Behind the front desk, the staff, a youngish flock, flits about. In the waiting room, older women somberly scroll through cell phones. Well, we’re not here to have fun, folks, we’re about as thrilled as growing gray. Get in, get out, get on with our lives. I’m asked to sign in, which I do with a wobbly scrawl. Why can’t I fucking write my name anymore? I hear a chirp:

“You can take a seat now. We’ll call you in just a minute.”

From my chair the office dynamics become crystal clear and naturally Boss Bird, the one making a flap about a lost ladies’ room key, calls my name. I say that as someone who’s always drawn to the Quiet Bird in the corner, not the loudmouth in the room.

“So, you have back-to-back appointments for a mammogram and a DEXA bone scan,” she says.

Comic sigh: “Yeah, makes the day twice as nice.”

Her smile comes off as superior. It must be awesome not having to worry about old-chick things. When I was her age, out dancing all night, I didn’t either. With a sparkly pink fingernail that could take out an eye, she points out shaded sections on several forms with strict instruction.

“Make sure you fill out here, here, and here.”

Note: One of us is in a prickly mood.

Boss Bird scans the clipped paperwork, looking for something wrong. Ah, found it! “You didn’t fill in all the gray areas.”

Gray areas? You mean like the gray areas of mammograms and bone density scans and shit like that?

Twenty, thirty, forty minutes pass. Boss Bird would say I missed my window by not filling in gray areas, so I hang tight and not ruffle any feathers. Finally, I’m called back by a technician my age, give or take, with a wooden smile.

“Hello.”

“Hi.”

“We’re actually going to perform your DEXA scan first.”

“But I’m feeling a bit brittle,” I joke, even though it’s true.

Not a chatty one. Stony, but I get it, she’s got work to do. Once I’m in my blue gown, she takes my height and weight.

“How tall am I now?” I ask, standing ridiculously erect.

She double-checks, squinting. “Five feet four.”

“Hey, I didn’t shrink!”

Blank nod.

Note: She’s one serious Owl.

Owl leads me to a room where the next thing I know she’s propping me in a variety of positions on the examination table with the help of hard-foam geometrically-shaped pillows. The scanner moves slow-mo up and down the length of my legs, hips, spine. Are we having fun yet? I’m no baby but watching my mom advance into her late 80s makes me shudder at the cold, clinical snapshots of life such as this very moment. These stills. Been through my own hell, too; then—experimental fibroid embolization at Georgetown Hospital was successful, but when national news broke of contaminated needles planted by a rogue temp employed in their radiology department that same week–oh, joy. The year that followed was a barrel of laughs.

Owl may not give a hoot, but I hear myself rambling to the ceiling anyway:

“You know, I had my first bone density scan around 2008, braced for the worse. I mean, I’d been told being slim and of Asian descent made me a candidate for osteoporosis like my mom. But the results were fantastic: my bones were baseline perfect. I had the skeleton of a thirty-year-old! Hallelujah, all those years of drinking soy milk and eating yogurt and taking Women’s One A Day vitamins really paid off. But my next scan a few years later revealed a very different picture: now I was swiss cheese. Thank you, menopause.”

Polite but disinterested: “Happens to many women.”

As Owl inspects the film, I’m hoping she’ll tell me something good, as the title of Rufus’ seventies song goes. Tell me my bones are miraculously rock solid again. At the very least, tell me if I fall, I’ll friggin’ get up.

Wishful thinking—she’s ready to move on to the next patient.

“I’ll bring you back to the change room. Someone will come get you for your mammogram.”

Frankly, I never flashed them at the Peter Frampton concert like I was dared to do, but I was happy to have them, my crowning glories. Thanks to the pill, I was voluptuous and everything I slipped on looked good on me. Yes, once upon a time estrogen was my friend, but turns out it’s friends with cancer, too, and I’m not sure I can trust it anymore. Yet I still need it, damn it, not for birth control or bigger boobs but for other private things. Speaking of estrogen-fueled issues, last week I took my sister to the hospital for a procedure five worrisome months in the making. In the end, thank the god of little sisters, she was fine.

The door opens. Fluttering in like a breath of fresh air is a new technician in a sweet butterfly smock. I don’t catch her name; it’s foreign, as is her voice. I’ll call her Dove. She’s 35 or 40, young to me, reading my chart. Incredulously:

“So, you’ve been through menopause?”

“Yes.”

“But you look so young!”

OMG, all caps. I didn’t even have to fish for that compliment.

“No, I mean it!” she says. “That’s crazy!”

Note: I love her.

“Let’s put this on,” Dove says. Instead of wrapping me in the big heavy belt-like thing hanging on a hook, she opts for a smaller apparatus that snaps around my waist. She has life, she has spirit; her presence is nectar. I would like her anywhere, under any circumstances. “Does it fit?” she wonders. “You are comfortable?”

“Yes, yes, I am.”

“Good. Ready now?”

Yes, I know the drill. I’m a big girl. Thrust yourself into a cold towering metal contraption that squeezes and squishes your breasts into pancakes from this angle and that angle, your arm here, your other arm there, hold your breath, don’t move, you’re an eagle, yes, perched to fly because you’ll be out of here in a heartbeat.

Before I know it, Dove is slipping the apparatus from my waist. Instead of hanging it up, she works it like a piece of gym equipment. Open, close, open, close…

Snap!

“See?” she says playfully. “It’s good for the arms, too.”

Holy shit, that’s what I was waiting for. A light, bright moment. That smile.

Frances Park is the author or coauthor of ten literary books—novels, memoirs and children’s books—published in seven languages and praised by The Times Literary Supplement, Newsweek, USA Today, NPR, Radio Free Asia, and Voice of America. Her short fiction and essays, often inspired by her Korean American heritage, have appeared in O, The Oprah Magazine, The Bellevue Literary Review, Spirituality & Health, The Massachusetts Review, The Chicago Quarterly, The London Magazine, and many others. She was short-listed for the 2019 Dzanc Novella Prize and earned a spot on the 2017 Best American Essays Notable List. 

Header image: Smile by Richard Wu