Mr Limpopo Goes to the Doctor

Niall Limpopo woke up one morning feeling a bit out of sorts.
He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but for starters, he felt a bit cold. Not shivery. No, this was a cold that he felt in his bones. As though it ran through his veins. And his skin was pretty dry. His legs and elbows were going all scaly. His teeth felt a bit funny, too, he realised, once he'd come to think about it.
He'd been having a lot of other strange symptoms that he wasn't sure he would have noticed, individually. But together with the other stuff, he had an inkling that something rather odd was going on. He rang his local doctor's surgery and made an appointment with his GP, although he wasn't altogether sure he shouldn't be seeing a psychiatrist, too.

"Mr Limpopo?" Dr Mganga stuck her head into the waiting room.
"Uh, yes, that's me". Mr Limpopo stood up sheepishly and waddled into Dr Mganga's office after her.
She sat down heavily on her big-comfy-doctor-chair and indicated that he do the same, opposite her, on the little-creaky-patient-chair.

"What seems to be the problem, Mr Limpopo?" She had a kind voice. He felt a little less uneasy. He cleared his throat.
"Well, I've been feeling a bit out of sorts lately," he began. "It's hard to explain. I don't think anything is wrong in particular it's more... lots of little things."

Dr Mganga sighed. Here we go. Another patient wasting her precious time trying for a free, full-body MOT. The hypochondriac special. "Go on," she said. Her voice still sounded kind, only, the fake kind of kind.

"Well. My skin is very dry, all of a sudden. Scaly. It wasn't before," he added, trying to give a little weight to a complaint which suddenly sounded embarrassingly trivial. The doctor raised her eyebrows and smiled fake-kind-of-kindly.

"And I'm cold all the time. Not shivery. It feels like. It feels like my blood is cold. I know that sounds silly. And my teeth hurt."

Dr Mganga was clearly waiting for him to stop talking so that she could fake-kind-of-kindly deliver a dismissive diagnosis. So Niall Limpopo jumped in again before she had a chance to.
"AND I WANT TO EAT RAW MEAT AND BITE PEOPLE."
Fadhila Mganga's face fell. She had seen hypochondriacs desperately clutching at symptomatic straws, but never this.

"Mr Limpopo, you're trying to tell me that you suddenly have a desire to eat raw meat and BITE people?"

He had succeeded in making his illness sound less trivial. He had also succeeded in making himself sound utterly ridiculous. And a little psychotic. He faltered.

"Yes. Well. I didn't like sushi before. But now I want it all the time. And meat. I just want to eat raw lumps of steak or something. I can't stop thinking about it. And I get the urge to bite things, and people. I want to bite people. Oh GOD I sound completely crazy," and he added a little laugh to make himself sound less crazy but it only made matters worse.

Dr Mganga nodded slowly, fake-kind-of-kindly.
"Do you want to bite me, Mr Limpopo?" she asked, as one might ask a five year old if they needed to go to the bathroom.

Niall looked at her. She was a large woman, with an enormous bosom and glossy skin the colour of dark chocolate. He did want to bite her. He wanted to bite her very much. He hung his head and whispered, "Yes, a little," then quickly added, "I'm not going to though. I won't," and he seemed very sincere.

The doctor nodded, slowly, in that way that could mean either "I know exactly what is wrong with you," or "I have no idea what is wrong with you but I'm going to just nod so that you think I do." Then she asked, "Do you have any other symptoms, Mr Limpopo?"

"Well," he answered, "I was walking past a canal the other day and I really wanted to jump in. But I couldn't get my suit wet before work, so I didn't. And," he added, "I keep having very strange dreams."

"What kind of dreams?"

"Well, ones where I'm underwater, and then there are hoofs all around me splashing down through the water, and everything's all green and murky, and then I go up to the surface and there are all these wildebeest running about and I'm trying to bite their legs. Then I wake up."

Dr Mganga smiled. It wasn't a fake-kind-of-kind smile, either. It was an, I-know-exactly-what-is-wrong-with-you smile.

"I know exactly what is wrong with you," she proclaimed.

"Oh," said Mr Limpopo.

"You're possessed by the spirit of a crocodile," she proclaimed.

"Oh." said Mr Limpopo.

Then she said, "I can't prescribe you anything. Not on the NHS, anyway. And I'm not supposed to give anyone these, but here," and she handed him a small business card.

MR MCHAWI
WITCHDOCTOR
07746827364

and there was a blurry photo beside it.

"Don't tell anyone I gave you this. But he is very good, and very cheap, too. He helped a lot when my dog was being possessed by the spirit of my great-grandfather."

Mr Limpopo was a little taken aback. He wasn't a suspicious man. He didn't believe in all that witchdoctor stuff. But he had to admit... it all made sense. The dreams. The cold blood. The hunger for raw meat. He thanked Dr Mganga and left the surgery.

Dr Mganga waited until he had left the room, paged reception telling them not to let Mr Limpopo leave under any circumstances, then immediately picked up the phone and dialled the code for the hospital.

She waited for a few seconds, tapping her long nails nervously on her desk.

 "Hello, yes, this is Dr Mganga speaking. We have a high risk patient on our hands. He is extremely disturbed, a danger to himself and others. Was talking about drowning himself and biting people. Sectioned? Yes I think so. Can you send someone? Yes. Yes. Okay, I'll tell reception. Thank you."

Then she breathed a long sigh of relief. She was lucky, she thought, that she was so good at being the fake-kind-of-kind.