You Get What You Get

by Jillian Grant Shoichet

About the Author: Jillian Shoichet's work has been short-listed for the Bridport Prize, the Exeter Short Story Competition, the CBC Nonfiction Prize and the Writers' Union of Canada Short Prose Competition, and her stories appear in Mystery Magazine and subTerrain.

Excerpt

“For a man of your age, you’re the picture of health.”

The woman sitting behind the desk was the sort of hale and hearty person that least appealed to him—all sinew and muscle, probably a runner.

But family physicians were harder to come by these days. And look what happened to Dr. Singh. Early retirement doesn’t agree with everyone.

Frank, on the other hand, was enjoying his retirement. He had no grounds for complaint—about doctors or anything else. In his experience, it wasn’t the complaining about a problem that solved it. As Lesley would say, You get what you get and you don’t get upset.

Solving problems required a different approach.

“But I would like to see you getting out more. Do you have any hobbies?”

She looked up at him over a pair of reading glasses.

He flexed arthritic fingers and pressed down on the arbutus-wood cane that lay across his knees. Slowly, his right leg stilled. He probed his left canine with his tongue and thought about what Lesley might have prepared for lunch.

“Mr. Walters?”

He shrugged. A puff of his own body odour escaped from the frayed collar of his plaid button-down and lingered in the air around his nose.

He took a shallow breath. “Well,” he said. “I like to trip people.”

Story Comments