跳Q / Jumping the Queue

跳Q 金雨田	Jumping the Queue Jin Yu Tian
寫了篇帶女兒看牙醫，讀者問怎麽你碰上的都不是東西？孰知當今行醫如賣雜果，生意好，少你個人又怎樣？	AFTER publishing an essay about taking my daughter to see a dentist, I got responses from readers wondering how it was that I had always come across mean doctors. They don’t know that many practitioners nowadays are like those fruiterers who, complacent about their good business, just don’t care about losing a customer.
年前駕車，胸口悶，才發覺自己對心呀肝呀肺呀的位置都摸不清，生命誠可貴，下句還是生命誠可貴。立即停車奔進診療所，櫃枱小姐竟擋駕，推說醫生準備出診，不看！不看！我說，好，我只要等醫生出來告訴我心臟在左在右呢，還是在中間？	Late last year, when driving, I suddenly felt suffocated somewhere in the chest. This reminded me how I had neglected myself, ignorant even about the position of my heart, liver, or lungs. “O verily, precious is life;” – the oft-quoted line flashed across my mind, followed by my impromptu version – “Nothing more precious can I find!” At once I stopped my car and dashed into the nearest clinic, only to be stopped by the receptionist. “No, no,” said the girl, telling me the doctor was just leaving for a house call. Well, I replied, I would just like the doctor to tell me where exactly my heart was – in the left, right, or middle of the chest.
才隔一天，牙根來折磨，年除夕大早，急下樓看牙醫，櫃枱小姐也推說不看不看，因爲我沒預約。“小姐，這是牙痛啊啊！”連續兩個啊，她都懶得睬你呢。	Two days later, a decayed tooth root came to torture me. Incidentally, it was the New Year’s Eve, so I hurried to the community dentist’s downstairs early in the morning. The receptionist turned me away because I had no appointment. “Oh, my young lady,” I pleaded, “but this is TOOTHACHE. Ouch! Ouch!” Yet the girl granted me no attention, despite my double exclamations of agony.
歲末得跟時間賽跑，只好急奔公司牙醫。嘩，少說也二十多人在輪候，都是友族病人，但沒幾個人，我便被傳召了。雖然麻醉藥還在擴散，醫生已把那“傢伙”幹掉了。“Happy New Year！”老醫生奧利佛說。	The year approaching its very end, I had to race against time. I rushed into my company’s clinic and found – oh no! – at least 20 patients in the waiting queue, all of them Malays and Indians. But very soon I was attended to and, under anaesthetic, the troublemaker in my mouth was removed. “Happy New Year!” said Oliver, the old doctor.
一面捧著腫脹的面頰一面感覺“如沐春風”，尤其對著候診室裏讓我跳Q的友族同胞 –– 新年快樂！好兆頭！	Even with my cheeks still swollen, I felt a soothing breeze caressing me. “Happy New Year to you, too!” I replied, particularly to all my Malay and Indian colleagues in the waiting room, who had kindly allowed me to jump the queue. What a good omen for the New Year! (Translated by Allen Zhuang)
[原載新加坡《聯合早報》(2000)；收入《不着地族 / A Lift-Off People》(潘正鐳著、Allen Zhuang 英譯；Singapore: All Publishing House, 2002)]