What to Do with It?

By Les Tanner

As usual when I’m sitting in those little white waiting rooms inside a doctors’ complex in Caldwell, I’m thumbing through an ancient issue of National Geographic, not having the slightest idea of what’s on the page I’m looking at.

Suddenly I hear this light tap on the door.

Also as usual, I jump a bit, and then croak, “Come in.”

“Hi, Mr. T,” the always cheerful young doctor says. (Of course he’s young, as nearly everyone seems to be these days. But he really does look like he just got out of college last week.)  “How are you today?”

How am I?  How should I know?  I think. That’s what I’m here to find out, for heaven’s sake.

But instead, I respond weakly, “Fine, thanks.”

Don’t get me wrong, I really like and trust this guy. He’s as nice a person as you could wish for, and one of the most knowledgeable and competent physicians in the whole region. It’s just that he may know some stuff about me that I don’t want to find out right now—or ever.

As usual, I steel myself against impending doom.

“Well, Mr. T,” he continues with a smile, “the X-rays show nothing serious at all.”

I begin breathing again.

He then clips two black-and-white rectangles of film against a square of glass that’s mounted on the wall and turns on a light. Suddenly I see my innards, in all their rather fuzzy splendor.