Love, Jimmie

I casually mentioned to you recently that I had to have a biopsy due to some questionable cells found upon my person. I reiterate, I am fine.  I know I am fine.  I just have to prove that I am fine.  To prove that I am fine, I had to visit a new cookie doctor, remove half of my clothing to don the fetching paper towel they call a gown, and clamber onto a paper-covered table.  For this privilege I will clean out my HSA plus what remains of my emergency fund and hand it over to the nice new cookie doctor I just bawled all over.

(While we are discussing “bawling,” please note the spelling of the word “bawling.” People who write notes under the touching and tear-jerker videos you find on Facebook or Reddit are not “balling.”  They are “bawling.”  Unless, of course, they are “balling,” and then that’s a whole ‘nother discussion we should not have here.)

For twenty-five years I have faithfully and annually donned that damned paper towel, and for twenty-four of those years I have cried like someone just ran over my dog. 2014 was the year I did not “bawl” and if I knew what was different about 2014, I’d write a novella about it.  Twice in those twenty-five years I have had to don the fetching paper towel a second and third time in order to have a biopsy.  Both times those doctors insisted that the biopsy, nothing you can be numbed for, only feels like small cramps.  Also, both times those doctors indicated to me that they never personally experienced a cervical biopsy before.  To them I’d kindly like to say, “Fuck you. After you let some person whose first name you are not allowed to use scrape a metal rake down your cervix whilst you are wearing a paper gown that ripped down the middle because your tears rendered it soggy and defunct, you can tell me how it is supposed to feel.  Until then, shut your yap and bring me a new paper towel.”

You can see from my essay that this particular visit went well.

Actually, you know what? I lived through it. It is over.  It only took 36 hours for my eyes to return to normal after the crying, and my boss brought me flowers because she is nice.  I have no complaints.  Except this.

When I left the cookie doctor’s office, I trudged down to my car carrying my umbrella while the rain poured over me. I collapsed into my car, turned it on for some heat, put it in reverse and then realized I had no idea how to get to work from the hospital.  I dug out my phone and sat in my space while I fat-fingered my office address into my GPS.  It was hard to see and I was still hiccupping from all the crying so I was not at my best.  After a few minutes of mistyping the address, I heard a faint tap of a car horn.  I looked behind me and saw an SUV with its turn signal on, clearly waiting for my parking space.  It was a nice space, close to the hospital door and with less of a walk through the rain.

Instead of reacting like a sane person would, I was catapulted into a violent rage. I powered my window down, shoved nearly my whole body out the car window and yelled obscenities at the SUV while giving it multiple single-digit finger waves that would make my grandmother spank my behind a thousand times.  I jerked my foot off the brake and tore out of that space at a speed not humanly possible, screaming at the SUV the whole way, finger out the window.  I jerked myself all over the parking lot until I got lost in it (yes, I know), and then finally found my way back to the row the SUV was now parked in.  Angry does not begin to describe what I felt.

Then I saw him. The man who climbed out of the SUV was black. He was overweight.  He had his hair cornrowed back in braids and he walked with a limp towards the door.  He was wearing a uniform jacket, one of the navy ones that zips up the front.  He was just a man.  Probably a very nice man who simply wondered if I was actually going to reverse out of the space as I was indicating by having my reverse lights on.  He saw me looking at him, just sitting in my car and crying in the rain, and he looked away and kept walking.

If you thought I cried before, you’d be shocked at the tears I produced then. I can barely type this today without crying.  Scratch that.  I’m “bawling” as I type this and I still feel like utter shit.  What if he was going to visit his wife in that hospital?  What if he was having a health scare of his own?  What if – it doesn’t matter.  This was a human, a person of value, a man worth my love and not my hate and I just treated him in a way that embarrasses me and in a way that no one should find acceptable.  Ever.  I’d give anything to be able to find him again and apologize and do something nice for him so that he’d have a good day instead of the crappy awful one I tried to give him. God, please, I hope I didn’t ruin his day.

I’ll get my results in just over two weeks and I’ll happily let you know I am fine. In the interim, I’m going to find some people who look like they are having a day straight from the garbage can and I’m going to do my damnedest to turn their garbage day back into a good one. I’ll do it for that man and I’ll do it because it is the right thing to do.  I’d like to act like a human for a while.  Maybe it will get back to him and he will find some anonymous good in a perfect stranger who did a tiny human thing that makes his day.

Amen. Please, God, Amen.