Friday Fiction: Doctor who? by Alex Snider

This week saw Rebekah and I working a movement disorder conference where we stood and served espressos, americanos and lattes to neurologists for nine hours at a time. Believe me when I say that despite the blister on my big toe the size of my second toe and the feverish lucid nightmares in which I dreamt that people were in my bedroom demanding coffees despite my pleas for sleep, it was one of the best jobs I've ever had. 

So much of it was amazing, from the numerous David Mitchell look-a-likes (and other celebrity doppelgangers: Lisa Simpson's fiance Hugh, Hugh Grant, Bishop from the US version of Being Human, Laura Linney's love interest in Love Actually, Jason Sudeikis as an a-hole, a young Michael Shannon, Ethan Embry...) to the 5:00 cookies, to all our regulars who claimed it was the best coffee they'd ever had (there was the exact same machine one booth over but hey, service with a smile and bit o' banter goes a long way). 

Oh man, I'm gonna miss all those doctors so much! I only wish I could have somehow made a video montage of all the best moments along to the cloying song that played in a loop at the GE booth ALL day so that I could share it with everyone and so that on the cold lonely days I could remember the time when I was "the coffee girl" and feel just a little warmer...

I ordinarily have horrible experiences with doctors (once upon a time I suffered from depression and after overdosing one doctor wrote me a prescription for fun and another, without any insomnia complaint, gave me a bottle of sixty sleeping pills -- I'm still unsure whether it was a test or maybe there was some kind of Ashton Kutcher-esque hidden camera angle) but because I'm feeling all warm and fuzzy like I just swallowed a big wool sweater (should probably get that looked at...) I'm going to dedicate this Friday Fiction to books about doctors. 

Happy Friday; live long and prosper.

Doctor Glas by Hjalmar Söderberg

Main Street by Sinclair Lewis 

Last King of Scotland by Giles Foden

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

The Good Doctor by Damon Galgut

Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen

Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann

An Irish Country Doctor by Patrick Taylor

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Mash by Richard Hooker

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Waiting by Ha Jin

Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald 

Doctor Thorne By Anthony Trollope

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez  

Really, this is the only doctor who can do it for me, these days...