MRI

After they’ve strapped my feet together and attached me to the machine that will pump a chemical into my veins that allows the bigger machine to read my insides with greater accuracy, after they’ve put plugs in my ears to ensure I don’t go deaf from the buzzing mechanical symphony of physics and enormous magnetic fields that will see through my skin like a man looks through a window to check the weather, after all of this preparation for what is effectively a miracle of science..., we hit a snag.

Now three people are futzing with the table upon which I am trussed and blanketed, raising it, examining the readout, lowering it, shoving it into place with a jarring clunk, consulting, shaking it back and forth, wiggling it, several more clunks and finally a smooth slide into place.

You know that feeling when the ride operator at the carnival checks the straps and the shoulder pull-down bar, just to make sure everything’s kosher, before the chair upon which your very life depends lifts off at ridiculous speed to spin you through space, but you notice when he does it he has to really shake it once or twice, like maybe he’s not entirely confident, but finally he leaves it, because, you know, good enough? I have a brief moment of trepidation as the open maw of the machine receives me and the cacophony of the scan begins.