I Try to Explain to My Husband What It’s Like by Linda Downing Miller

Image by Benyamin Bohlouli on Unsplash

in that small waiting room, each occupant half-enrobed in a somehow sinister mauve. We’ve entered curtained-off sectors and removed our tops and bras and covered ourselves in one-size-fits-alls, with their gaping necklines and tiny ties that cannot shield us. We’ve inserted our displaced clothing into our chosen lockers. Will we remember our locker numbers? We may not remember our numbers unless they’re helpfully written on the worn pieces of wood attached to our locker keys. We grip that wood more tightly than we might realize as we take our chairs, three here, four there, edging the room. We don’t think to check whether our locker numbers are written on the wood or not.

Our eyes gravitate to a television in the corner, where a cooking show offers light-hearted chatter. We need that lightness because waiting in this room does not simply feed impatience. It feeds terror and prayer and a pitching of the mind, from attempted optimism to malignant imagery and all that might ensue: a biopsy proving what they’ve caught; months and months upended; slashing, burning, poisoning, weakness, visible illness; then the slow crawl back to normalcy, or as close as we can get, if we’re able to crawl at all. 

As they arrive or return after their names have been called, some women say hello to the others in the room. A newcomer sits with brittle poise; another, with heavy resignation. Some who’ve been here longer may know who’s yet to get any pictures and who’s waiting to hear about the results of their pictures and who’s been called back for more pictures—“the doctor just wants a few more pictures”—and who has returned from a nearby room in which ultrasounds are performed and discussions held, the one doctor on duty periodically approaching and leaving in her clicking heels. They’re the only clicking heels in the place, at least on the morning I’m talking about, so those heels in the hallway sound like doom being visited upon one of the women who had needed extra pictures. 

We could free our tops and bras. Try our keys in every lock. But we’d still be at risk, however we’re shaped, in whatever position we wait. So, we cede ourselves to this life-saving/-shattering process. The clicking of heels. The meting out of doom.

Perhaps I shouldn’t say doom because I’ve faced and survived a breast cancer diagnosis. So far? Entering with two double As and emerging with one and three-quarters or so, without chemo. Yes, I was luckier than most. But it didn’t feel like luck at the time. And it doesn’t feel like luck now when I’m called back for more pictures—technically, “better pictures.” A very experienced mammographer has taken up my case because the minimal tissue that can be pressed between those planes of hard plastic requires an expert hand, guiding my position at the machine and positioning me within it. 

I spare my husband the turning knob, the ratcheting pressure on flesh, the suffocation of held breath…. He’s already wincing, and I haven’t even gotten to the worst of it yet. 

The worst of it, I explain, is the waiting after the second set of pictures. The heels on the floor tiles. The woman who returns after a stint in the nearby room and hopes things go well for us, all of us in the waiting room right then. Things have not gone well for her, she confesses—she cannot help but tell us—but somehow, she manages to wish the best for us.

He’d asked me how things went. 
Could any of us have simply said, “okay”? 

I’m still not sure what exactly happened in that room after the woman spoke. Did someone muster a word of comfort? Did time go silent for everyone, or only me? I have a blurry image of our wounded comrade disappearing with her coat and purse. Then nothing: until I’m released with a paper bearing an “x” in the “benign appearing” box.
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Perhaps my desperate relief could be seen in the shiver of my key, the clutching of my things, the haste with which I abandoned our uniform. I had no words for anyone else just then. I wanted every second left for myself.

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Linda Downing Miller has led creative writing classes in Chicago for more than ten years. Her stories and essays have appeared in literary journals and other publications, including Chicago Quarterly Review, Water~Stone Review, The Florida Review, Booth, and the Brevity blog. She earned an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte and lives in Oak Park, Illinois.