I've had a couple skin cancers—the most common, least serious variety, but still, the whitecoats are interested in me, so Friday I found myself sitting alone in one of those rooms, wearing only one of those "robes" and enjoying the sensation of the examination table's crinkly paper runner against my exposed backside. How long did I sit there before the dermatologist, a woman perhaps half my age, rapped unshyly at the door and entered? Impossible to say, on account of psychological aspects relating to judgment about the passage of time, but I can say with certainty that it was long enough so that before I got company the room's energy-saving motion detector had shut off the lights. In the dark, I maneuvered gingerly on the table in order to wave my hand in front of the switch, thereby reilluminating the room in antiseptic brightness. If they measured your blood pressure on these visits, pretty sure I'd have been hustled over to the ER.
The doctor was covered up like you see in news spots aired from the hospital's coronavirus ward—a mask and a plastic shield and goggles. I could be off about her age, for the same reason you might misjudge an astronaut's weight. She had short sleeves, however, and her skin was very white and smooth. It seems that if dermatology is your specialty, you stay in the shade. Her first question related to my own habits in this regard, and my answer, shall we say, massaged the truth. It's like a game, I think: she expects to be lied to, and asks only to make her point, so, since she'd made her point, I lied to her. It was somewhat of a relief when she began to look me over. At least I had something to do, following instructions: stand here, face that way, lay back, take your arm out of the sleeve, etc., etc. To stay out of the barbershop, I've given myself a military haircut, which she said made her job easier. One's groin does not typically suffer damage from the sun but I believe she copped a look anyway. Rather too frequently, it seemed, she would pause to study, under magnification, a square centimeter of blemished skin. Her thoroughness suggested she was determined to find cancer and I hated her for that. When finally admitting she'd failed, she spoke clinically, but I heard relievedly, and my hatred dissolved. Suddenly her thoroughness was a virtue. "Come back and see us in a year," she said, exiting.
I dressed with efficiency and, pitying the people looking serious behind their masks in the waiting room, got the hell out of there.
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