I haven’t beeped yet.’
‘Sorry?’
‘You need to wait till I beep.’
I had come so close. And yet the prize of healthcare free at the point of delivery was about to be snatched from me as it dangled before my eyes. At that point I would have done anything to satiate the doctor’s desire for beepage. So I said, ‘Would you like me to go back out so you can beep, then I’ll come back in?’ He looked at me with disappointment of epic proportions. ‘It’s too late now. What do you want?’
I explained. He looked in my ear and harrumphed. ‘It’s infected. Take these.’ And he thrust a prescription for strong antibiotics at me — the good ones, the ones I usually have to go to Eaton Place to get hold of.
I felt deep gratitude as I scurried off, but also dreadful confusion. My experience either means the system is brilliant or terrible. I just can’t decide which.
Melissa Kite is deputy political editor of the Sunday Telegraph.
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