Universal Table

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When the doctor finally came in, he was wearing a houndstooth suit; not the traditional black and grey pattern, like in the photo of my father as a young man, but in browns and tans. I'd never seen anything quite like it. Perfectly pressed. How much would a suit like that cost? And he wore it well, a tall man, olive complexion.

James knew the way to the clinic. That's one of the things I admire about him. He can drive through traffic in LA and Chicago. Plus he speaks Italian, beautifully, even after all these years. To Italians he sounds like an American. To me, he sounds beautifully fluent. Driving in Milwaukee was a piece of cake for James. And the parking was easy - just circling and circling up until we were exposed to whatever snow might fall that day.

But the waiting room was crowded, and there was a man in a wheelchair. I'd keep those patients in another waiting area. I wondered if we were in the right place. Because there were posters about a meeting for people with MS: how to deal with the cognitive disability, the memory loss. And an announcement about being in a trial study. If I ever had a disease like that I'd want to be in a trial; not for the free meds, not for the side effects, just for the excitement of it, the eventual results, the pure science of things. Proving something beyond doubt. Even if it does take years.

The physician's assistant (who comes in to do all the work a doctor will later repeat) wore a lab coat over black slacks. The slacks fit well but were not wool; I think some kind of blend. But a tie, which is a nice touch when you're feeling apprehensive, which I will admit I was. First the right side of my body had gone numb, and now my left foot. I was tingling. And the metaphor that came to mind was that I was disappearing from the toes up. Like special effects, where you can still hear the person talking but the body isn't there. Kevin Bacon did that once.

The physician's assistant spoke like he was raised in the Midwest. But it was shocking, humiliating, really and maybe this part of the exam should be dropped. Try as I did, I could not close my eyes and touch my nose with my right hand. I hit my cheekbone once, then the other side of my face. When the doctor finally came in, he repeated this test. Again I made an ass of myself. My face, somewhere, lips once, but no nose. Did they think I was faking the first two times?

"We brought our own films," James said, as if this was a film festival. We all understood it was an MRI. But only the radiologists and the man in the houndstooth suit and his sidekick in a white lab coat could go and look at them while James and I waited in the exam room where my socks were off for a neuro check and my feet were cold. Let the patients keep their socks on.

Finally the houndstooth man came back, confident. "Let's look at your films," he said, jauntily. He spoke with an accent, like the support people you get when you call for technical support. India?

"Here we see your brain. Nothing there." But I knew what he meant. I've always been the smart one. My older sister the pretty one, my younger sister the baby, petite and lovely but naive. I'm the intelligent one, a master's degree and love reading, writing thesis papers, developing a thesis. So I know he didn't mean 'nothing' there. I know he meant no lesions.

"See these two small areas in the spinal chord?" He pointed with his pen. "Well the quality of this film isn't the best. They're gray, little cloud tufts. Here we have it. Here we have the reason for the numbness on your right side. . .."

Houndstooth in winter. Perfectly pressed. Fits him to a tee. The length of the pants just right. James's father was a tailor; James knows suits. It kills him to see the wrong length of pant, cheap material. When I went back to the west coast for a conference, I met with my former boyfriend. He was still so nice, so witty and funny. Still called me by my pet name. Thinks I talk like the people in Fargo. But his pants - all wrong. That's the first time I realized how much of James had gotten into me - the pants were corduroy, for Christ sake, and there was a matching jacket - such a bad idea. Not since the leisure suit had a look been so wrong. I was impressed with his effort; it was sort of a suit but casual enough to wear in a city where everyone hikes. Probably the best sales in any REI anywhere. Just not a look he, or anyone, could pull off.

But this man in the houndstooth, he could look into my brain and come up with a diagnosis in a minute. Actually, less.

And then there was a lot of talk about the drugs that could be used, and I nodded a lot. I mean, all the signs were there, but absent a good film, I was still enchanted by door number one: the viral theory. My best friend liked door number one, too, and she is a nurse and very smart.

They gave me a choice: a spinal tap or another MRI. Hmm, let me think about it a minute: spinal taps are said to be very painful. Everyone says that except the neurologist. The worst part is staying still while the needle is inserted into the spinal cord and the potential for a bad, bad, headache after. I call it invasive. The needle. The headache.

Or, my second option, another MRI, where you lie perfectly still while they slide you into a tube and send rattling noises into your brain. I've always been very smart, even in grade school. The teachers liked me, used my homework as an example. Only Mary Lou was smarter and a boy named Thomas but I'm talking about the girls now and some years Mary Lou was in another class so she didn't matter. I chose the tube and the bullet sounds toward the brain because I'd just had four of those and now felt  like a pro. I can lie very still for those and if my feet are warm, I do quite well. The X-ray techs have praised me. How do I do it? Imagery, of course. You think those years of yoga didn't count towards anything? I can imagine myself lying on a warm beach, the waves crashing upon the shore, though it's been years since I actually did lie on a warm beach with waves crashing.

My attorney boyfriend, who did not do a lot of hiking, had a deal on a time share and invited me along. I shouldn't say boyfriend, because, after six months of dating, I discovered that he never had the mens rea for monogamy. He didn't like me that way. We could spend every night of the week together, but it did not imply any kind of reciprocal commitment. But that trip to Molokai, the waves, the warm sand. He was tall, probably six foot three, and could wear a suit well. But I only saw him in a suit once, and I think it was gray. Gray means never having to make a decision.

And a couple of years later James and I had a belated honeymoon on the Big Island. I dug a little hole on the beach and let my five month pregnant belly rest in the sand. That's why our son has such wanderlust, the sound of the waves. Almost 25 years ago.

But the beach is not the image I go for when I'm in the tube. My secret is this: a poem by Sharon Olds about how she wrapped her daughter in a blanket. A cocoon. All mothers wrap their babies in a blanket; that's how they feel secure. But Sharon Olds did it for her daughter when she was older, maybe ten. And the daughter took delight in it. I have done the very same thing for my boys, and they laughed and laughed. Something about pretending to be all caught up, like in a spider's web, but knowing all along your mother will free you when you've had enough. I wrapped my little sister like that when I was taking care of her. She laughed and laughed.

Of course I opted for the MRI. I was feeling disoriented; where is the lab in this huge building? Why are they handing me a key to a locker when my hand does not work, will not obey, will not open a locker or the buttons on my blouse?

The X-ray tech, who was wearing blue scrubs, asked if I could hold still, if I was claustrophobic. I told him I'd be his best patient ever, he'll see. "All I need is my feet covered with a blanket, and a folded wash cloth over my eyes." He started an IV in my right hand, at my suggestion because I can't feel it anyway. His name tag said Jamal. His hands were dark, shiny almost, and the contrast with the blue scrubs was nice. All I needed, I reminded the tech, as he began to walk away into his own room where a tinny voice announces every so often you're doing fine, just seven more minutes. . . the next scan will last eleven. . .was the call button.

Jamal got me the call button and apologized for forgetting it. "And you'd be like 'Yeah I needed you but you didn't leave me the call button and now I hate you.'" It was funny. He was the funniest tech I've had so far. He made me smile through the bullet sounds to the head, and in my new cocoon the minutes passed. I tried to sleep, but that didn't happen. Instead, the images that came to me were brown and blue, tree branches and sky. How corny was it that his name was so common, for a black man, I mean? How funny that the first three letters were the same as my husband's name?

After the procedure, where I hardly moved at all, if at all, I told him my secret: about the cocoon and the poem and my imagery. He thought that was pretty good. He wished all his patients could lie that still. "I finally found something I'm good at" I joked with Jamal, because he had made me laugh so I wanted to make him laugh. And he did. A real belly laugh.

"I'm sure you're good at other things, too," he said. I told him it also helped to have a good tech, one who you know is watching from the far away room. One who can share a joke.

"That's interesting," he said. "Yesterday I was told I was a lousy X-ray tech. Some guy really chewed my ass." Now don't record that Jamal said the word "ass" with a patient. I had opened the door to colloquial talk with my own casual use of language.

"People are just scared when they're here," I said. "That's why they say things like that and blame you. They're scared and freaking out."

"But there's no reason to be rude." I agreed with him.

"It bothered me all night," he said. "After I went home, I still felt bad, all night." I wondered if the doctor or even the physician's assistant would think about me after they got home. I wondered if Jamal would think of me tonight.

Jamal said "You just made my day. So why you here?"

"I have MS" I said. The words sounded wrong, like they came from the far away tech's room, all wrong like my wooden hand trying to tie my shoes, but it was good practice. "Just found out about an hour ago."

"Ah, well, you know what? They have so many new treatments and meds out for that now, you gonna be all right." And he touched my shoulder. I suppose a X-ray tech shouldn't do that. I hope you don't mention anything about this on his evaluation.

And though James was waiting for me upstairs, and he knew the way home, and he has always been a wonderful husband, I wanted to go home with Jamal that night. Because he speaks my language. We'd talk about his day at work, and we'd laugh.

The narrator shifts between present tense when she is addressing asides to the reader and past tense when she describes what happened at the clinic. What is the emotional effect of this slip-sliding sense of time?

What does love have to do with what she is grappling with now? What does haberdashery have to do with it?

Would it change how you read the story if you knew the narrator was a nurse? A physician? How?

What is the most telling detail you learn about the narrator?