Mammogram

A small story:

Say what you will of mammograms, it’s fun that someone is still sending mail.

Of course, the letter that came years ago said, “Call the Center upon receiving this,” and the phone number was busy for 45 minutes. I drove to the office and found the woman up front, on the phone speaking in Armenian in what I can only describe as a “Non-breast-related tone.”

She grudgingly put the phone aside, looked at my letter and told me, “There’s something wrong. You have to come back for more tests. You might need a biopsy.”

“May I make an appointment?” I whispered with the air left in my lungs.

She sighed and made me an appointment.

I waited until I got home, in the bedroom, in the closet, to wail in terror into a towel, so as not to frighten the Kid.

It was pink.

The envelope.

When Consort got home, I had settled into stoic despair. I believe I began with conversation with, “You’ll be fine. Men who were in happy marriages tend to get remarried very quickly after they lose their wife.”

Consort, for some reason, wanted more information than this.

I told him in a pale way. Something was terribly wrong with me. I was probably laced with breast cancer. Please cremate me and no flowers, just contributions to animal rescue.

“What did you doctor say?” he asked, as I shed a few more tears at the thought of all the used towels donated to kitten rescue.

“The doctor?” I asked, “Oh, I didn’t call the doctor. I don’t want to bother her.”

Consort rubbed his forehead and the bridge of his nose, something he does around me more often than I am prepared to admit.

“Maybe,” he said, with forced calm, “Before you type out a list of your single friends for me, you could see what your doctor thinks?”

Fine.

My doctor called me back from her convertible, she and her husband dashing to Santa Barbara for the weekend. I read her exactly what the letter said. She yelled over the rushing air into the speakerphone, her voice clear and comforting.

“That basically means they blurred the film. I’m not going to say it’s definitely nothing, but I’ve been ordering mammograms for thirty years and that phrase has never led to anything.”

I thanked her and hung up. Consort, having heard her, smirked at me.

“Told you.”

“Fine,” I thought, “For that, I’m going to populate my next-wife list with the lactose-intolerant.”

The initial terror eased, I noticed when my follow-up appointment was; Valentine’s Day. I will be the first to say it’s a greeting card holiday but that didn’t mean I necessarily wanted to spend it having a little under the shirt action with a solid woman named Sonia.

But I had been promised the radiologist would read it immediately, thereby removing the last shreds of fright and doubt.

So Sonia was to be my Valentine.

I arrived and headed towards the waiting room I had been in before. The front desk woman – once again, on the phone – put her hand over the receiver and said, “Follow-ups go over there.” I followed her finger down a hallway to an open door, a hint of pink walls inside.

I walked in, looked around. Pink walls, pink patterned couches, pink window treatment, pink carpeting. It was labia with track lighting. The only thing not some shade of pink was a pine armoire, slightly too large for the room, thereby guaranteeing it had your attention.

I sat on the couch. I stared into the armoire, expecting a tv. I was mistaken. In the armoire were several naked wig heads of varying hues and a bag of…pelts?

Not pelts: wigs.

So many wigs, and yet there was a common soul deadening “I’m Brenda from HR and I’m here to talk to you about that joke you made in the elevator” vibe. Why are so many wigs taupe?

The next shelf was nothing but brochures. I grabbed a few and sat back down.

BREAST CANCER: The Questions

Here’s a question: What?

METASTATIC BREAST CANCER: Your Quality Of Life

My quality of life was better before I entered this Labia of Terror, thanks.

CHEMOTHERAPY: 6 Things You Might Not Know

Well, wasn’t that just the worst Cosmo quiz ever.

The entire armoire was trapdoors into your worst fears. I swear, there was a small cardboard cut-out asking you if you have talked end of life issues with your loved ones. After a few minutes, even the most optimistic person would notice the armoire was shaped like a coffin.

The room had been empty when I arrived but as I waited, I watched several women walk in. We were all there for follow-up tests, nervous and sad, but I would look at each woman sit on the pink couch, or the pink chairs, look into the armoire, and collapse even more.

I knew I was going to be fine. They didn’t. For the first time since I had opened that pink envelope, I felt the cleansing fire of rage. I strode to the front desk. The woman was on the phone, ordering balloons.

I leaned across her desk and stared into her eyes.

“Hang up that phone right now!” I whispered.

She did.

“Why,” I began, “In the name of God do you have breast cancer paraphernalia in the pink waiting room?”

“I don’t…we have group therapy in there sometimes?” she stammered.

I leaned further over her desk, my toes barely scraping the floor and hissed, “Are you having group therapy in there now?”

“No?” she squeaked.

“Do you have storage closets?”

"You...mean here?"

I smiled in a way which did not reach my eyes.

"Yes. Do you have storage closets...here."

“Yes,” she breathed.

“Send your office manager to the pink waiting room,” I said, hopped down then strode off.

I had work to do.

A few minutes later, the office manager looked in to the waiting room, nervously, and said, “Quinn?”

I looked up from my phone.

“Is there a problem?”

“Not any more,” I said pleasantly. “The armoire is now not making your patients sad but I thought you might like to know exam room #3 is filled with wigs and brochures.”

A nurse slithered into the door, past the office manager and asked, “Miss Cummings? Are you ready?”

Yeah, I was ready.

(P.S. I was absolutely fine)