I always figured I’d be a lousy Doctor. I’d be pretty bad with hanging around sick people, and even worse with giving them the bad news in a comforting way. With that said, I like to think I’d be better than Dr. Goldberg here. So, here’s my newest story: Tales from Dr. Horatio Goldberg, Doctor at large: Phillips gets a check up.

“Hey hey! Phillips! How ya doin’ buddy?” Dr. Goldberg said as he came tumbling into the room where his patient was waiting.

“I’m great doc! I’ve never felt better!” Phillips said with a gleam in his eye.

“Haha, that’s odd.” Dr. Goldberg laughed, as he took off a pair of latex gloves.

“Really? Haha, how come?” Phillips said, losing his gleam.

“Because you won’t make it through the week.” The Doctor said as he checked his clipboard. “So…Phillips, is that a Persian name?”

“Wait, I what??”

“No no, I was asking you.” Dr. Goldberg said, putting his stethoscope into his ears. “Persian name?”

“Dutch-Irish.” Phillips said. “What did you say about me not making it through the week?”

“Well its no big deal. Your test results came back; you’re probably not going to make it to next Tuesday. Its all good, plenty of my patients have died.”

Phillips didn’t know what to say.

“So, you’re scheduled for a prostate exam, right?” Dr. Goldberg said..

“I hardly think that matters right now!!”

“Look, Philly–you mind if I call you Philly?”

“Uh, no, go ahead.”

“Philly, dying is not a big deal. It happens to everyone. I personally believe that after death, we will all be sent to a spirit world, where we will be resurrected and then judged by our superior spirit overlords and then granted life on a far off planet with varying degrees of servitude.” Dr. Goldberg said. “I believe that I’ll be a king of my planet.”

“So you’re a Mormon?”

“We prefer the term Latter Day Saints.” Dr. Goldberg said.

“Well…sir…how am I going to die?” Phillips asked.

“How should I know?” The Doctor asked.

“Well I would think because you’re a-”

“I gotta run, I’m playing golf with Gonzalez from cardiology.” Dr. Goldberg said, running out the door. “We’ll make a rain check on that prostate exam.”

“HEY! Wait a second!”

“See you next time.” The doctor stopped himself at the door. “Actually, haha, no I won’t.”

With that, Horatio Goldberg ran out the door, and Phillips was left alone in the cold, grey doctor’s office.

Phillips was back at his house and was wondering how he was going to do it. By “do it,” I mean kill himself.

Phillips was a reasonable man. He new that he was going to die, but not how. If it turned out to be something frightening, like excessive fat buildup on the heart, he would die a painful death as a result of a heart attack. He knew that sort of thing ran in his family.

But, there was also the possibility that it could be something of an easy death, in which he would be carried off in his sleep.

So, needless to say, Phillips was in a pickle.

He had decided to kill himself because he didn’t want whatever malignant entity was inside of him to have the satisfaction of doing it itself.

Yet another pickle emerged.

How would he do it? He was afraid of heights, so he wouldn’t jump from a building, he didn’t like the smell of gas (his stove was out), he was out of gasoline in his car (he had ridden his bike to the doctors), and he didn’t like sharp objects or guns.

He finally settled on hanging.

“This is the honorable way to do it.” He thought. “This is gonna be great.”

After printing out his death note and setting it neatly on his piano, he began to plan his demise.

He brought a gas lantern down to his basement, and sat on the carpet and began to tie his noose.

He flung the rope over a beam on the celing, stood up on a chair, and went to town.

Sadly, as he jumped off the chair, a terrible thing happened.

His feet touched the ground.

“God dammit.” Phillips said.

As he said this, his cell phone rang.

“Who could be calling me right now?” He thought.

“Hello?” Phillips said.

“Hey hey! Philly Willy! Its me! Dr. Goldberg!”

“Oh, Doctor, you caught me at a bad time.” Phillips said, with the noose still around his neck.

“No time like the present!” Dr. Goldberg said. “You aren’t going to die. What I meant to say at the office was ‘We should get some Thai’. You know, like the food. I had written it down so I wouldn’t forget to ask you. My bad. I can’t read my own writing sometimes.”

“Wait I’m going to survive?!” Yelled Phillips.

“Yeah I guess.” Dr. Goldberg said. “I mean I never got a chance to read your file so I have no idea but yeah, I’ll take a wild guess and say you’re good.”

Phillips was so happy he could hardly contain his joy. He began jumping up and down in a  fit of cheerfulness.

“Yes!!” He yelled. “I’m going to survive!!!”

It was approximately then that he kicked over his gas lantern and lit his carpet on fire.

“Ah nuts.” He said.

After making it out of his house alive, Phillips stood in the road, with a noose still around his neck, watching his house burn down.

His dog Kip stood next to him, watching the flames engulf the house.

“You learned anything from this, Kip?” Phillips asked his dog.

Kip looked right into Phillips’ eyes, as if to say something.

Then, Kip began to lick himself.

“Yeah,” Phillips said. “Me neither.”