RATH SAT IN Rankin’s waiting room, his empty stomach groaning as he ate half a Snickers in a bite. The receptionist had told him he hadn’t needed to fast. He popped the other half of the Snickers in his mouth. A nurse entered. “Mr. Rath?”
Rath followed the nurse, a soft, amorphous, middle-aged woman with frizzy hair so unnaturally blond she ought to just let it go gray. She had runs in her nylons, just above the heel of her white sneakers. She pushed her hip into a bar in the middle of a door, and the door opened to the outside of the building, what looked like a loading zone.
Rath raised an eyebrow. “You kicking me out?”
“We have a temporary setup out here.”
A temporary MRI machine? Rath followed her to a trailer a few feet away.
“Go on in,” she said.
Rath climbed the metal folding stairs up into the trailer, the nurse close behind, shutting them inside with the swing of the metal door.
The trailer was as tight as a coffin, immediately in front of him was a panel of gadgetry. To his left was, apparently, the MRI machine. It took up the width of the trailer. A cylindrical apparatus made of cream-colored plastic, a cushioned bed he’d lie on before he was shoved into the machine like a loaf of bread into an oven on a baker’s paddle. It looked like something out of Star Trek.
“It looks more ominous than it is,” the nurse said. “I swear it doesn’t hurt.”
“Can’t hurt more than my back does.”
“Won’t hurt at all. I’ll slide you in, and all you have to do is lie still and relax. I’ll speak to you through an intercom. You’ll hear a few noises, and that’s it.”
Rath took a breath, wondered what they might find inside his body. His liver. His pancreas. There was nothing that could be done for the pancreas. If Steve Jobs couldn’t buy his way out of it, no one could.
“Don’t worry,” the nurse said. “If you’d take off your belt and anything else that is metal. Coins, keys—in this basket.” She handed him a plastic basket that looked like something fried clams would be served in up in a Maine seafood shack.
He did as asked, and she guided him to the MRI machine and helped him rest back on it, her cold palm flat on his chest. “Some of the noises will be a bit loud, so you can wear these.”
She handed him a pair of foam earplugs like those he used when sighting in his .30-06. He wedged them in his ears.
As the foam expanded in his ear canal, the world grew muted and remote, while the sounds of his own body grew pronounced: his heartbeat, swallowing and breathing and blinking.
The nurse slid him in and shut the door to leave him in the silent, claustrophobic tube. A distant whir rose, then a sound like a lug-nut gun in a mechanic’s garage. Clackclack clack. Silence again.
“OK,” a faraway, gauzy voice said, “I’m going to move you farther back.”
He slid back with the padding beneath him.
He closed his eyes and breathed. A clicking sound arose around him. The sound of a camera shooting pictures rapid fire.
“Turn on your left side please,” the voice said.
He struggled to turn, pain shooting from his back down his leg.
Clickclick clack.
“Your right side please.”
His palms were sticky. His heart skipping.
The machine whirred, a soft, low, pleasant hum. He drifted on the sound.
“OK,” the voice said.
Rath jolted.
Had he fallen asleep?
The door to the MRI machine opened, and he was slid out.
“Fall asleep?” the nurse said.
“Hmm, no,” he lied. Embarrassed somehow.
“A lot of people do,” she said kindly.
He gathered his belongings from the fried-clam basket. Saw images of the internal workings of a body on a computer screen, each muscle as distinct as a poster of a steer in a butcher shop. “Is that me?” he said.
“That’s you.”
“Can you tell if there’s anything wrong?”
“I just take the pictures. I’m sure your doctor will be in touch. It’ll be all right.”
Rath left unconvinced.
He was pulling out of the parking lot as his cell phone buzzed on the seat. He picked it up. The Dress Shoppe. A current of electricity sang in him. The phone buzzed again. He stared at it, picked it up, and answered.
“Is Frank there?” a woman’s voice said.
“Speaking,” Rath said. Speaking? Who spoke so formally?
The woman was saying something.
“What? I lost you for a moment,” he said, lying.
“It’s Madeline.” Her voice was bright and musical, and his tension from thinking about the MRI subsided to hear it. “I was calling to see how your daughter liked the jumper and to remind you that you can always return it for an exchange. We don’t do full returns for worn clothes, but . . .” She paused. “Anyway, did she like it?” Was this business?
“She loved it,” Rath lied again, wanting Madeline to feel as good about her choice of jumpers as he surprisingly felt at hearing her voice.
“Well,” she said. “Great.” He knew he’d messed up. She’d tossed him a big fat easy softball that hung up belt high over the plate, and he’d look it into the glove. She didn’t care about the jumper; she was calling for him. Or was she? Damn it. He couldn’t tell. What did it matter anyway?
“Hello,” Madeline said. “You there?”
“Sorry, I’m in a bad place, a bad section of road.”
“I’ll let you go. I’m glad your daughter liked it.”
“Maybe I’ll stop in sometime, get her another one.” He sucked a breath through teeth. He sounded desperate.
“Great.” Her voice had lost its warmth, grown distracted. “I have a customer—”
“Of course. Sorry.”
“No need to apologize.” Her voice cool now. “Good-bye.”
He ended the call and looked at himself in the rearview mirror. “Idiot.”