Hater

clinic, didn't I? This is a very small procedure. I'll just be making two incisions, one on either side of your scrotum, okay?'
    Pearson nodded. I don't want to know what you're doing, he thought, just bloody well get on with it.
    'You feeling a bit better now?' the female nurse asked, gently stroking the back of his hand. He nodded again and she removed the oxygen mask. He could feel the surgeon working now. Although his genitals were anaesthetised, he could still feel movement around his legs and occasionally someone brushed against the tips of his toes sticking out over the end of the operating table. More nausea. He was starting to feel sick again. Christ, think of something to take your mind off this, he silently screamed to himself. He tried to fill his head with images and thoughts - the children, his wife Emily, the holiday they'd booked for a few weeks time, the new car he'd picked up last week… anything. As hard as he tried he still couldn't forget the fact that someone was cutting into his scrotum with a scalpel.
    Is this how I'm supposed to feel, Pearson thought? I'm cold. I don't feel right. Should it be like this or is something going wrong?
    'Don't feel right…' he mumbled. The nurse looked down and slammed the oxygen mask on his face again. The sudden movement made Dr Panesar look up.
    'Everything okay up there?' he asked, his voice artificially bright and animated. 'You all right Mr Pearson?'
    'He's fine,' the nurse replied, her voice equally artificially trouble-free, 'a little light-headed, that's all.'
    'Nothing to worry about,' the surgeon said as he took a step around the edge of the table and looked into his patient's face. Pearson's wide, frightened eyes were dancing around the room, squinting into the bright lights which shone down over his prone body. Dr Panesar stopped and stared at him.
    'Dr Panesar?' the nurse asked.
    Nothing.
    'Is everything all right, Dr Panesar?'
    Panesar stumbled back to the other end of the table, his eyes still fixed on Pearson's face.
    'You okay, Dr Panesar?' his surgical assistant asked. No response. 'Dr Panesar,' he asked again, 'are you okay?'
    Panesar turned to look at his colleague and then tightened the grip on the scalpel in his hand. Crouching back down again he slashed across Pearson's exposed genitals and severed his testicles and scrotal sac. Blood began to spill and spurt over the operating table from sliced veins and arteries.
    'What the hell are you doing?' the surgical assistant demanded. He pushed Panesar out of the way and moved to grab his hand and wrestle the scalpel from him. Delirious with fear, Panesar turned and sliced the man with the blade, cutting him open in a diagonal line down from his right shoulder.
    Panic erupted in the operating theatre. The staff scattered as the surgeon lunged towards them. Pearson lay helplessly on the operating table, turning his head desperately from side to side, trying to see what was happening around him. Covered in blood and still brandishing the scalpel Panesar fled from the room. Pearson watched him run. What the hell was going on? Christ, he suddenly felt strange. He felt cold and shaky but his legs felt warm. And why were people panicking? Why all the sudden movement? Why had the nurses gone to the other end of the table and where was all that blood coming from?
    Still anaesthetised and oblivious and ignorant both to the pandemonium which was rapidly spreading through the private hospital and the fact that he was rapidly bleeding to death, Pearson looked up into the light and tried to think of anything but the fact that his surgeon had just disappeared in the middle of his vasectomy.

12

    There's a strange atmosphere everywhere today. Everyone seems to be on edge. No-one seems certain about anything anymore. Everybody seems to be thinking twice about everything they do and worrying more than normal about what everyone else is doing. Our ordinary lives and the day to day routine suddenly feel more complicated than they did before and yet I'm still not even sure if anything's actually changed.
    I had a phone call from Lizzie just after I'd been out for my lunch break today. We had an appointment to take Josh for a hospital check-up this afternoon and, with everything that happened at school yesterday, we'd both forgotten about it. He fell off a chair at playgroup three weeks ago and cut his head open. The appointment was just to make sure that everything had healed properly and that he was fit and