KATIE KNECHT

The Exam

Filling out forms usually delighted me. A pen gliding across the paper, sharing the information in my head, accurate answers I could provide to the requester, even if it was just my full legal name—that’s where I was most comfortable.

This form, however, stared back at me with a raised eyebrow. Good luck with this one, kid, it said in a smoky voice.

“Just circle where they’re supposed to check you out,” the receptionist had said, a thick wad of gum sliding and stretching between her teeth. She handed me a brown clipboard to which a pen was attached by a brown, frayed string. On the paper was an outline of a person with abnormally large, cartoonish breasts awaiting my instruction.

My mouth had opened to ask something—anything—but the phone rang and the receptionist ripped it off its base as though a second ring would be deadly to us all.

I shuffled away, staring down at the blank body outline before me, trying to think back to what the doctor had said. It was a lump, definitely, but where, exactly? Actually, more importantly, which boob was it?

I mushed myself and my puffy coat into one of the metal chairs and tried to think back. How was this not something the doctor called about in advance? Was it really up to me, a pedestrian with a degree in journalism, to direct these medical professionals on how to find what was surely cancer in my tits?

I drew my coat around me and glanced around the room with the charcoal gray floors, ashen gray chairs, and smoky gray walls, wondering if anyone else was chilly, or if I was breaking out in chills thinking about failing this crucial assignment. I made eye contact with a dark-haired, freckled woman also filling out forms; she seemed equally lost. I felt comforted. I hunched over my paper, embarrassed by the still-empty form.

I pulled out my phone and went through the multiple hoops required to log in to my OBGYN provider’s proprietary portal to see that the only quasi-medical information I had been sent was that I had a “suspicious abnormality” for which “further tests” were “recommended”. At my mammogram a few weeks ago, my doctor had said, “You have very fibrous breasts” in a tone that sounded like such breasts made her job harder, but also that she was impressed by them.

Deciding I was about eighty percent certain it was the right boob, which was also the bigger boob, I went in with a heavy pen stroke, hoping no one would infer my lack of confidence. I’d just tell the technician I wasn’t positive, and could she please check both?

“You want me to check both?” she said.

The conversation was going worse than any sleepless night of horror fantasy could have imagined. I waited in a paper shirt in a different gray room that had a temperature reminiscent of my winter trip to London. After turning in the form, I had been handed a thin, pale blue shirt, instructed to put my things—including my phone—in a locker, and led to a new waiting room. I changed into the flimsy top, which crinkled around me as I sat in another gray chair—this time silver. I sat.

And sat.

And slouched.

And slumped.

I thought about returning to the gunmetal gray locker every few minutes—this place was a crayon box of grays. I decided to wait it out, because what if they called me back and I missed it, and I ended up having to wait even longer because of my lack of discipline? It would have been nice to scroll Instagram or read about the demise of democracy while my teeth chattered.

Finally, I had been summoned, only to find that my technician was astonished I hadn’t come equipped with the knowledge of an actual, trained gynecologist.

“Like I said, I can’t remember for sure which one it was.” I stumbled with the confidence of someone trying to tell which loaf of bread was gluten-free just by looking at it. I watched the sooty ceiling from my horizontal position as she clicked around on her computer. I didn’t even have to look; I could feel her shaking her golden-highlighted ponytail. I was wasting her time. Click, clack, clack. Her frustration with me pounded through the keyboard.

“I’m sorry,” I said, desperation creeping in. “I didn’t know I was supposed to remember myself.”

“Lift up your arms,” she said, sliding her chilled hands under the paper shirt and pressing her fingertips around my boobs. A wave of her perfume or hair products or laundry detergent landed on me. Was it mango? Peach? I thought bizarrely of sunscreen. Princess Peach looked up and to the right as though listening for something.

“It’s the right one,” she said satisfactorily.

Totally made sense that she couldn’t have conducted this 10-second test at the opening of our meeting, but sure. I was grateful, at least, that my 50-50 guess had been correct.

A+ for me?

Princess Peach applied an icy gel to my right breast and moved a metal instrument across it. I could feel my goosebumps chafing against the barely-existent shirt.

“Yep, here it is,” she said as though she weren’t possibly identifying authentic breast cancer.

“Great,” I said weakly.

She moved the tool around with her left hand and clicked around on the computer with her other while staring at the screen. I was probably her tenth exam of the day and it wasn’t even lunch yet. I tried to empathize with her frustration that I hadn’t come with the coordinates of the likely death cells in my body, but I couldn’t help but feel that I, bare-chested with a shirt made of tissue crinkled around my neck, was in the worse position of the two of us.

She clicked and clacked a few more times, abruptly removed her instrument, and said, without making eye contact, “The results’ll be sent to you in a few days. They’ll call you if it’s anything.” Her shoes squeaked lightly as she left the room.

I sat up and reached for the tissues, which I thought she probably could have handed to me, and began wiping off the gel.

“They’ll call you if it’s anything,” she had said. Anything what? Bad, I presume? Also, how long was a few days? To me, a few meant three, but what if Princess Peach used it more loosely, like up to a week?

Over the next seventy-two hours, any call from an unknown number sent me into a spiral.

One phone call sent me into an empty meeting room at work, mouth full of kale and chicken, desperate to hear my results. Instead, I spoke with a young man offering me a refund for SpyWare9000 if I simply shared my bank’s account and routing numbers. I returned to the sad salad at my desk, evidently looking forlorn, because my coworker Tom asked if everything was okay. I sat down, smoothed my black skirt. I swallowed hard, forced the corners of my lips up, and replied, “Totally.”

The F.B.I. was also apparently on my trail—the robot who called me said it was for something related to tax evasion, but I guessed it was actually for not having my lump coordinates at-the-ready. I always submitted my taxes well ahead of the deadline.

I went for short runs in my brownstone-lined neighborhood, feeling detached from my own body. What was it doing to me while I ran, ate, slept? Was it nervous for me to discover its betrayal?

Every unread email sent a spark down my arm as I clicked it open. Even you-get-ten-percent-off emails from Old Navy and the usual notifications from Chase Bank that my balance was below the “recommended amount” left me rattled.

I wondered if I was going to give myself cancer if I didn’t already have it.

Mid-bite-of-sushi on the third day: an email notification from “Testing Center Results.”

Open.

Log in to this portal.

Send a code to your email.

Input the code from the email.

Download the PDF.

Try to make sense of these medical words.

Absent.

Clear.

Devoid.

No cancer.

I didn’t have cancer.

Well, of the breast.

There were plenty of other body parts that could become malignant at any moment. A multitude of period cramps that could be ovarian cancer. Dozens of headaches that could be the result of a deadly brain tumor. Despite the good news, my anxiety would perpetually be wearing a little paper crop top on a cold exam table, waiting to find out what else was about to go wrong.