OSMOSIS...

The doctor’s waiting room is a cesspit of disease and disorder, seemingly quarantined from the outside world.

I remember sitting in one specific room when I was younger. Disgusting. The dreary walls in need of a new coat of paint. The air dank and heavy. The old dears smiling at you toothlessly, as they ambled along the final road to their inevitable death. The supposedly ill children who seemed absolutely fine as they ran around ripping posters from the wall and diving under seats and tables, squealing at each other. The parents of those children, completely unaware and uncaring of the trauma around them. And by trauma I don’t mean the ill people.

But it got me to thinking about the common trend of behaviour by osmosis. The idea that you unconsciously learn your behaviours and traits through the environment around you. If you hang around with your Australian friend, you are naturally going to start picking up the accent. If you hang around with a bad bunch then you’ll end up getting in trouble with the law. That sort of thing.

Me? I was just sat in that office for hopefully an hour, no more, then I would see the doctor, and afterwards I would leave, never to return again.

But the doctor?

The doctor was there for hours every day, stretching over weeks and months and years. And if behaviour by osmosis is true, then I would hate to think what putridness the doctor picks up as he treats his patients for all manner of disgusting ailments. And trust me, people are disgusting.

And that is why doctors can’t be trusted, because although they vow to protect and help the community, in reality they are behind enemy lines, fraternising with viruses, dancing with disease and cavorting with bacteria, spreading death far and wide as they do.

Just like Isaac Danvers.

A man who claims to be a doctor, who seems to act like a doctor, and who seems to have centuries of patients to speak of. But if he has centuries of patients to speak of, then he would be even more infected than the mortal GP.

Danvers speaks of patients with wicked desires, twisted fantasies and rotten ideologies that come to him for a cure. He claims that he cures them, but he does not cure them. He merely inherits their sickness himself and becomes blind to it. He absorbs their deficiencies and becomes sicker in body and soul with each passing day.

Instead of a cure the good doctor is the vessel.

And the vessel is now so contaminated that it is weak, leaking and spluttering along. But don’t worry Mr. Danvers, I have some good news for you. The test results came back from the lab and it’s a miracle! We’ve found the ultimate cure for all the sickness festering with you.

And to administer it only takes one dose!

One.

Lethal.

Dose.