It’s time for my annual physical, which makes me feel virtuous and slightly anxious. I think I’m in perfect-ish health, but there’s also this feeling that if they go poking around long enough, they’re going to find something! I mean, how many deficiencies can they test for in your blood? 100 apparently. Once, when I taught workshops at the local hospital, they insisted on testing me for tuberculosis by injecting some of the bacterium into my arm. When the result was negative, they did it again. Enough already. Stopping looking. Since writers often start stories with an inciting incident—the moment in their lives after which nothing was ever the same—I have to wonder how many of our stories begin in a doctor’s office? It is the very nature of a test that you could fail.
But some of the physical is fun. My blood pressure is super low, about which I am inexplicably vain, and I’ve grown an inch! This is exciting until Nurse Killjoy stares pointedly at my shoes and raises an eyebrow. Ever the optimist, I call out cheerfully, “Yes, but I haven’t shrunk!” as I follow her down the hall.
She leads me back through a warren of cubicles to an exam room, tells me to get on the table, then hands me a small piece of white paper. “Fold it in half,” she says, and leaves the room. Another test! I sit there, legs dangling, wondering if there’s a hidden camera somewhere. Do they think I’ll do something weird with the paper if left alone long enough?
She reenters the room holding a cardboard sign and tells me to read it silently and do what it says. I read, “Close your eyes,” and promptly do. I’m acing this! She then hands me a pen, tells me to pick up the folded paper I have set by my thigh, and write a complete sentence on it. I write, “I am writing a complete sentence, and by the way, I’m a professional writer, ha ha.” Having passed this test, she then asks me to spell “world” backward. I feel a flash of panic at “backward” but do so accurately. This is followed by a verbal list of three words, which I am to repeat in order. I do. Then she goes away again. The crafty leaving me on my own!
Bored, I check my phone, then I start studying the photos on the wall. A blue-footed booby, a baby seal, and a tortoise. Innocuous nature photos. I spell innocuous. She returns in a few minutes and asks me to repeat the three words with which she left me. Thank God, I remember them, but when I leave an hour later, I will only remember two of the three.
Apple, table, blank. Don’t tell me. I’m still working on it.
The last test is to replicate a drawing she hands me. It is a sketch of two boxy opposing arrows–the kind that say detour ahead–thick, outlined graphics that overlap and intersect. My drawing is inelegant. Clumsy. Intersections often are. I imagine there are detours ahead.
When the doctor comes in at last, she reviews my chart and tells me I’m too thin.
To this silly statement, I respond, “Please don’t retire because I love you very much.” I’m not too thin, but apparently padding is helpful if you ever fall down. My doctor and I discuss how fuller faces are more attractive—I look my best when pregnant for this reason — but only baby weight goes to my face. Which is yet another reason among many not to fall on it.
The next day, I tell my trainer that my doctor wants him to teach me how to fall, and he looks at me like I’m an idiot. I demo several possibilities for falling badly to make him laugh.
My cholesterol is high, and I don’t care. I’m a bit authoritative about this. A bit gunslinger-ish because it is not a surprise. It’s a genetic anomaly that runs through my family. Sky-high bad cholesterol that is offset by astonishingly high good cholesterol. The ratio is perfect, and our arteries are clear. But this time, the doctor suggests a scan of my heart. To be prudent. Prudent is not high on my good-qualities list. Prudent means taking care of yourself, looking towards the future. Prudent people plan. They make dinner, plane, and hotel reservations. I live as if I don’t want to be committed to anything. Even fun. Even myself. But I acquiesce and leave with a referral for a heart scan. And here we go again, looking for trouble.
Will a scan show the number of times my heart has broken? Whether it is empty or full? Who resides there?
Apple, table, what? Apple…table… She should have given me three words of significance. She should have asked me the birth weight, date, and time when each of my three children was born.
She should have asked me to spell “loved” backwards. It’s the same number of letters as “world,” but I suspect it has protective qualities.
Will the scan of my heart show its history, I wonder? I’d like to keep that to myself, but it would be prudent to review after all.
If it’s in danger of breaking, I need to learn how to fall.
Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.
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