Dr. Nikolik

Brilliant bastard I must admit; I had to fire him yeah, but not because he was not clever or because he was doing his job in a badly way; in fact, he always showed a great knowledge and outstanding skills; he could perform with ease, some tasks that for other doctors were just too difficult; he got himself a very good reputation among the whole staff. I can easily say that there was not a single doctor on the whole hospital that gathered all his abilities. Apart from that, the fellow was also charismatic and handsome; all the nurses on the north wing were always inventing pretexts to go and ask him whatever; -Doctor Nikolik, how can I best measure the blood pressure-, or –Doctor Nikolik, please explain to me how the pancreas work-, -Have a lovely day Doctor Nikolik- Some little presents would appear every morning on his desk with post-its full with happy faces. Aagh! I was so tired of that. No, I was not jealous!; well… a little bit I must confess; but the main reason why I fired him is that he was not showing any enthusiasm at all; you could see him just walking around in all the aisles of the hospital, just losing his time, just wandering away, with his sight lost on the garden through the main window, like a man who is really and completely trapped on his thoughts. I had to fire him because he was so disinterested in our goals and objectives as a team, he was lacking of that vital pleasure that a job like this must give you. I tried to find what he was missing in order to be happy, I approached to him on several occasions to speak with him but he never revealed what was bothering him, what he was up to. His salary was one of the highest on the range of doctors of his specialty, and he had always lots of privileges that other doctors didn’t have; even the smallest details like a parking place close to the building, or the office with the biggest window, all those little things that may be important to feel comfortable at work were always granted to him. Sometimes, I could see him typing for hours on his computer while mouthing the words he was writing; completely absorbed into something he wouldn’t speak to nobody. The situation kept on being like that for months, and despite of his superior skills his results were not the best; I had the impression he was doing as few as possible to dully accomplish all what was required; by then, there were candidates that showed; if not outstanding skills, at least a strong commitment and much greater enthusiasm; finally, I decided to charge the balance (tip the scales?) on the side of doctors with that profile, and trying as accurate as possible, to follow all the professional and ethical requirements needed for the process, I fired him. Don’t get me wrong, my personal point of view about him was very positive, it still is; nevertheless, I had to put on top the proper performance of my department. The strangest thing, was that when I call him to my office to make with him an account of all his late results, and to explain him why I was arriving to that decision, he didn’t express the slightest discomfort, or anger, or desperation, or any other feeling that may be expected to have a person who is being fired; instead, he replied back with an expression of satisfaction; an expression suitable for a man that suddenly realizes that he has accomplished with success, a task which was already programmed to be finished. Doctor Nikolik just smiled at me; he signed the documentation, he handed to me his credential and his parking pass, he slowly put on his feet, removed his coat, sincerely thanked me and extending his right hand he said in a calmed voice: I understand.

Now that you mention it, there were some rumors about him being very promiscuous; you know, some say he was often seen departing from nightclubs with three or four women for company at the same time; some of them, nurses of this hospital; and to be completely honest, some of them personally confessed it to me; of course I will say no names; they would all go to his place and spend there the whole night having the craziest sex. His personal life was something private in which I didn’t care to get involved of course, but it began not to be that private, when I began to wonder why he had that strange behavior. An attractive, wealthy and single man having crazy sex with many women at a time, that I can understand; I would do the same if my condition was similar to his; don’t think of me as a saint; but not enjoying himself at work and not reaching the results I was demanding from him, that made no logic to me. Of course now it all has became just a good laugh; and not because something in particular is funny, but because now that I know what was happening, everything seems so clear and logic. When Doctor Nikolik was typing on his keyboard like a maniac, he was just designing the medical structure, the soul of his job, let’s just say he was building the framework of an extraordinary hypothesis on a new way of therapy. When he was having crazy sex with lots of women at the same time, he was in the middle of a sort of field experimentation, that clever bastard was actually working! And instead of mice, he had women and their emotions as subjects of study; controlling stimuli and measuring their responses, dividing them in groups and verifying all their behaviors. Yes, he not only became a hot spot for the whole medical community; but also for the media and for everyone. He is the creator of what now is called “Kissotherapy” and “Sexotherapy”. His idea is simple, elegant and brilliant: If the beneficial reactions caused by “polemical” treatments like the use of drugs like the cannabis for some mental afflictions, or the use of the pill of the day after for avoiding a pregnancy; although with some normal difficulties, are now more than accepted by medicine and by the society in general, then new kinds of treatments that may as well be qualified as “non-ethical”, “unmoral”, “dangerous” etc. Can as well, begin to be implemented. If physical contact between persons produces a large quantity of endorphins, which are the chemicals that practically produce a natural sensation of happiness, and which can be really helpful in the treatment of mental disorders like depression, the bipolar syndrome, anxiety or even schizophrenia; then why not make it an official procedure and an institutionalized way of applying a therapy. No, he didn’t hire whores for that! I guess somehow you could call them like that, but in the strict and medical point of view they are therapists; not only their name, but also their professional background since they all hold medical academic records; and of course, they are really beautiful. There are men for female patients and he is now considering hiring some gay therapists. Each therapy costs an eye from your face, so, by now, only wealthy people can have access to them; they are completely confidential, and also, a document must be signed in which the patient accepts the responsibility for all the moral damage, that a therapy like this may cause on anybody’s reputation.

The first therapies have been of a great success. Patients report to have been getting more confident in their daily life; they have been gaining weight, defeating their mental ghosts, and aiming to new personal goals and objectives; some patients have came back with their couples or make peaces with their relatives; there is a patient that has even stopped having hallucinations and has decided to make a long trip to a sunny place. Patients are in general, a lot happier; nevertheless, one of the inconvenients of these therapies, which can go from stimulating the patient with some kisses to a whole sexual relationship with a therapist, depending on the level of illness that a patient may have, is that patients can easily become sex addicts or create an emotional dependency on their therapists. The whole attention that Doctor Nikolik is paying now is directed to this problem. The patient must know that each session will have only a determined duration and that there will be a, previously programmed, number of therapies to take. Not all the patients can be accepted for this type of therapy, since some of them are very prone to have violent reactions, and some others are infected with some disease; in these cases the patient is given an explanation and just referred to another type of therapy that may be more suitable for him. There are some other minor problems that need to be solved, but Doctor Nikolik was always an innovative guy, I should have seen that before; he needed to create, to produce, to invent so he was happy; that is why he was always bored with his old job and lost in inner thoughts. There are still lots of things that need to be taken care of; lots of other factors, chemicals, secondary effects that need to be measured; lots of social battles to be won. But he is working, step by step, in all of them. Now, wish me luck; my interview with Doctor Nikolik is in just thirty minutes; I have a lot of faith on his job; I have done a lot of research on what he is doing, and I would really like to participate with him.