The room is empty and silent. It’s a nothing room, plain, dull, practical. Just like every other room in the hospital clinic. I’m sitting in one of the two blue chairs that line the left wall. At the end of the room is a computer monitor for the doctor. In front of it is a stool on wheels for her to roll around the room or wherever she wants to go. Maybe she and the other doctors have stool races in the hallway after hours. I laugh to myself at the thought of her squealing with pleasure down the hallway, her long brown hair flying behind her.
To the right of the computer, a large reclining chair angles out from the corner. It’s covered with a fresh paper sheet held tight by a clamp at the bottom. The sheet is designed for sanitation; its immediate effect is slickness. It helps the chair become a ski slope for my body: Every time I climb up, I have to cling to the sides to keep from sliding off. A privacy curtain hangs from a half-ellipse track on the ceiling; it’s near the chair but too far away to grab if you start sliding down.
A plain room, an empty room, a familiar room. I have been here many times for many test results over what seems like many years. The visits have become almost routine. I am a little nervous, of course, but not too concerned. The results have always been good. I tuck the fear that creeps up behind me back into the corner of my consciousness and think of the stool races again.
I wonder if I will have time to go to the store before I head back to work.
Ten minutes pass. I continue to pretend I’m taking a video and scan the rest of the room. To the right of the door I came in, there’s an ivory-colored sink in an ivory-colored counter on an ivory-colored cabinet. Standard soap containers and sanitizers watch over the sink from either side of the faucet. On the wall perpendicular to the cabinet, a paper towel dispenser hangs above a lidded trash that’s big enough for Oscar the Grouch. It has a foot pedal at the base for opening the lid. If you use a grouchy voice and step on it in time with your words, you can pretend Oscar is speaking from inside. Too bad I’m the only kid in the room.
Closer to me hangs a blood pressure device. The aide used it on me when I first came into the room. My blood pressure was fine, always a good sign.
The time continues to pass. I hear occasional footsteps in the hallway and muffled voices. Then, after a quick knock on the door, a slight Asian woman comes in. She smiles.
“Hello, I’m Mya, Dr. Marx’s nurse. I need to go over your basic information with you.”
She runs through my recent history and asks me about any current symptoms. (I have none.) Seven minutes later by the clock on the wall, she leaves the room. “Dr. Marx will be right in to see you,” she says as she walks out the door.
Eight minutes later, Dr. Marx comes in. She’s attractive and nice, in her forties. She asks how I am, I say “Okay.” She gets the stool and rolls it over to me and sits down.
She tells me the results of the test I took three days ago.
The room fades. I feel like throwing up. I cannot think.
I try to listen as she gives me the details of something and something else and asks if I have any questions. I don’t. I see tears in her eyes when I look up. She squeezes my hand. She says they will do everything they can, then she rolls the chair back to its place. She touches my shoulder briefly as she leaves. Mya comes in. She gives me some papers and tells me when my next appointment is scheduled, then she leaves.
The room is empty again, and silent, just as it was when I came in. But it has changed forever. It’s no longer a nothing room. Now and always it will be a place of fear and dread, at least for me, at least for as long as I am alive.