I.
The cardiology consultant asks the nurse to give me another ECG, so I lie on the bed and let them stick wired patches on me, from ankle to breastbone. Afterwards, he explains that any heart irregularity I have is within normal parameters, but — he scratches his belly, gutsily bursting out between a popped button just above his belt — do I have a fear of MRIs? Only his lack of English would make him ask me so honestly, so simply. I shrug. I’ll have one if I have to; I didn’t enjoy the last one, though. He watches me for a moment, his head tipped back and to the side, then abruptly, he says, No, we’ll do something else instead. I won’t make you go through that again if we don’t have to.
He checks me over, and I feel him jolt, discovering something. What is this? he says, holding up my wrist. It’s paint, I laugh, and point to my toes, my face, my other forearm.
Ok, he says. You’re fine.
II.
One of the kids says to me as I tuck them up, How was your hospital appointment? A whole thick book flicks from front to back while I take a breath: how beautiful they are; how thoughtful; how separate; how our bodies are all disintegrating; how stories about accidents and illness fur up the arteries in my brain for days; how every momentary faintness, every headache, every forgotten word or prickling finger is a black cloud, waiting to burst; how I could never, ever leave them; how I’d ask for nothing other than to see them grow up, healthy and happy and good; how painful it is to love them, bruising and sharp and suffocating; how I want to pour my love in their ear, rich and treaclish and golden, and have it sustain them whenever they’re in need; how I wish when they’re short on good dreams — sometimes they can’t sleep because, they tell me, they can’t find any good dreams — I could light up the inside of their eyes with how I see them, funny and smart and kind and brilliant, so they would glow in their beds; how I wish I could show them, too, all my mistakes, on a gleaming white projector screen, so they can learn at 4 or 8 or 12 or 16 or 21 what it took me cold, aching, marble-lined decades to discover; how jealous I am that I already know Cancer Dad got to see his children grown and well.
Fine, I say, Thank you; it was fine.