The doctor is in.

My parents gave Ian a doctor’s kit for his third birthday. For days, Kelly and I were Westley to his Count Rugen, subject to the twisted and misinformed experiments of a three-year-old without so much as a GED. He liked giving shots. A lot. ‘Now, don’t cry, okay? It will only hurt a little bit.’

The thermometer told us if we were happy or sad, and he opened an office under his bed, for his stuffed animals.

Like all toys, this doctor’s kit lay largely forgotten after about a week. Yesterday, Kelly went shopping for overalls in our local thrift stores. She found more doctorial implements, and Ian has started practicing again.

I don’t like doctors or hospitals. I was born with a cleft-lip, and had corrective surgery minutes after I was born. It was the first operation of several. I also don’t like medical care circa 1863. It was somehow fitting that Ian’s new ‘toys’ went nicely with my psychoses. Ian with a syringe is frightening; Ian with a second-hand scalpel is fetal-positionally horrifying.

Last night—after Kelly had, conveniently, gone upstairs—Dr. Gilbert walked into the den. He held his bag toward me, and shook it. It sounded like bones, rattling. ‘I’m going to be your patient!’ Ian makes daytrips to the Bizarro World, and often transposes ‘A’ with ‘B’. What he really meant was, ‘Roll up your sleeves!’

I was laying on the floor, watching Star Trek from the corner of my eye. I was trying to ignore the approach of Ian and his pincers. Pincers! Who puts pincers in a toddler’s doctor bag?

After my dental work—which really was quite painless, just as he said it would be—Ian held a bottle toward me. It’s not really a bottle, it’s supposed to be an ice pack. But it’s not really an ice pack, either. It looks like a flask, which is the only good thing to have come from the field of medicine circa 1863.

‘Here. This is frosting. You need to drink this and you’ll feel better.’ He put his hands on the floor and leaned over, bring his face inches from mine. ‘Frostiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing!’ he shouted, mouth opened wide and head shaking slightly.

The thermometer said I was happy.