Sleep rarely came easily to Anthony, yet the single heavy knock that shook the door in its frame, woke him from an unscheduled snooze and not a moment to soon. Nurse Flitchgaurds head popped around the door and with her usual, no nonsense tone, said "The patient is ready, Dr. Bonnavil. Soon as you've seen his morning charts, we'll have him under and ready for surgery"

Anthony nodded but said nothing. Even before he completed the nod, nurse Flitchgaurd had withdrawn her head and closed the door.
'She's a strange one' he thought, 'and so plain'

If he didn't know any better he would have thought that the phrase, Plain Jane, was created solely for her.
'I suppose, plain Vanessa, doesn't quite have the same ring to it'

Earlier that morning he had seen her arrive sporting her usual bland clothing style. Clothes hung on her like she was a wire hanger. This mornings uninspiring choice consisted of, light grey cotton trousers, an insipid green blouse and a yellow cardigan that was so pale that even pastle was to strong a word to describe it. Anthony knew, that regardless of her dowdiness, there was no better nurse to have by his side in the operating theatre. Her excellent theatre craft helped him settle into a steady routine during long surgery's.
'It's time I prepared for today's marathon'

He patted the arms of his chair, braced himself for extraction and groaned loudly as he crowbarred himself up out of the dirty draylon single seater. The chair was a burgundy and gold affair, just like the one his mother inherited from her mother on her death bed. The one his father later claimed for his own, to be his new throne. From that chair, his father would rule with an iron hand whilst chain smoking and watching the five o'clock news.

The chair had been central to Anthony's unhappy childhood. He remembered his mother nervously rushing out each afternoon to the corner shop to purchase that days Mirror newspaper, a packet of number 6 cigarettes and two slices of salted ham. His mother would place both paper and cigarettes safely and neatly on the armrest of his father's throne, ready for when he came home. The salted ham was for his fathers pack-up the following morning. He always had a salted ham sandwich for work, with a smidge of mustard, always.

Anthony hated that chair and his father. He hated the man's anger, his meanness and the back of his hand. He had been a hard man, a hard father and a bully, especially towards his mother. The chair symbolised everything Anthony hated about his childhood. Yet, it symbolised everything he had learned from his father, all the harsh lessons he had taught him. Anthony smiled sourly at the thought 'taught me! ha, taught mother and I both, more like!'

As often as Anthony had felt the back of his father's hand, his mother also got her fair share. More often than not, she would receive the worst of his father's rage, almost on a daily basis.

'Yes' he thought 'I did learn from that bastard. I learned to be a better person'

Anthony raked his fingernails through the velvet of the armrests as he climb to his feet. Now standing at the centre of his Stark white office, he turned round to look down on the draylon chair, to see just how out of place the it was. Other than a large grey filing cabinet and a generic desk, his office was just four white walls, a large window that looked over the hospital's carpark and a teak veneered fire door, that in the hallway, carried his name and position.

Dr. Anthony Bonnavil. Head of cardiovascular surgery.

Anthony frowned, he always frowned when he looked at the chair. It was exactly the same as his father's throne. If, on the day of his father's death, he could have dragged that chair into his office, he would have, but that had not been possible.

Anthony's father had outlived his long suffering and abused wife, by five years, but eventually had himself died of a massive heart attack whilst sitting on his throne. Several days past before he was discovered by an inquisitive drinking buddy from his local. Anthony never got the chance to save his father that day. Never got the chance to find out if he would have saved him even if he could.

Just like his heart, both his sphincter and bladder had given up their ghosts and their contents. Even the local crime scene cleaners refused to clean the chair. Just as his father was later cremated, so were his chair and carpet.

A week later, after his father's funeral, Anthony began the search for a chair just like his father's throne. He couldn't find anything even similar in the local furniture shops or larger stores. Unhappy with his lack of progress, he began to search secondhand and charity shops. He found one or two that were close but not close enough. One afternoon, on his way home from his latest trall of the towns seedy pre-loved shops, Anthony, taking the fastest route from the run down area that housed many of the town's run down residents, he passed a vacant lot that had become the locals dumping ground. Among overgrown brambles, nettles, discarded sacks of rubbish and rotten couches, was what looked to be a familiar chair, a dirty draylon throne.

The scavenge had been a painful one. His shins, protected by thin trouser legs, were stung by the nettles. As he delved his hands into the weeds, to haul up his find, something jagged ripped into the palm of his right hand. After rapping his rather expensive silk tie around his bleeding hand, Anthony eventually manhandled the chair into the back of his Explorer. It had been an exhausting and dirty retrieval, but a satisfying one. Once in his office at the hospital, he'd had time to inspect his find. It was almost exactly the same as his father's throne, even down to the stains on the arms, the grease smudge where his head had rested and over the year's, his hair fallen out. Even the smell of mildew and stale cigarettes were present. It was altogether disgusting, altogether perfect.

The chair that Anthony hated so much, the throne he had despised all his life or at least the one that was almost a perfect match to it, now took pride of place in his office. For the past two years he had sat in that filthy chair before he was due to perform surgery. It had become a ritual, a reminder to himself of the man he had worked so hard all his life not to be. And now on the second anniversary of his father's death, he sat upon his father's throne in memoriam and castigation of the memory of the man he had called Daddy.