Geri did the crab walk down the crunchy-papered catwalk, placing her cold feet
in icy stirrups. She could see the intern's bed-hair from behind Dr. Chang,
making the doctor appear as though she'd grown a second head.
She squirmed on the exam table. Despite the two thread-bare blankets the nurse
hoisted on her lap before leaving, she couldn't escape the room's chill— a
small inconvenience considering her follow-up would soon be over.
"Dr. Hargrove recently started a rotation with me and plans on specializing in
Urogynecology," Dr. Chang said as she adjusted the light.
"So you're a fledgling sadist?" Geri quipped. Anyone who stuck tubes in orifices
smaller than nostrils was a sadist. She'd once known a guy by the name of
Hargrove who was a sadist of sorts, but that was back when her hair was big.
Really big. Hair shrinks a lot in twenty years even if memories don't.
"You can see the scarring here," she said, her voice impassionate. "Geri, I'm
going to have Marc— Dr. Hargrove, I mean— get a clean urine sample, if that's
okay."
"Sure." Geri lifted her head. Just as she'd thought, it was a rhetorical
question. The intern was already on the toddler-size stool, torture implements
in hand.
She called him, "Marc." Marc Hargrove. Dirk had a kid by that name. How old
would he be? Impossible. Dirk was a short fireplug and his boy an effete whiner.
This intern was Abe Lincoln lanky and—
Crap. She did the math. It was possible. She caught a glimpse of his profile.
Never mind the fact that he was trotting a catheter— fragile, only millimeters
in width and ready to splinter— up her urethra. She needed a better look. Now.
"Please don't move," The intern said, panic in his voice.
Geri ignored him.
"Please, Geri," Dr. Chang said, poised to call a Code-Blue.
"Holy shit," she muttered after she dropped back on the crunchy exam table. His
nose and chin— more precisely, the abundance of nose and the lack of chin— clenched it.
"Your accent isn't from Chicago. Where'd you grow up?" She summoned more stomach
acid. If she were going to be sick, she had years of sour to spit.
"Evansville, Indiana." His response was curt.
Yep, that was the place she swore to leave behind.
"He has to know it's me. My name is even the same," she thought.
She was the overt reason his parents nearly divorced. She doubted the parade of
Dirk's other women ever made it past the family reviewing stand. (She was always
amazed by how eagerly women believed the
Honest-This-Was-The-First-Time-I-Ever-Cheated claim.) She had been the
infelicitous one stuck without a chair when the music stopped.
"Could this get any stranger?" she thought.
"Done," said the intern, his head appearing between her legs. The irony of this
was not lost on her.
Geri emerged from the exam room not sure whether to bolt out the "Emergency
Only" exit or approach the intern. Like years ago, whichever she decided, she'd
have to live with.
"I'm sorry," the young doctor said. "I made you uncomfortable."
"Me? Do you know who I am?"
He nodded and looked straight at her.
"You're a brave young man," she said.
"You're the one who let me catheterize you."
"I like your sense of the absurd. I'm sure that's come in handy a time or two."
His composure gave her confidence. "I'm sorry, Marc," she said.
"I'm surprised you said anything," he said.
"I had to. If I ignored you, it would have been out of fear. I hate being
afraid."
"I hate fear, too."
Was this a comment about her culpability? She could tell him the fear that
afflicted her, how she could still feel Dirk's fist. She didn't want to— the kid had to have been twisted enough.
"Tell me, why did those women like my father so much?"
"I doubt they did. I didn't." She walked past the reception desk and out the
door.
