It wasn’t just this story, this pup. All over the world things meant to stay buried were being uncovered because people had forgotten they were part of the world even as they couldn’t stop devouring it. In Russia, a long-frozen reindeer carcass suddenly thawed and the nineteenth-century anthrax that had killed it took the opportunity to infect a twenty-first-century child and not a single flight was cancelled, not a single carbon-spewing factory closed.

Last year a Czech river revealed centuries-old low water marks made on stones. One said, If you see me, weep. Nobody did, though, far as Will could tell. They tweeted it, reposted it, reported it in the last minute of the TV news, letting the credits roll over the footage of the rock, so dry it was hard to believe water had ever touched it. The etched warning didn’t look frightening at all if you couldn’t read Czech. It could have said anything. It could have said, Everything is fine. Carry on exactly as you are. Everyone, including Will, acted as though it did.

At the ninety-minute mark he approached the desk, waited for the receptionist to stop typing and look at him. When she didn’t he cleared his throat, asked if it’d be much longer. The woman sighed loudly, demanded his name, rolled her chair over to a different monitor, sighed again. ‘There are three people ahead of you,’ she said.

‘It’s just I’ve already been waiting for—’

‘The people ahead of you have been waiting longer.’ She slid back to her original position, recommenced typing.

He sat back down, ashamed. Nobody else had stood to question the waiting time. Nobody else thought they deserved special treatment.

At the two-hour mark he caved, washed down two more Panadol with water from the cooler next to the front door. The white cardboard cups were so tiny he needed to refill and tip the contents into his mouth five times before the tablets went down all the way, and still his throat felt bruised from the effort. He was going in for a sixth refill when his name was called. He dropped the cup, fumbled to pick it up as the doctor repeated his name. ‘Here,’ he called, sounding like an idiot kid in class. Couldn’t see anywhere to put the cup, scrunched it in his hand and tried to keep up with the bald, skinny doctor race-walking down the corridor.

Before Will had managed to sit, the doctor was asking what the problem was.

‘Um, I’ve got this toothache …’

‘Seen a dentist?’ The doctor was as absorbed in his screen as the receptionist had been in hers.

‘Nah, um, that’s the thing, why I’m—I can’t afford to yet but I thought maybe you could, um, in the meantime, something for the pain.’