Invisible Mending

The strangest thing about this particular ESA medical Assessment was that the claimant appeared to be invisible. I say appeared because in a visual sense Davie Bryant didn’t appear at all. O the assessor, one Maggie Finlay a senior nurse, knew he was there but she couldn’t actually see him. She could see everything else in the room; the gurney, the scales, the door the window, even the carpet, her computer screen and the implements on her desk. She just couldn’t see Davie Bryant.

“But, I um here though..!”

He’d had terrible difficulty signing in present at reception, in fact, the receptionist had taken so poorly at the non-sight of him that she’d had to lie down in the sick room and was sent home for the day.

“Mr Bryant. You haven’t mentioned anything on your claim form about being invisible”, Maggie Finlay could hear herself speaking words but was disconcerted by the fact that she didn’t know what they collectively meant. She’d apparently acknowledged, almost accusatively, that another human being was invisible and sitting before her.

“Naw, well it’s happened since. Ah wis awright when I filled the form in”, he stopped, realising what he’d just said and to whom “Well, y’know, obviously ah wisnae awright ah jist wisnae invisible, ken?”

She could see and hear the leather seating on the chair creasing under the pressure of Bryant’s agitation.

“Erm, Mr Bryant, I’m not sure how to proceed. The rules mean that I have to view your condition at the time of you filling your form in, when you stated you were suffering from stress and depression. I can’t really take your subsequent……invisibility into account…”

“You don’t think it’s significant…?” She could sense Bryant had lent forward in his annoyance as the sound of his voice seemed to edge closer.

“You think it’s mibbe cured my anxiety and stress to have woken up last Thursday tae find that I couldnae see masel in the mirror…that I was invisible? You think that’s mibbe calmed me doon”

Maggie was used to claimants getting upset. This was after all a government sponsored project to get those they saw as shirkers and malingerers off state benefits wherever possible. Over her three years as an assessor she’d found that it was often the undeserving that got shafted. The street-wise ‘at it’ merchants had the vitality and the cojones to find a way through, the truly vulnerable hadn’t the energy or compulsion and were easy targets for the….well….targets.

“I know what you’re saying, it’s just that I have to view your condition from what you’ve written on your claim form and also, of course, your GPs report which doesn’t mention you’re invisible either. Granted it was written before….was it last Thursday you said?”

“Aye, last Thursday. Been invisible ever since”

“Have you seen your doctor about it, just as a matter of interest?”

“He said he couldn’t see me”

A heavy pall of silence fell upon the ropey little assessment room with its Monet print on the wall, put there for its calming effect. As if any notions of claimants becoming distraught as your system of questioning consistently denied them the opportunity to explain their condition satisfactorily would be instantly extinguished by the presence of this painting in its tatty frame. Once, they’d used plants strategically placed in open plan job centres for this same effect until they realised they could just as easily be used as weapons to hit impertinent staff with.

All at once the sardonic humour of his remark hit the part of her frontal lobe that recognises these things and she smiled in recognition.

“Have you found no advantages to being invisible?” If one human adult couldn’t take a healthy interest in anothers sudden invisibility then what had the world come to? She just hoped he wasn’t going to pipe up with some clichés about being able to watch women undress or go to the toilet.

“The obvious wans like watchin the burd acroass the street get ur kit aff, bit mainly ahv jist been goin aboot playin wee tricks oan people and stealin weans sweeties an that”

She looked long and hard at Davie Bryant and decided that his benefit was humped.