Today, I visited the doctor and was seen by an artist.
It started off as a normal visit. I was seated in the waiting room, surrounded by off-white walls displaying generic doctors’-office paintings, the ones that look like landscapes that’ve grown tired and old but still persist.
I began to pick at my fingernails when a prosaic voice called out, “Megumi?” (We’re all anonymous in the waiting room, until we’re not.)
The man attached to the voice was anything but an ordinary fixture of the medical arena. He was lanky, salt- (not pepper-) haired, with clear-framed glasses and tattoos up and down his long arms. He looked like a veteran of the dimly lit space behind a bar or the natural light-drenched window of a studio, mixing drinks in tumblers by night and media on canvas by day.
But instead he was here, in scrubs turned bright by fluorescent lights.
“My name is Jay and I’m Dr. R’s medical assistant. Come on with me to the back.”
As we entered the doctor’s office, Jay seated himself in front of the computer and asked me all the basic information: Can you confirm your name? Date of birth? Are you looking to establish care here? What’s the best pharmacy to send your prescriptions to?
He paused and sighed. “I know I’m asking you everything you already wrote on your intake forms. We just loooove redundancy around here.”
He continued. How many times do you drink a week? How many drinks per time? How often do you smoke? How often do you use recreational drugs? First date of last period?
Pause again.
“Just bear with me, I know this is such a repetitive process.” He was about to enter more information into the ancient, boxy computer when he turned to me.
“You know, I was reading the New Yorker the other day when I saw the funniest thing. There was a cartoon where this guy has a doctor’s appointment, and he has to fill out the forms online, then again once he gets to the front desk, and then again when he’s seen by the nurse. It’s like, why is this so repetitive? But that’s just the way it is.”
I nodded and smiled.
He finished with all the requisite questions and took my requisite vitals. Recording some numbers, he mentioned something about his bad handwriting.
I quipped, “My handwriting degrades every year. We don’t do much writing by hand anymore.”
“No — it’s a lost art.”
Jay’s words were immediate, at the ready, spoken routinely. But filled with lament. I knew he meant it.
He paused. Put away the instruments. Told me the doctor would be in shortly.
I stayed seated and looked up at the ceiling.
