Friday I had a doctor’s appointment that I had planned on canceling but had forgotten. I got dressed and went even though I didn’t want to talk about my back, or my depression and anxiety, or my should I keep it? uterus. When they called my name I walked in and after passing through the doors I was immediately asked to step onto their large digital scale. I took my coat off as it was my heavy winter one still soaked with rain from the last downpour I walked through umbrella-less and I hung it and my purse on the hook. As I was slipping off my shoes I remembered what my Mom always says before she’s weighed; the joke about needing to take off her 100 lb. shoes. She did it every week when we were in Weight Watchers together and she’s done it at every doctor’s appointment and ER trip I have accompanied her on. My Mom has maybe a dozen lines like that which she laces into her conversations. Decades old and worse for the wear, they are the jokes I used to roll my eyes at and groan with embarrassment over, now I smile just because they are a part of her and she refuses to give them up, even though everyone has heard them all before.

The CMA led me back to the room and after I had sat down on the paper covered exam table she took my vitals. I apologized for wearing a long sleeve shirt, but the young girl said it was okay, she could put the blood pressure cuff over it because it was so thin. I studied the girl’s face as she carefully recorded the numbers. She looked to be about twelve, her hair in a ponytail, her face a mixture of perfectly tiny features that made up her sweet little face. I imagined that I could be old enough to be her Mom, if I’d given birth to her in high school. As she was checking my pulse the sleeve of the long sleeve shirt she wore under her pink scrubs slid up and I saw that her arms were covered with scars from cutting herself. I imagined that she had to wear long sleeves on even the hottest days, and I thought about her cutting into herself, wearing her pain on the outside too. She told me that I had to get undressed and that I couldn’t even leave my socks on. “When I go to the doctor, I always want to leave my socks on because it makes me feel more secure.” she said to me. I nodded in understanding and wanted to hug her but she was out the door, gone, not my girl to save.

My doctor had large dark puffy circles under her eyes. I had never seen them there before, but although she sees me naked, inside and out, we are not allowed to break through the doctor patient relationship and talk about her. She scolded me gently for not having done the two things she had told me to do, go to physical therapy, and get blood work done at the lab. I told her that I knew I should have, but when the woman had called bright and early from the physical therapy department I had listened to her chipper over enthusiastic voice and deleted the message without writing down the number. The doctor laughed at that. I have always been suspicious of people who are genuinely cheerful, especially so early in the morning, because I feel like I am in a Twilight Zone episode enough as it is without surrounding myself with constant happy banter.

The doctor gave me three new prescriptions and I showed her the zit that had sprung up on my chin. It was one of those that lingers, red and throbbing, but there is nothing you can do about it because it refuses to break through to the surface. I told her that it was my worry about going back to work zit and mentioned that I had read in a trash magazine that celebrities have cortisone injections to eliminate their pimples. She said that she had never done a pimple injection before and she wanted me to hold a warm compress on it three times a day.

She flipped through my charts after we had talked for awhile about my back and my crazy brain and exclaimed that I had lost fifteen pounds in a month. She asked me how I had done it and I, having not been aware of the weight loss, said that I had been drinking lots of water and walking my dog. I didn’t mention that I was trying to flush narcotics out of my system. She warned me again about the ramifications of taking any job that required lifting and I nodded solemnly as I thought about telling ChefHisName that I could lift up to one hundred pounds, no problem. She told me she wanted me to find another psychiatrist because she felt like what she was doing, the drugs she was prescribing me, the medication monitoring, she felt it wasn’t working. I knew she was right but I felt weary at the thought of trying therapy again. I told her I’d look for a doctor who was accepting new patients, and inwardly felt nauseated at the thought of sitting in another office with the stranger taking notes and the tissue box pushed closer to my seat as I was told to tell the story of my childhood. Again. Over and over again, just for me, just for them, until one day something in the wiring of my brain reprograms itself perhaps? Until I can retell the morning of March 27^th 1985, walking into a house to find my father had chosen to die, was I supposed to tell that story until I could tell it with dry eyes?

I went downstairs to fill my prescriptions and the café next to the pharmacy was packed with lunch eaters. After comparing prices between the café and the vending machines I bought water from the vending machine, letting that be an opportunity to use up all of the nickels in my purse. I sat staring at the numbers on the pharmacy screen. It currently read 71; the piece of paper in my hand read 85. There was a woman in a wheelchair telling everyone and no one that she had lost her husband of thirty years to cancer. People moved tables to avoid her, and she maneuvered her motorized scooter, carefully zipping up rows in between the groups of patients and employees trying to eat their lunches. Everyone seemed to be avoiding eye contact, not wanting to get caught up in someone else’s grief, and I looked directly at her, committing her face to memory, noticing the long thick grey whiskers growing from her chin. She didn’t come near me. She forced her pain on the other people, the people in the circle that I actively tried to sit outside of.

Finally, unable to stand sitting a moment longer, I made my way outside to the one bench that has been designated as a smoking section at the hospital. Rushed employees trying to hurry and inhale as quickly as possible linger there, as do patients who come outside to smoke, some with their IV poles still attached to their arms, some with oxygen tanks hooked to their faces that I imagine to be flammable.

As I lit my smoke I remembered my cell phone, which I had turned off due to hospital regulations. I turned it on, wondering if ChefHisName had called with the appointment time for my UA. I pressed the 1 on my speed dial and his voice was there, different than before.

“Hi, sorry I haven’t gotten back to you sooner. Uhhhhhhh…….After giving it, uh, further thought, I uh, have decided to uh, um, go with someone less experienced, so ah, um, the position has been, uh, filled with someone else. I, um, uh, will, however, keep your resume on file, and it will, uh, be the first one I pull if I am looking for a Chef or a Baker.”

I hit the 4 button on my phone and listened to the message again. I felt a pang of disappointment, then a rush of anger. He had told me the last time we spoke that the job was mine; I just needed to take the test. Pride came to my mind and joined regret and anger in the party and my ego said, “ChefFucker, you just made a huge mistake not hiring me.”

As I stood there and studied the sky, the people taking advantage of the free valet parking, the old people bringing their even older looking parents into the hospital, (at least they were parent child in my imagination), and the most amazing thing happened.

Usually I am prone to fretting and fussing, over thinking every scenario until it’s beaten to death, bloody and limping, feeling and feeling some more. This time? This time I just let it go. I let it all go, and I actually felt the weight of it leave me. I wondered if that was the secret of the chipper people I so try to avoid, the ones whom I feel so irritated around, the ones who can put on the face and pull out the happy voice.

I walked back inside and the number board read 84. I was next.