“That’s right. I do yoga with Breanna.”
“Nice to meet you, Kristin. I appreciate you fitting me in.”
“No problem.” She hands me back my health card. “I’ve checked you in, you can take a seat. The nurse will call you in soon.”
I move to the waiting room, which is empty. I’m probably the last appointment of the day, and they’ve probably been waiting for me.
“Mr. Malone?” A redheaded nurse is calling my name, and I follow her down the hall to an exam room. I move to take the chair in front of the computer—the doctor’s chair—then catch myself and hop up onto the examining table.
“My name is Cindy,” the nurse says with a bright smile. She’s probably around fifty years old, and she looks like the motherly type. “I’ll just get your blood pressure, then Dr. Barrett will be in.”
“Great.”
I roll up my sleeve and Cindy slips a digital blood pressure cuff around my arm. She pushes a button on the machine, and the cuff squeezes my arm. It gets painfully tight before it starts to deflate.
Cindy sees my grimace. “Try to think happy thoughts,” she says with a reassuring smile. “A lot of people find coming to the doctor stressful, and it puts their blood pressure up. It’s called the white coat syndrome. But if it’s a little high now, Dr. Barrett will recheck it near the end of the visit.”
“Sure,” I say, suppressing the urge to roll my eyes. I do brain surgery for a living. And when I’m not operating, I’m policinga group of egotistical surgeons in my role as department chief. Going for a check-up does not rank high on my list of life stressors.
The machine beeps to signal it’s done. Cindy frowns at it for a moment before moving to the computer to type in the numbers.
“Okay, all done,” she says, in her usual bright tone of voice. “Your blood pressure was little high, but like I said, Dr. Barrett will probably recheck it later.”
I glance at the machine. Fuck. My blood pressure is 154/92. It’s not dangerously high, probably not high enough that Dr. Barrett will recommend medication, but still above target.
It’s probably a mistake. Maybe the cuff wasn’t calibrated properly.
Cindy bustles out before I can ask her to check it again, and a moment later Dr. Barrett comes in. He looks friendly enough, but young. Probably fresh out of residency. Only a year or two older than Alexandra Parker.
“Mr. Malone,” he says, extending his hand for me to shake. I notice his tie is printed with a Snoopy cartoon. “I’m Dr. Barrett.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise,” he says with a grin. “I hear my receptionist does yoga with your sister.”
“Uh huh.”
He sits at the computer and taps at the keyboard. “I see you’ve completed our new patient questionnaire, but we don’t seem to have received the records from your previous doctor,” he remarks. “I can have Kristin send them another request?—”
“I don’t have any medical records,” I tell him.
That gives him pause. “None at all?”
“I haven’t been to a doctor since I was a teenager,” I explain. “And I’m pretty sure the last guy I saw is retired, so I wouldn’t know where to find the records. But there’s really nothing significant. I’m healthy.”
“That’s great,” he says. “So no health concerns?”
“No.” I’ll be a great patient for him. I won’t be the guy who comes in every week to complain I get a tingling sensation in my pinky toe whenever the moon is full.
“Great.” Dr. Barrett meets my eye, and he’s scarily perceptive. “So what made you decide to book a doctor’s appointment now?”
I’m afraid I’m losing my edge. Sometimes I lose focus in the OR, just for a moment. And sometimes I have trouble falling asleep. And sometimes even when I do sleep, I’m still exhausted when I wake up.
And sometimes I think I have a fucking tremor.
Fortunately, Dr. Barrett can’t read my thoughts.
“Uh, I’m here because my sister nagged me to have a physical,” I tell him.
