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Description
There were certain people who carried an aura about themselves, a manner of behaving and interacting with the world at large which instantly put one in mind of the environment in which that person would best have fitted. But somehow those same individuals embodied that environment, carried it with them through their attitude and inevitably ended up influencing those whom they met into behaving in a similar fashion, often unconsciously. It was a phenomenon that Adam had witnessed very few times in his relatively short thirty years of life, but one which he had recently been experiencing at first hand for the majority of his professional life.
With Milly, that aura was of a truly flamboyant musical diva.
Milly was supposedly his client and he her manager, but the reality of the relationship had soon morphed into his being the person responsible for ensuring that she was kept in the state of near perfect emotional equilibrium, the state in which she claimed to be solely able to contemplate either sitting down to write, record or perform the music for which she was famous, and which in turn made her such a lucrative client. To his credit, Adam generally did well in the role, juggling multiple mobile phones, seldom being seen without a tablet in hand and losing more sleep than he could have recalled ensuring that things in Milly’s life ran smoothly and the bubble in which she existed was not popped by harsh reality.
More than ten years his junior, she treated him in one instance like an indentured servant, the next as an impassive witness to the most extreme and fiery of her emotional outbursts. But in addition she was never above using her tomboyish femininity to ensure that he was wrapped around her little finger and willing to go the metaphorical extra mile in her service. Adam had never seen her flirtations as anything more than the exercising of her power and influence over him, but he was no more than human, and so often fought against the thought of her side-shaved hair, tattoos and liking for clothes that showed off the leg and exposed the midriff.
On that particular morning, Milly was making a command performance out of her arrival at the clinic, which Adam had specifically chosen for its supposed anonymity. She arrived with all the noise and disruption of a star and their entire entourage of lackeys and hangers-on, no matter that there was only herself present, followed as ever by Adam, as he struggled with her bags and the lead of her diminutive pet dog.
Milly waffled into her impractically large and yet painfully on-trend mobile, ignoring her surroundings as he made his way to the reception desk and spoke, in near perfect classroom Chinese to the prim-looking woman that smiled in greeting.
All the time he did this, the tiny dog alternated between yapping aggressively and then whining in a pathetic manner at anyone who strayed into its field of vision, whilst pulling ceaselessly at the lead attached to its collar. Adam did not for one moment even contemplate raising his voice to it, or even giving the lead a good, hard tug in order to bring to dog to heel. Past experience was enough to make him aware of the almost psychic connection between the accursed animal and its owner, who reacted in seconds and often with more histrionics than the dog itself, should anyone object to its almost pathologically anti-social behaviour. He had no clue what supposed breed the dog might have been, only knowing that it was a small tangle of curling fur and teeth, which was probably more expensive than his own car.
“They’re ready for -,” he paused, mid-sentence, as Milly raised a hand and placed it in front of his face.
Adam was well-used to such treatment and the feeling of coming second to any given phone-call, and so he waited as patiently as he was able until Milly wrapped up the conversation in her own good time. Once she had done so, she slipped the mobile into her designer handbag and turned to give him the kind of smile and fluttering of eyelids that at once both made use of all her charms and also made it plain that she was fully aware of, indeed enjoying, his awkwardness and the impositions imposed upon him.
“They’re ready for you right now,” Adam completed the sentence on the second attempt. “The nurse over there will show you through to the operating room. All being well, it shouldn’t take more than an hour or two until they’re finished.”
“Okay,” Milly arched an eyebrow at him and turned to follow the nurse he had indicated, “see you on the other side!”

Adam sat himself down in the well-appointed lobby and arranged Milly’s bags as best he could around his feet, hoping that he might make use of the time that she was in the operating theatre to get some of his more demanding tasks taken care of through his tablet. But then he felt the familiar tugging on the lead, and looked down to see the dog staring up at him in what he took to be an accusatory manner.
“Look,” he spoke to the dog in English, so as to somewhat reduce the humiliation of addressing a canine by doing so in a language that he was sure most of the other people present were not fluent in, “I don’t like this situation any more than you do. But she’ll be back in an hour or so, and we’re both reasonable sorts – I think. So what do you say that I get on with some work and you…erm…have a nap or something?”
The dog’s expression turned into something that Adam could only interpret as suspicion and then quickly degenerated into disdain and it curled back its lip and snarled in his general direction.
It was then that the thought hit him: the kind of clinic into which Milly had booked was well used to dealing with high-status and demanding clientele. Even though she had opted for nothing more unusual than a swift nip and tuck in order to keep up with the current trends in body size using a matter conversion booth, it was still costing an eye-watering amount of money. Under those circumstances, surely he was entitled to at least inquire as to the possibility of someone on their staff taking care of the abominable dog for an hour or so?
Adam returned to the reception desk and attempted to ask the woman sitting there that very question. But he soon found that while his Chinese was good enough to conduct formal negotiations, it was somewhat lacking in the social niceties of requesting that an irksome canine be taken off his hands for a short while.
In the end, he settled for explaining in the broadest terms possible, that this was Milly’s dog and that she should have made arrangements for the clinic to take care of it before going in for her treatment. He made sure to emphasize just how important the animal was to its mistress, how close the bond between them was and how upset she would be were anything to happen to it.
The nurse at the reception desk was more than willing to help, and nodded profusely at his explanations, even if her expression was seldom anything but one of polite confusion.
She took the dog off his hands, assuring him that everything was fine and it would be taken care of.
And with that, he went back to his seat.

The space of time that followed was characterised by the unusual occurrence of Adam suddenly looking up from his work, as if shocked into awareness by the memory of something he had forgotten to do, and then visibly relaxing once more as he realised that there was in fact nothing and no one demanding his immediate attention. At one point the nurse manning the reception desk even approached him and asked if he would like a coffee, and after having accepted, he hesitated before drinking it, so used to the approach of a beverage to his lips being interrupted by a surprise problem or unanticipated need being waved in his face.
So it was that when the first hints of the screaming and crashing reached his ears, his reaction was more one of instinct than any genuine effort to disengage from his work and see what the hubbub was on account of. It was only later that it occurred to him that he had most likely recognised Milly’s voice amidst the chaos and so automatically turned his mind towards addressing the problem without actually giving it a second of conscious thought.
In the ensuing confusion, it was easy enough for Adam to walk from the reception and into the surgical rooms which branched off a corridor beyond. Nurses seemed to be the ones trying to stoically rise to the occasion and bring everything under control, whist the doctors themselves were anything but keen to get involved in the fray.
The centre of the disturbance was one room alone, and Adam chose the moment after a clipboard came flying from the doorway and into the corridor, to poke his head in and try to see what was causing the hellish noise.
Inside was a scene of utter bedlam, the open matter conversion pod in the centre of the room was virtually the only thing left standing, thanks to the virtue of being bolted to the floor. Elsewhere tables had been overturned, chairs thrown around and every single piece of paper cast to the four corners of the room.
Unlike the medical staff at the clinic, Adam was quite used to seeing the results of such a tantrum, and instead of being shocked at the whirlwind which seemed to have touched down inside, his eyes searched the room until he finally located just where Milly was to be found, sure without need for further proof that only she could have been the source of it all.
What did surprise him, however, was the fact that he located her squatting in the middle of the floor, her back slightly turned to him so that the hospital gown she wore was unable to maintain an ounce of her dignity.
“Hey,” he shouted, “what’s the problem?”
Milly turned her head to face the familiar voice, and Adam’s eyes widened at the sight of her.
The procedure had been described to him as nothing more than the matter conversion equivalent of a minor nip and tuck. But Milly’s nose, quite a snub button beforehand, was now visibly black and moist. Her hair had developed a distinct curl and in place of human ears she had two flopping appendages that were covered in the same follicles as her scalp. Her mouth hung slightly open, tongue protruding a little, and he could have sworn that before she recognised his face, she was preparing to let out a snarl as a threat.
Instead she cracked a genuine smile at the sight of him, and came careening across the room, almost on all fours, to stop right at his feet. The speed of her approach made the back of her gown ride up, and revealed the presence of a foot long, hairy and enthusiastically wagging tail. As soon as she reached him, Milly sat up on her haunches, still smiling and seemingly ecstatic to see him. Adam noticed that her hands were also covered in fur as she squatted there, and that he had been mistaken in thinking that she had her fingers clenched into fists, seeing now that they were subtly smaller and less well-developed than a typical spread of human digits.
“Hi,” she sounded genuinely overjoyed to see him, “Hi, Adam.”
“Erm…Hi, Milly,” he said tentatively. “I think something’s gone wrong.”
“Yeah,” Milly’s expression darkened for a moment as she frowned at the medical staff still cowering in the doorway. She growled a little in the back of her throat before going on. “Yeah, they screwed it up pretty bad. But it’s okay, because you’re here now, and you always fix things, don’t you? I was scared and mad, but you’ll make it all okay, like you always do, won’t you?”
She looked at him in such a pleading, wide-eyed manner that he almost forgot the strangeness of the situation in which he found himself.

Description
There were certain people who carried an aura about themselves, a manner of behaving and interacting with the world at large which instantly put one in mind of the environment in which that person would best have fitted. But somehow those same individuals embodied that environment, carried it with them through their attitude and inevitably ended up influencing those whom they met into behaving in a similar fashion, often unconsciously. It was a phenomenon that Adam had witnessed very few times in his relatively short thirty years of life, but one which he had recently been experiencing at first hand for the majority of his professional life.
With Milly, that aura was of a truly flamboyant musical diva.
Milly was supposedly his client and he her manager, but the reality of the relationship had soon morphed into his being the person responsible for ensuring that she was kept in the state of near perfect emotional equilibrium, the state in which she claimed to be solely able to contemplate either sitting down to write, record or perform the music for which she was famous, and which in turn made her such a lucrative client. To his credit, Adam generally did well in the role, juggling multiple mobile phones, seldom being seen without a tablet in hand and losing more sleep than he could have recalled ensuring that things in Milly’s life ran smoothly and the bubble in which she existed was not popped by harsh reality.
More than ten years his junior, she treated him in one instance like an indentured servant, the next as an impassive witness to the most extreme and fiery of her emotional outbursts. But in addition she was never above using her tomboyish femininity to ensure that he was wrapped around her little finger and willing to go the metaphorical extra mile in her service. Adam had never seen her flirtations as anything more than the exercising of her power and influence over him, but he was no more than human, and so often fought against the thought of her side-shaved hair, tattoos and liking for clothes that showed off the leg and exposed the midriff.
On that particular morning, Milly was making a command performance out of her arrival at the clinic, which Adam had specifically chosen for its supposed anonymity. She arrived with all the noise and disruption of a star and their entire entourage of lackeys and hangers-on, no matter that there was only herself present, followed as ever by Adam, as he struggled with her bags and the lead of her diminutive pet dog.
Milly waffled into her impractically large and yet painfully on-trend mobile, ignoring her surroundings as he made his way to the reception desk and spoke, in near perfect classroom Chinese to the prim-looking woman that smiled in greeting.
All the time he did this, the tiny dog alternated between yapping aggressively and then whining in a pathetic manner at anyone who strayed into its field of vision, whilst pulling ceaselessly at the lead attached to its collar. Adam did not for one moment even contemplate raising his voice to it, or even giving the lead a good, hard tug in order to bring to dog to heel. Past experience was enough to make him aware of the almost psychic connection between the accursed animal and its owner, who reacted in seconds and often with more histrionics than the dog itself, should anyone object to its almost pathologically anti-social behaviour. He had no clue what supposed breed the dog might have been, only knowing that it was a small tangle of curling fur and teeth, which was probably more expensive than his own car.
“They’re ready for -,” he paused, mid-sentence, as Milly raised a hand and placed it in front of his face.
Adam was well-used to such treatment and the feeling of coming second to any given phone-call, and so he waited as patiently as he was able until Milly wrapped up the conversation in her own good time. Once she had done so, she slipped the mobile into her designer handbag and turned to give him the kind of smile and fluttering of eyelids that at once both made use of all her charms and also made it plain that she was fully aware of, indeed enjoying, his awkwardness and the impositions imposed upon him.
“They’re ready for you right now,” Adam completed the sentence on the second attempt. “The nurse over there will show you through to the operating room. All being well, it shouldn’t take more than an hour or two until they’re finished.”
“Okay,” Milly arched an eyebrow at him and turned to follow the nurse he had indicated, “see you on the other side!”

Adam sat himself down in the well-appointed lobby and arranged Milly’s bags as best he could around his feet, hoping that he might make use of the time that she was in the operating theatre to get some of his more demanding tasks taken care of through his tablet. But then he felt the familiar tugging on the lead, and looked down to see the dog staring up at him in what he took to be an accusatory manner.
“Look,” he spoke to the dog in English, so as to somewhat reduce the humiliation of addressing a canine by doing so in a language that he was sure most of the other people present were not fluent in, “I don’t like this situation any more than you do. But she’ll be back in an hour or so, and we’re both reasonable sorts – I think. So what do you say that I get on with some work and you…erm…have a nap or something?”
The dog’s expression turned into something that Adam could only interpret as suspicion and then quickly degenerated into disdain and it curled back its lip and snarled in his general direction.
It was then that the thought hit him: the kind of clinic into which Milly had booked was well used to dealing with high-status and demanding clientele. Even though she had opted for nothing more unusual than a swift nip and tuck in order to keep up with the current trends in body size using a matter conversion booth, it was still costing an eye-watering amount of money. Under those circumstances, surely he was entitled to at least inquire as to the possibility of someone on their staff taking care of the abominable dog for an hour or so?
Adam returned to the reception desk and attempted to ask the woman sitting there that very question. But he soon found that while his Chinese was good enough to conduct formal negotiations, it was somewhat lacking in the social niceties of requesting that an irksome canine be taken off his hands for a short while.
In the end, he settled for explaining in the broadest terms possible, that this was Milly’s dog and that she should have made arrangements for the clinic to take care of it before going in for her treatment. He made sure to emphasize just how important the animal was to its mistress, how close the bond between them was and how upset she would be were anything to happen to it.
The nurse at the reception desk was more than willing to help, and nodded profusely at his explanations, even if her expression was seldom anything but one of polite confusion.
She took the dog off his hands, assuring him that everything was fine and it would be taken care of.
And with that, he went back to his seat.

The space of time that followed was characterised by the unusual occurrence of Adam suddenly looking up from his work, as if shocked into awareness by the memory of something he had forgotten to do, and then visibly relaxing once more as he realised that there was in fact nothing and no one demanding his immediate attention. At one point the nurse manning the reception desk even approached him and asked if he would like a coffee, and after having accepted, he hesitated before drinking it, so used to the approach of a beverage to his lips being interrupted by a surprise problem or unanticipated need being waved in his face.
So it was that when the first hints of the screaming and crashing reached his ears, his reaction was more one of instinct than any genuine effort to disengage from his work and see what the hubbub was on account of. It was only later that it occurred to him that he had most likely recognised Milly’s voice amidst the chaos and so automatically turned his mind towards addressing the problem without actually giving it a second of conscious thought.
In the ensuing confusion, it was easy enough for Adam to walk from the reception and into the surgical rooms which branched off a corridor beyond. Nurses seemed to be the ones trying to stoically rise to the occasion and bring everything under control, whist the doctors themselves were anything but keen to get involved in the fray.
The centre of the disturbance was one room alone, and Adam chose the moment after a clipboard came flying from the doorway and into the corridor, to poke his head in and try to see what was causing the hellish noise.
Inside was a scene of utter bedlam, the open matter conversion pod in the centre of the room was virtually the only thing left standing, thanks to the virtue of being bolted to the floor. Elsewhere tables had been overturned, chairs thrown around and every single piece of paper cast to the four corners of the room.
Unlike the medical staff at the clinic, Adam was quite used to seeing the results of such a tantrum, and instead of being shocked at the whirlwind which seemed to have touched down inside, his eyes searched the room until he finally located just where Milly was to be found, sure without need for further proof that only she could have been the source of it all.
What did surprise him, however, was the fact that he located her squatting in the middle of the floor, her back slightly turned to him so that the hospital gown she wore was unable to maintain an ounce of her dignity.
“Hey,” he shouted, “what’s the problem?”
Milly turned her head to face the familiar voice, and Adam’s eyes widened at the sight of her.
The procedure had been described to him as nothing more than the matter conversion equivalent of a minor nip and tuck. But Milly’s nose, quite a snub button beforehand, was now visibly black and moist. Her hair had developed a distinct curl and in place of human ears she had two flopping appendages that were covered in the same follicles as her scalp. Her mouth hung slightly open, tongue protruding a little, and he could have sworn that before she recognised his face, she was preparing to let out a snarl as a threat.
Instead she cracked a genuine smile at the sight of him, and came careening across the room, almost on all fours, to stop right at his feet. The speed of her approach made the back of her gown ride up, and revealed the presence of a foot long, hairy and enthusiastically wagging tail. As soon as she reached him, Milly sat up on her haunches, still smiling and seemingly ecstatic to see him. Adam noticed that her hands were also covered in fur as she squatted there, and that he had been mistaken in thinking that she had her fingers clenched into fists, seeing now that they were subtly smaller and less well-developed than a typical spread of human digits.
“Hi,” she sounded genuinely overjoyed to see him, “Hi, Adam.”
“Erm…Hi, Milly,” he said tentatively. “I think something’s gone wrong.”
“Yeah,” Milly’s expression darkened for a moment as she frowned at the medical staff still cowering in the doorway. She growled a little in the back of her throat before going on. “Yeah, they screwed it up pretty bad. But it’s okay, because you’re here now, and you always fix things, don’t you? I was scared and mad, but you’ll make it all okay, like you always do, won’t you?”
She looked at him in such a pleading, wide-eyed manner that he almost forgot the strangeness of the situation in which he found himself.