The Appointment

In full

Short story, 2026. Written by Charlotte Joanne.

Ellie left work at four because the appointment was at half past.

It was easier to leave at four than explain why she needed to leave at quarter past, and anyway nobody asked. People rarely did. They saw an appointment in a diary and a handbag lifted from under a desk and a coat put on with that particular after-work tiredness, and they supplied the rest themselves.

“See you tomorrow,” someone said.

“See you tomorrow,” Ellie said.

Outside, the air had that grey late-afternoon feeling that belonged to pavements, buses, damp sleeves and shops with their lights on before closing. She stood at the crossing with one hand around the strap of her bag and the other tucked into her coat pocket, aware of her tights under her skirt, the small pressure of the waistband, the familiar private fact of her knickers.

She had chosen the blue pair that morning without thinking much about it. Not special. Not new. Not daring. Just hers.

There was comfort in that. A whole life could be held in ordinary things if they were ordinary enough.

At the surgery, the receptionist looked up and smiled in the neutral, practised way of people who handled names and times and bodies all day.

“Ellie?”

“Yes.”

“Take a seat. The doctor won’t be long.”

Ellie sat beneath a noticeboard of leaflets and reminders. Flu jabs. Blood pressure. Screening. Stop smoking. A poster about looking after yourself before symptoms became something worse.

She crossed one ankle behind the other and smoothed her skirt over her knees.

There were two women across from her, both older, both pretending not to read the same faded magazine. A man in work boots sat near the door with his elbows on his knees. Somewhere behind the reception desk, a printer started and stopped. The whole place smelled faintly of disinfectant, paper, and rain brought in on coats.

Ellie liked surgeries better than hospitals. Surgeries were more human. More local. More Tuesday. People came in with ordinary fears and ordinary bodies and hoped to leave with something bearable.

She had not always been good at that.

When she was younger, her body had felt like evidence against her. Later it had become something more complicated. Not home, exactly. Not enemy, not every day. A place she had to live in. A place she had learned to dress. A place she had learned to tend. A place that could still require things of her, whether or not those things fitted the shape of her soul.

The doctor called her name.

“Ellie?”

She stood, picked up her bag, and followed him down the short corridor.

The room was warm. There was a desk, two chairs, a computer, a curtained couch, a sink, a box of gloves, a roll of paper towel. Nothing dramatic. Nothing designed for revelation. Just a room where bodies were taken seriously for ten minutes at a time.

The doctor checked her notes. He was kind in the brisk way of a busy doctor trying not to make an ordinary examination feel larger than it was.

“Any problems since we last spoke?”

“No,” Ellie said. “Nothing specific.”

“Good. We’ll just do the examination today, then.”

“Yes.”

He explained what he was going to do. Calmly. Clinically. No fuss. Ellie nodded at the right places. She knew how to be a patient. She knew how to listen, how to give consent, how to make the whole thing easier by not making him carry her history as well as his job.

“Behind the curtain when you’re ready,” he said. “Just lower things from the waist down.”

Ellie stepped behind the curtain.

There was always a moment.

Not fear, exactly. Not shame, exactly. Something older and more precise than either. The little pause before the private self and the literal body had to be in the same room, under the same light, for the same reason.

She put her bag on the chair. Took off her coat. Folded it badly because there was nowhere sensible to put it. Then she reached under her skirt and found the waistband of her tights.

Her fingers knew the movement. The careful rolling down. The slight cling at the hips. The way tights always wanted to become awkward at exactly the wrong moment.

Then her knickers.

Blue cotton. Ordinary. Hers.

For one second, she held them at her thighs and felt the whole stupid, sacred tenderness of being alive.

She thought of women in rooms like this. Women before work, after work, between children, after menopause, after bad news, before better news. Women rolling down tights, folding underwear, doing what had to be done because bodies were not theories and care was not betrayal.

She thought of Jon at home.

She thought I am going home to my husband.

Then she took her knickers off, placed them with her tights on the chair, and got onto the couch.

The paper crinkled beneath her.

The doctor came round the curtain.

“All right, Ellie,” he said. “This won’t take long.”

It didn’t.

The doctor finished checking Ellie’s prostate, removed his gloves, and turned away to give her privacy.

“All done,” he said. “You can get dressed now.”

“Thank you,” Ellie said.

The curtain closed again.

For a moment she lay still, looking at nothing in particular.

There it was. The fact. Not a verdict. Not an argument. Not a punishment. A fact with a job to do.

Her body had needed checking. So, she had come.

That was all.

That was everything.

Ellie sat up carefully. The room sounded different from behind the curtain: paper rustling, the doctor typing, the small professional clicks of a person recording what had happened and what had not.

No abnormality detected, perhaps.

All normal, perhaps.

Normal was a strange word. It could be cruel in the wrong mouth and merciful in the right one.

She stood and reached for her knickers.

The blue cotton opened in her hands. She stepped into them one foot at a time, pulled them up over her thighs, settled them properly beneath her skirt. Then the tights, more slowly, because tights demanded patience and punished arrogance. Over toes, over calves, knees, thighs, hips. A little tug at the back. A smoothing at the front.

She put her shoes back on. Heels first, then balance. A woman reassembling herself from the floor up.

Coat. Bag. Breath.

When she came out from behind the curtain, the doctor was still at the computer.

“All seems fine,” he said. “Nothing worrying. Come back if anything changes.”

“I will.”

“And don’t leave it if you notice symptoms.”

“I won’t.”

He glanced at her then, properly, kindly.

“Good.”

Outside, the receptionist was on the phone. The waiting room had changed its cast. The two older women were gone. The man in work boots was gone. Someone’s child was turning in circles near the chairs while a tired mother said, “Stop that, please,” with the exhausted rhythm of someone who had said it many times already that day.

Ellie stepped out into the evening.

The air had gone colder. Traffic moved through wet light. A bus pulled away before she reached the stop, which felt about right. She stood under the shelter and adjusted the strap of her bag.

Her tights felt slightly twisted at one hip.

She left them.

At home, Jon would ask how it went. She would say, “Fine.” He might make tea. Or she might. They might talk about nothing much: work, shopping, whether the milk needed using, something on television neither of them really cared about.

She would not need to explain the appointment to him.

Not all of it.

Not the room. Not the curtain. Not the small private pause before taking off her knickers. Not the ordinary courage of letting one truth be seen without surrendering the others.

He knew enough.

She was going home.

Behind the fiction

The Appointment is a short work of fiction written by Charlotte Joanne. Ellie and Jon are characters in the story.