This summer I participated in a program called “Young Writer Lessons,” where I met weekly with a writing mentor to work on creating a story. The idea I chose to focus on was one from my senior year of college when I had to get an MRI. Nothing ended up being wrong, but for several days I was in agony, waiting for the results and wondering what it meant. I wanted to capture that in a story. It ended up growing far beyond that, but here’s a piece of the story that focuses on the original seed for the idea.
A few minutes later, a nurse calls my name, and I stand, take a breath, and follow her back into a hallway. She gives me a paper gown and shows me where I can change and lock my things in a cabinet. I eye the dusty locker and flimsy lock with suspicion, but finally decide I don’t have another choice and close my purse inside. I hear footsteps in the hallway, but instead of the nurse, it’s someone different.
“Hi there, Mrs. Rutherford?” The woman, probably in her early thirties, smiles, lips painted pink parting to reveal straight white teeth. “I’m Carla. I’ll be doing your MRI today.”
I nod, before saying, “Ms.”
Carla pauses. “I’m sorry?”
“It’s Ms. You said ‘Mrs. Rutherford.’ It’s just Ms.,” I say. “I think I marked that on my sheet.”
The woman—she might be younger than I originally thought—glances down at the clipboard in front of her. “Whoops, I guess you did! My bad. Ms. Rutherford, if you’ll follow me.” I obey, feeling very vulnerable as little every breeze rustles up the paper gown. It’s not a feeling I’m used to, or enjoy.
“Have you been having a good day?” Carla asked as they made their way down a hall.
Other than having to come in for an MRI? To Carla I smile and say, “Yes, it’s been fine. And you?”
“Pretty good, pretty good,” she responds, stopping in front of a door and opening it.
“How long have you been doing this?” I try to keep my tone light and conversational and not reveal the skepticism I’m feeling. I’m quite certain Carla can’t be more than a few years out of her undergraduate.
Carla, however, smiles reassuringly before walking to a computer screen. “Six years. Stand right here, please.” She motions next to the long tray that was currently outside a huge tube contraption. I shift my weight and tug at the paper gown, trying not to look at the huge whirring machine to my right. I can almost hear my mother telling me to stop fidgeting.
Carla finishes tapping on the screen, and then turns to me. “All right. Go ahead and lay down on that patient table behind you. Can you manage that?”
“Of course I can,” I snap. Get a few wrinkles and grey hairs and people assume you’re as breakable as a china teacup.
Carla, however, doesn’t respond, just leaves the computer to come stand closer to me. Once I’ve lain down, she tells me a few things to change about my position for “optimal results,” and then lowers something that reminds me of an umpire’s mask over my face.
“Six years,” I say, returning to our conversation in an effort to ignore the behemoth, humming machine that’s now located directly behind my head. “An MRI technician. Your mother must be proud.”
Carla smiles, but it’s tinged with sadness. “Thank you. She was. She passed two years ago.”
“Oh…” I begin, unsure of what to say. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
Carla merely gives a grateful nod and refocuses on the task at hand. “All right. I’m going move you into the machine, and then I’ll go into that little room over there and begin the MRI. Sound good?” She points to a glass window in one of the walls, and through it I can see a desk with more computer screens surrounding it.
“Um,” I say, stomach suddenly twisting with nerves. “How long does it take?” I can’t see Carla very well through the mask, and it’s only adding to my anxiety.
“Just a few minutes. Not long at all.” I think Carla must have smiled at me, but it’s hard to tell because of the mask, and a second later I hear a whizzing noise as the narrow table I’m on is pulled backward into the machine. I feel like a human sacrifice, being scooped into the mouth of some great metal beast.
When I’m fully inside, it clunks to a stop, and Carla’s voice, distorted by a mechanical buzz, clicks on through a speaker. “All right. Joyce, can you hear me?
“Yes,” I say.
“Perfect. Remember to stay completely still. If you have any trouble for any reason, just say something, and I’ll be able to hear you. Okay?”
“Okay.” I swallow and focus on not moving. But my left elbow itches, and I want to scratch it, but I know I can’t, which makes it itch even more. And my knee hurts, the one I busted in college on a ski trip and it hasn’t been the same since. I know if I can just bend it, my knee would feel better, but right now it creaks in protest.
I set my teeth, determined to think about something else. My mind drifts to what Carla had said, about her mother passing. I swallow. Carla certainly isn’t any older than Riley, which means her mother probably wasn’t much older than myself. My knee cries out again, and suddenly I am aware of all the aches and pains throughout my body, the little things that have accumulated over the years like cobwebs in that corner you always forget to dust. I wonder what had happened to her mother. I wonder what will happen, to me.
A sudden, loud clunking sound echoes through the chamber of the machine. I almost jump, but force myself to stay still. Carla said this would happen, remember?
Carla’s mother was probably very proud of her. I wonder what Riley would think if she found out I had died…or am dying.
I try to tell myself I’m being ridiculous, but the loud clanking sound seems like it only exists to remind me of the very real possibility of having a tumor in my head. How would Riley react? When strangers at the restaurant asked if her mother was proud, would she smile in that same bittersweet way and say, yes she was? Or would she ignore the question, move on to something else, not wanting to tell a customer that the last time she had spoken with her mother had been in a fight two years before she died?
The clanking stops as abruptly as it had started, and after a pause, I feel myself being pulled back out of the machine.
“Great job, Joyce!” Carla’s voice comes through the speaker again, in a tone so perky I practically expect her to offer me a lollipop next.
I thank Carla after following her back to the changing room. I quickly put on my own clothes and jewelry, glad to be rid of that exposing gown. After stopping by the front desk to settle insurance, I make my way back to the entrance of the hospital and to my car.
I turn on my car, but stay in the parking spot. I’m not sure what to do next, actually. I tap my fingers against the steering wheel, thinking. Carla didn’t give me an exact timeline for when I would hear about the results, just that I should expect a phone call by the end of the week. They really couldn’t have been even a little more specific? I’m going to jump every time my phone rings now.
I pull out of the spot and turn towards the road that will take me home. A jogger passes in the distance, running along the sidewalk by the hospital. At the same time, an ambulance with flashing lights comes whizzing through the parking lot to the emergency entrance. I shake my head. It all seems so useless. Exercising and eating healthy, believing that it would result in a long, happy life and old age. Look at me now.
In school, they always told you that if you ate right and exercised and got a good night’s sleep you would live to see old age and great grandkids and have happy wrinkles from all the smiles in your life. Well, isn’t that a load of garbage.
I’ve been eating vegetables and avoiding desserts and going for walks every evening—yet, here I am, getting an MRI. It’ll probably reveal I have some tumor eating away my brain. It doesn’t even really matter because I don’t have anything to give me laugh lines or any grandkids and if I did Riley wouldn’t let me visit them anyway.
I might as well die at fifty-seven.
This last thought passes through my mind abruptly, as if placed there by someone else, and I almost slam on the brakes. Did I really mean that? Surely not. But I search myself, like rifling through a closet where everything looks familiar but you can’t quite remember how it got there. And I realize I’m not sure. I might mean it. Well, I think to myself, If I’m going to die, I can at least die happy. And that’s what I decide to do. But then I realize: I don’t know how.
Feature image by Ken Treloar