2-43（在线收听）

43.

Upon reaching the top of the world, the four wounded soldiers uncorked a bottle of champagneand drank to Granny. They were kind enough to phone me and let me listen to their joy.

They’d set a world record, raised a truckload of cash for wounded veterans, and reached thebloody North Pole. What a coup. I congratulated them, told them I missed them, wished I could’vebeen there.

A white lie. My penis was oscillating between extremely sensitive and borderline traumatized.

The last place I wanted to be was Frostnipistan.

I’d been trying some home remedies, including one recommended by a friend. She’d urged meto apply Elizabeth Arden cream.

My mum used that on her lips. You want me to put that on my todger?

It works, Harry. Trust me.

I found a tube, and the minute I opened it the smell transported me through time. I felt as if mymother was right there in the room.

Then I took a smidge and applied it…down there.

“Weird” doesn’t really do the feeling justice.

I needed to see a doctor, ASAP. But I couldn’t ask the Palace to find me one. Some courtierwould get wind of my condition and leak it to the press and the next thing I knew my todgerwould be all over the front pages. I also couldn’t just call a doctor on my own, at random. Undernormal circumstances that would be impossible, but now it was doubly so. Hi, Prince Harry here—listen, I seem to be having a spot of bother with my nether regions and I was just wondering if Icould pop around and…

I asked another mate to find me, very discreetly, a dermatologist who specialized in certainappendages…and certain personages. Tall order.

But the mate came back and said his father knew just the bloke. He gave me a name andaddress and I jumped into a car with my bodyguards. We sped to a nondescript building on HarleyStreet, where lots of doctors were housed. One bodyguard snuck me through a back door, into anoffice. I saw the doctor, seated behind a big wooden desk, making notes, presumably about theprevious patient. Without looking up from his notes he said, Yes, yes, do come in.

I walked in, watched him writing for what seemed an inordinately long time. The poor chapwho went before me, I thought, must have had a lot going on.

Still not looking up, the doctor ordered me to step behind the curtain, take off my clothes, he’dbe with me in a moment.

I went behind, stripped, hopped onto the examination table. Five minutes passed.

At last the curtain pulled back and there was the doctor.

He looked at me, blinked once, and said: Oh. I see. It’s you.

Yes. I thought you’d been warned, but I get the sense you hadn’t.

Right. So, you’re here. Riiight. OK. It’s you. Hm. Remind me of the problem?

I showed him my todger, softened by Elizabeth Arden.

He couldn’t see anything.

Nothing to see, I explained. It was an invisible scourge. For whatever reason, my particularcase of frostnip manifested as greatly heightened sensation…How did this happen? he wanted to know.

North Pole, I told him. I went to the North Pole and now my South Pole is on the fritz.

His face said: Curiouser and curiouser.

I described the cascading dysfunctions. Everything’s difficult, Doctor. Sitting. Walking. Sex, Iadded, was out of the question. Worse, my todger constantly felt like it was having sex. Or readyto. I was sort of losing it, I told him. I’d made the mistake of googling this injury, and I’d readhorror stories about partial penectomies, a phrase you never want to come across when googlingyour symptoms.

The doctor assured me it was unlikely I’d need one of those.

Unlikely?

He said he was going to try to rule out other things. He gave me a full examination, which wasmore than invasive. No stone unturned, so to speak.

The likeliest cure, he announced at last, would be time.

What do you mean? Time?

Time, he said, heals.

Really, Doc? That hasn’t been my experience.