“I’m fine without. Thank you.”
I would very much like a sedative, but I don’t have anyone who could take me home and stay with me. Nobody even knows that I am here. My scooter is parked outside.
“Okey doke, we’re all set. Ready?” the nurse asks. She touches my shoulder and I know she is just trying to be kind, but I flinch again.
“Lie back and try to relax. Think of it as a day off work. What do you do?”
None of your fucking business.
“Admin mostly,” I tell her. It’s not a complete lie.
She looks sufficiently bored by my answer and I’m glad. I never tell people what I do for a living. Aside from the obvious reasons, I’m not sure why. I guess, if people know what I do it makes them look at me differently, and I’d rather they didn’t look at me at all.
“I just need to double-check that you have removed all your jewelry?” the nurse asks before pressing the button that will slide me inside a giant magnet. I nod again, but she looks down at my hands as though I might be lying, checking for a wedding ring I might have forgotten to take off. There’s no need. That’s the only finger I never wear a ring on.
“I’m going to leave the room now, but there is an intercom and a camera inside the scanner, so I’ll be able to see you and talk to you at all times.”
Just when I thought things couldn’t get any bloody worse.
I wonder how many times she says this. I wonder how many patients have already been through this today, and whether sheremembers any of them once her shift is over. People who pretend to care are even worse than those who don’t. It’s like she’s just reeling off a script she’s had to repeat a thousand times before.
“Once you’re inside it’s going to feel a little cozy,” she says, even though nothing about this situation feels cozy to me. “And it’s going to get a bit loud, so I’m just going to pop these earplugs in for you.”
“Thank you.”
Fuck you and all who sail in you.
The nurse presses a button and the motorized metal bed I am lying on starts to move backward. The MRI machine swallows me headfirst until I am deep inside it, and she was right, it is loud. My ringless fingers ball into fists again, and I hold my breath while the machine scans my body.
“You’re doing really well, Olivia,” says the voice on the intercom. “You okay in there?”
No.
“Yes,” I lie.
“Good. Only twenty minutes to go.”
The roar of magnets flying around me at tremendous speed is too loud in my ears. The space is too small, like a coffin, so I keep my eyes shut. I imagine being by the sea, in the place where I was happiest as a child—Hope Falls—and I tell myself that it is the roar of waves crashing on the rocks around the pretty little harbor that I can hear. Not a man-made machine that will predict my fate and future.
Afterward, I wait in a different waiting room. The hospital seems to have a lot of them. I stare at the other patients and wonder why they are here and what is wrong with them, as though you can tell just by looking at someone whether they are seriously ill. Trust me, you can’t. I try to see myself through their eyes: my long dark hair now restrained in an elaborate plaited bun, my tortoiseshell glasses, the tweed jacket, white shirt, skinny jeans, polished laced shoes. My rings are back on my fingers, and my polite smile is fixed on my face. We all choose a costume to wear every time we open the wardrobe, and this is myarmor. I feel vulnerable without it. My tattoos are hidden, except for the swallow, and I look like me again. Even if I don’t feel like myself.
The doctor appears, calls my name, and I follow her to a private consulting room. She invites me to take a seat and I do. She sits behind a desk and her face gives me the diagnosis before her words do, but it is still a shock when they confirm it. Turns out those shadows on the previous scan didn’t justlooksinister, they are.
“I’m afraid there are multiple tumors growing inside your body…” she says, and the room seems to get smaller, colder, darker. I hear the sound of waves inside my head again, so loud that they drown out a lot of what the doctor is saying. I see her lips moving but I don’t hear another word. Can’t. Won’t. It’s as though the sea is calling me home and that is all that matters.
“How long do I have?” I ask, interrupting her. Everything is suddenly silent, as though the room itself is holding its breath.
“It’s hard to say.”
“Then give me your best guess.”
Her eyes fill with sympathy. “Not long.”
It feels as though someone just shook the Etch A Sketch of my life; one minute it was there, now it’s gone. She talks about options and opportunities but none of them are really that. She talks about choices as though I still have any. Then she tells me she is sorry, and I wonder why and what for. I don’t cry.
Fuck that.
And fuck her.
