Private Medical Practice

Silver Spring, Maryland

June 2017

     I'M WAITING IN THE EXAMINATION ROOM.  I've moved from the exam table to the plastic chair at its side.  I feel like I have more fortitude here.  It's a little more familiar and less lonely than being elevated and exposed on the exam table.  My mom is still in the waiting room.  I didn't really think it would best for her to be here.  I mean, Jesus, dad only died a year and a half ago.  But what if it's positive?  I wouldn't be able to drive myself home after that.  And I couldn't ask a friend.  It's just ... too much.  Too personal.

    I also moved to the chair because every time I moved on the table, every fidget, every deep breath, caused that damn paper to crinkle, like a mocking echo of my nervousness.  A refrain to my thoughts.  I decided I could do without the added exclamation of the too-loud crinkle in the too-quiet room.

    My thoughts circle around and around, only pausing when I wonder how much time has passed.  I refuse the temptation to check my phone, but then lose the fight to keep my eyes off the clock on the wall.  It's been three minutes.  Goddamn, but the brain can think a helluva lot of thoughts in three minutes.

    Happy birthday to me.

    My name is Enya.  I'm 18.  Newly minted.  Just a couple weeks ago, actually.   To most kids, that means another degree of freedom.  Moving out of the house, entering official adulthood, starting the rest of their lives, maybe beginning the independence of college.  To me, it means I get to take a test.  

    A genetic test.

I've been waiting my entire life for this test.  No, I've been waiting my entire life for the results of this test.  And I can wait a little longer.  I think of not looking at the clock and end up looking at the clock.  Another minute has passed.  

Are these my last minutes of freedom or the beginning of freedom?  The shadow of a death sentence will either become real or dissipate.

    My eyes drift to the clock again.  Thirty-two seconds have ticked by.

    I focus on benign facts.  Did you know that about 300 million cells die every minute in our bodies?  

    And that we replace about 48 million cells a minute?

    Or that every few years most of our body has recreated itself?

    Or that most of our body is made up of stardust?  Everything in our bodies originates from stardust, which is still falling and still recreating us.  There’s something beautiful in the impermanence of us from the eternity of stars.  I wish that thought could bring me the reassurance it usually does.

    Did you know that I want to be a doctor?  I know exactly the kind, too.  I want to do Integrative Medicine.  Yeah, all that kooky stuff.  I love it.  I really believe I've got my head screwed on a little tighter than my mom does since my dad died last year.  I credit my getting acupuncture and homeopathy.  People know it works, too.  That's why it's so popular.  I'm gonna be part of the movement that brings it to the forefront. 

   Despite waiting for it, the double rap on the door startles me, and Dr. Yee strides in before I can recover.  I could have chosen a different doctor to tell me my fate.  A genetic expert in a comfy conference room.  But Dr. Yee is my family doctor who’s a special combination of straightforward and kind, and I trust her.  She grabs the black wheeled stool and sits, leaning onto the examination table, facing me.  There is a computer screen hiding my medical records beside us, but she doesn't log in.  I want her to.  In my mind — I've prepared by imagining this playing out, and I used our prior visits as fodder for my fantasy — she logs in.  She shows me what it says.  Sometimes it's printed out; in my fantasy that usually doesn't bode well.

    She is staring at me now and I desperately, unreasonably, want her to show me the computer screen.  I don't want her to tell me directly.  Give me a buffer, let the windows to my soul have some privacy.  But the only shutters to my eyes are my eyelids, and my face feels frozen, eyes wide.

    I observe a part of my brain that is having its own conversation, that's analyzing all her mannerisms, like a poker fiend making bets.  Is that normal?  I've had this doctor for as long as I can remember, and she knows me.  And I know her.  And she seems extra doctor-y today.  I cannot marshal my thoughts, and a group of them tangent off, ping-ponging into a future of preordained death.  Other thoughts perseverate on the computer screen, while the background conversation of Dr-Yee-is-wearing-sunshine-yellow-today-what-does-that-mean distracts me from her words.

    She leans even closer and paper crinkles.  "Enya, I know you are prepared for any answer.  You've had extensive counseling."  

I've had, and I'm not.  My dad had Huntington’s disease.  It’s a fatal disease that’s passed on to your kids.  His mother had it and he had a fifty percent chance of having it, just like I have a fifty percent chance.  My dad decided not to get tested, but I want to know.  So I had to go through a lot of counseling to get tested.  Since there’s no cure.  It’s not a pretty way to go, but I’d like to prepare if I can.   But I’m not prepared for this like I thought I would be.  

    It's like when my mom gets her mammogram and then freaks out until the test results come.  If there's cancer, it's been there.  It didn't magically appear on the day of the mammogram.  The test just brought the possibility front and center and she's out of her mind with worry until she gets the results.  There's something in the knowing that makes fear manifest.  Ignorance is bliss.

    So I’m here, willingly giving up my bliss, and freaking out.  

    Because my dad started having symptoms on top of a midlife crisis and ended up killing himself.  

    Because the knowledge catches up to you.   It would be better to prepare.  Dr. Yee said I’m prepared.

    "You are prepared for this," she repeats.  The exam table paper crinkles sound their exclamation point, now like a cheerleading section, but I don't need an audience.  She's staring, and I think she expects me to nod.  I'm still frozen.

    "Enya, it's positive."