And the surname was Mallory.
I sat and looked at that screen for a while. Not long. Perhaps a minute.
And then I filled in a form.
There is a box on it for the nature of the conflict, and you write it in free text, and I typed: I am the former spouse of the patient’s father and have been party to legal proceedings involving both parents.
And then I passed the case to a colleague called Jun Abara, who is better than me at ears anyway, and I wrote a one-line note on the system and did not open the rest of the record.
Yvie rang me about it eight days later. She had been told it had been reallocated and why, because that is what the letter says.
And she said — and she was crying, and I do not think it was tactical — “You could have just seen him, Petra. I’d have been fine with it. I’d have preferred it.”
