Personal Day
By: Kurt Reno
Tags: Short Story, Short Fiction, Short Read, Doctors, Personal Day

My previous brush with a doctor didn’t go so well.

My mother-in-law was having a tough time with her hips. So much so that she was scheduled for hip replacement surgery. Only, when they had her open, they discovered that the source of her pain and reduced function wasn’t arthritis. It was a tumor, right on the structure of her hip. I was standing next to my wife, who was standing next to her mother, who was lying on a hospital bed, when the doctor relayed that little tidbit. I wanted to shout “How the hell didn’t that show up on the X-rays or the MRI?”. But I didn’t. What would that accomplish? She, and her daughter, and me I guess, were already scared and sad enough. She would have had the same surgery anyway. But still.

So a few weeks later, when I get a headache lasting five days and counting, I get worried. I take a personal day, the whole day, and go to the doctor’s myself. My doctor.

The nurse takes my temperature, blood pressure, weighs me, asks me if I am depressed, asks me if I feel threatened at home. I open my mouth, roll up my sleeve, stand on the scale, say the words “No” and “No”.

What’s the reason for my visit? “I’m worried about my weeklong headache”, I answer, and tell the nurse about my mother-in-law. She nods, with a concerned look, and runs several tests and probes involving blood, light, sound, and radiation. Lucky me, the clinic has all the equipment right there. About an hour goes by.

My doctor, Dr. Brioni, opens the door after knocking but not waiting for an answer, and walks in. He’s looking at some paper on a clipboard as he shakes my hand. He looks up at me, still shaking my hand, and speaks.

“Not every headache is a tumor, you know.”

“Thankfully”, I answer.

“Everything else checks out. So you’re good”, he says.

“So I’m good?”, I answer.

“You’re not good?”, he asks.

“Well…” I say, “I’ve still got this headache.”

“Most people,” Dr. Brioni tells me, “when they find out it’s not a tumor, their headache goes away. They stop worrying so much, and their headache just goes away.”

“Hey, that’s great”, I say. “When can I expect that to happen to me?”

“For most people,” he starts, “it’s instantaneous. For others, well, I suspect it’ll vanish on your way home.”

We’ve both been standing this whole time. He writes one or two things on the paper on the clipboard, then puts it in the holder on the back of the exam room door. He turns to shake my hand again.

“Good to see you again. You’re all set. See Kelly on your way out.”

“Thanks, Doctor. Good to see you too.”

He opens the door and walks through. He looks to the right down the hallway and nods to someone I can’t see. “I’m going to leave this door open” he says to me without looking, and heads left. My total time in his presence today is about ninety seconds. Two minutes, tops.

All the way home I think about the would-be consequences of my would-be tumor. The effect on my wife, my children, my place in the world. I just now turned a corner at work, with high hopes and high possibilities.

I notice things on the way home, like people looking at their phones while driving, people piling into liquor stores, the big billboard flashing the lottery jackpot. What are they looking at more important than the road? What are they celebrating? What car would I buy first if I won the jackpot? What about the smaller prizes? That’s still quite a lot of money, a real windfall. How would I spend that? Hey, my headache’s gone! The Doctor was right. I guess ninety seconds is enough! I smile, smile the rest of the way home.

I pull into my driveway and walk through the front door of my house. My wife looks at me anxiously, and reluctantly asks me how it went.

I say “Not every headache is a tumor, you know.”

She smiles, and her eyes well up. “Hey”, I say, holding her close, “it’s OK. It’s all OK. Doctor Brioni says ‘Hello’, by the way”, I lie. She wipes her eyes with a tissue that’s already in her hand. The kids are still at school, and I’m glad we didn’t mention anything to them before.

“Let’s go get a lottery ticket”, I say. “Just to see. Just to see.”