Ftrain, by Paul Ford

Went to the doctor's office for a checkup. I'm on Atenolol, Diovan, and Lipitor, all drugs for the old, but the fat are prematurely old. The Atenolol is interesting because it's a β-blocker, and it works--I haven't had stagefright since I've been on it, even last night, representing my place of employment in front of 120 people.

My doctor shares the office with a pediatrician who was giving out the flu shot to numerous screaming children; there was terrible grieving. In the waiting room I watched a man put a tiny jacket on a tiny screaming boy, murmuring to him as the boy twisted and kicked off his shoes. The tenderness was thick and almost bizarre, as if we were something more than cruel apes.

I heard my doctor yell, "Is this even a freaking doctor's office? Get him on the phone." There was a problem with the phone, and then finally three minutes of him plain yelling at his patient. "Listen, you went ahead and did it and now it's going to get infected," he said. "You have to get in here."

I was taken into an examination room and seated next to a cabinet filled with sample pills. The shouting of the children continued. "Do you want a Dora? Or a red?" yelled the pediatrician. He was talking about Band-Aids. "Okay, so Dora!"

A woman stuck her head in the door. "Can you give me some urine?" she asked.

I said: "I will do my best."

I will confess my fantasy.

In my fantasy, a fantasy I've had since the last time I was here, July 1, 2009, the doctor is surprised by how much weight I've lost. He tells me that no one ever listens to him, but here I am, having listened. It is a moment of professional grace: for a minute his disappointments, railing at the drunks and the smokers and overweight can be put aside. Someone is actually listening. He doesn't have to keep trying, doesn't have to keep scribbling things down.

In the fantasy, I say, "I was looking into the surgery."

And he says, "well, you did it on your own. Exactly right. You should take a multivitamin."

He pulls at my legs, looks for the signs of high pressure above the ankles, but there are none; he palpates the stomach and listens to the chest through a stethoscope. "Good," he says. "Much better. Yes. Yes. Excellent."

He takes my pressure; it's 120/80. Could be lower, but it's safe.

"We'll get you off the pills but right now your pressure is going well," he says. "So keep on them."

"I'm thinking 230," I say. "220."

"You get around 240, I'll be fine," he says. "Congratulations," he says. "Don't stop." We shake hands.

And that was, roughly, how it went. I was a pound lighter on their scale; some difference in calibration or gravity. The appointment happened right as I crested the hill of 300. I am on the human scale again, in the zone of normal, no longer requiring surgical intervention, and that is a great satisfaction. I wanted that handshake and I earned it. I was hungry and over in my old neighborhood, so I had two slices of pizza and took the Ftrain to work.