Receive a Message Notification from MyChart

Receive a message notification from MyChart forty minutes before your next meeting. See the phrase cancer findings, followed by words you don't recognize in small print. Your office fades around you, the groan of your old space heater and the rush of students in the hall dulled by the words on your screen. Feel pressure by your throat, as if you're back in your surgeon's office: eyes fixed on the white-tiled ceiling as he presses a needle into the camel's hump that's sprouted at the base of your neck.Each day you reenter adulthood with the desperate, wide-eyed confusion of a newborn. The world is made fresh and unfamiliar by a strange sound your engine starts to make, the tax forms HR hands you, an email from your bank promoting Roth IRAs. Turn to Reddit and Google as you once did to your parents: how to tell if mushrooms expired; puddle by radiator; removing peanut butter from suede. Today, type: what is thyroid cancer; thyroid cancer survival rate; FMLA policy and process.Ten minutes until your meeting. Google your doctor's number, then listen to the dial tone as you close your office door. Attempt a balance between polite and pleading when you ask the receptionist to tell him you called. “The doctor will go over the biopsy results at your appointment on Thursday,” she says—slow and sweet, as though you'd simply forgotten.Google papillary carcinoma once more before opening Zoom. Smile and wave to your thumbnail colleagues. Give your well wishes when Sylvie mentions Craig is out after breaking two ribs. Recall that he responded to a message you sent this morning, and wonder whether he was online because he was bored or because he felt he had to be. Imagine starting a new life in Europe—or at least the version you see in videos mocking American work life. Wonder how long it would take to change banks, if credit scores cross continents, whether your roommates could afford the lease without you.Remind yourself that your job is here—which means your insurance is here, which means your surgeon is here, which means you and your nodule must stay here. Switch to daydreaming about lunch. Rank the local restaurants by how difficult their food will be to swallow.Pass the afternoon in identical meetings. Avoid messaging Craig, hoping he'll do the same when it's your turn in the OR. Leave at the same time afternoon classes let out and ride an elevator cramped with undergraduates. Listen to their breathing: the slight wheeze of the blue-haired girl with round glasses; the frantic huffs of the boy with the heady cologne. Wish they could hear the pressure on your throat: that you didn't have to crane your neck and point for others to see the way you've changed. Notice the warped mole tucked beneath a professor's earlobe, and the way the girl in the corner winces as she adjusts her shoulder bag. Wonder what messages they receive through MyChart, and if they, too, are feigning calm while awaiting a Thursday appointment.The elevator door opens, and the huddle around you evaporates like a cloud. Muscle memory leads you through the front doors and onto the misty street, five blocks from your bus.Consider calling your mom, then feel stone-heavy dread at the possibility of navigating her anxieties: the way she'll beg for a list of your symptoms, compare them against her ailments, and ask if she, too, should see a doctor. Think about how anxious and tired you'd be after that call—then think of how anxious and tired you've made yourself by imagining it.Dial Mark instead. Savor the low rumble of his laugh as he greets you. Picture the slope of his shoulders as he tugs on his raincoat, AirPods nestled in freckled ears. Remember how those shoulders looked above you the other night: the jagged white scar he earned in a car crash at twelve, the way his skin flushed pink like spilled paint as you moved together.Hear the tremor in his voice when he says he wasn't expecting this. Know he's not referring to the cancer but to the fact that you told him about it. Realize too late that the C word should never come before the L word. Feel the urge to assure him with what you read on Mayo Clinic: how treatable this is, how you'll only have to avoid exercise for two weeks after surgery.Decide instead to keep those facts nestled inside your chest like tiny life preservers. If you say them aloud, you would both have to face the doubt in your own voice. If you stay silent, you only have to lose Mark. Say, “Well, I should let you go,” and know that you need to mean it.The drizzle builds to a pour, and a bone-deep cold seeps beneath your skin. Your muscles clench and stutter, a fierce trembling that makes your limbs feel as tight and pinched as your neck.Close your eyes and tilt your chin to the storming sky. Icy droplets prick your cheeks, streaming tiny rivers down the arch of your neck. Envision they are tributaries: that if you hold still long enough, they will erode your throat to smooth sand.