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.  “Oh, 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 dentist 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 anaesthesia, 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! (Tr. by Allen Zhuang)
原載新加坡《聯合早報》(2000)；收入《不著地族/A Lift-Off People》（潘正鐳著，Allen Zhuang 英譯；Singapore: All Publishing House, 2002）；2009年1月31日譯者貼於博客網頁坡港英華/SingaKong Chinese & English，今重貼於此。

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