I looked at the million dollars worth of food lined up on the table, ready to be put in the oven in waves before my family and their boos arrived for Thanksgiving in a matter of hours.
"I'm going to take a shower."
I have a lot of faith in Alec. After a long shower, I crept out, hoping he would say it was all fixed. And, it was. Or, at least the oven was shooting between one hundred and three hundred degrees, randomly, but it was better than nothing.
"You have dense breasts." the letter and email from my doctor and the dear people at the mammogram place at Emory let me know.
Hmmmm. Dense. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
"Your mammogram was normal, but you should get an MRI." it informed me.
An MRI. The five hundred dollar option that can only occur in the mornings, Monday through Friday, as opposed to after work and covered as preventative by my insurance. I made the appointment on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, because I get the whole week off.
I took my rock-hard, dense tits to Emory. Paid up the $525 on my credit card.
"Have you had an MRI before?" the nurse asked, while running the IV for the contrast stuff.
"Yeah," I responded, unworried. It was on my neck. I had to lay on my back and roll in barely beyond my shoulders while some guy spoke to me through some kind of speaker, informing what was going on, every step of the way.
"You have to take off all your clothes, except your underwear. Here are two robes. You can keep your shoes on."
"On the breast is kind of different...." she continued, her accent kind of heavy and for the first time, I felt like she might be at a loss for words.
"You are on your stomach....in a weird position...." her nose crinkled up a little.
"You're not claustrophobic, are you?"
"No." I answered.
"If you have to throw up, tell us. But don't move."
We walked down the hall, where other people were dressed and I was walking around in two robes, my underwear and shoes.
"You're going to be in there about thirty minutes." I heard some medical person tell a guy in a wheelchair.
Thirty minutes? That sounded long. Maybe he was having some other test. They opened the door and I realized I gasped, the machine looked kind of monstrous and it barely fit in the room. The other place had the MRI thing in a giant room, this one was stuffed in a closet.
They hustled me onto my stomach with my rock hard tits sort of hanging through some weird device. They told me to grip something, which I did, white knuckle. They put something under my knees and my feet were sort of up, like some sort of hog-tied animal.
"Squeeze the ball in your hand if you need anything. You can't move, don't move at all, or they will make us do it again."
I gripped harder and they rolled me in and left.
It was radio silent. No one said anything. The machine started clanging and making that outer space sound. I gripped harder. I opened my eyes, they were about two inches above some sort of plastic bottom of the machine. I realized I had no idea how long I would be in there. I could not figure out spatially what was going on. I felt nauseas. I realized pretty early on I was in trouble, but I had to make it. It was stupid. The clanging started and stopped. I jumped when it began again and feared I had already ruined the image. No one said anything. It wasn't like before when they would warn me, warn me when the scary noises would start, when the contrast would start, how much longer I had to go. I felt the contrast shooting into my arm and no one said anything. I tasted it in my mouth and my scalp felt like it was on fire. I remembered climbing in a cave in Laos, clandestinely, no ropes no guides, and told myself not to think it. The machine stopped. Was I done? I laid in silence, in terror, more uncomfortable than I could ever imagine being. The clanging started again. I could feel my brain vibrating inside of my skull. Esther the Wonder Pig had an MRI. I pictured pig heads with dead eyes, it was flashing in front of me. Lola has had an MRI. What if she was dead, what if Alec was dead, my mind was racing. I remembered the part in the Exorcist with Reagan screaming in pain while she was in some machine. How much longer, what if I was going to be in this thing for six hours, what if it would be four in the afternoon and I was still there...
I squeezed the thing.
"Let me out of here....."
No one said anything.
"LET ME OUT OF HERE!" I started screaming.
"LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT!!!!!!"
"I AM BEGGING YOU!!!!!"
And then, I started moving myself out, backwards.
I heard the door swing open and felt them rolling the thing backwards.
"Close the door!" one of the people yelled to the other.
I sat up while they tried to get the IV out. I clutched my chest, a strong hard pain on my left side.
"You had an anxiety attack. We were almost done. You will have to come back, talk to your doctor, and we will give you a sedative beforehand."
I just sat there, numb but half crying, dazed, clutching my chest. They took me where my clothes were, I changed and drove home, taking a random route that didn't make any sense.
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