The Literal Patient

I read people. I think I do it quite well. I can pick up on sarcasm and I'm keen to complisults. I know when it's time to laugh, time to listen, and time to shut the hell up. So when I get a good read on someone, and they ask me to do something, I do it. I do it with conviction because any less would be an insult to my literacy. You see, when I meet people, I tend to cut straight to their childhood and forego their tales of the previous weekend. I don't want to know what they did last weekend, I want to know why they did it. I prefer diving boards and deep ends to running through sprinklers. When you run through the sprinklers, you can't drown. The lessons you gain when fighting to stay afloat make drowning worth the risk. You drown when you don't seek the truth. You drown when you make assumptions. You drown when the nurse at your doctor's office has more patients than time to see them and provides the Cliff Note's version on what to expect from your first visit to a family clinic in the better part of a decade.

As she took my vitals and described the next 10 minutes of my life, Nurse Vague skipped key bullet points of the house rules. "Take off your clothes," she said. "Dr. Chang will be with you in a moment." When the door shut behind her, I realized that we'd been standing in the shallow end. I didn't read her. I didn't ask questions. I didn't know if the good doctor and I would be running through sprinklers or swimming in the ocean. As we stood in the knee-deep baby blue cesspool called pleasantries, my eyes darted toward the other end of the tank and I've never since felt a longing so strong.

But maybe I did read her. She was direct and to the point. She didn't waste time. If I waited for Dr. Chang to repeat those crucial instructions, I would be wasting everyone's time. 'The nurse was direct,' I kept telling myself. 'She spoke with conviction.' Those words ran through my mind for two minutes before I moved a muscle. 'I'm in a doctor's office. She's a doctor. She's going to do a full examination anyway. Sure, a nude introduction wasn't what I had envisioned when I booked the appointment, but the nurse told you to take off your clothes. So take off your clothes.'

If Dr. Chang's appointments were a novel, then Nurse Vague had written the medical equivalent of a prologue. I had an idea what was about to go down but the devil is in the details. "Take off your clothes," she had said. I briefly pondered the idea of running down the hall to ask some follow up questions. "Excuse me, nurse? Hi. Thomas here, we met just a second ago. Nice to see you again. Listen, if you don't mind, I'd like to clear a few things up. Just how many articles of clothing is the doctor expecting to see on the floor when she comes in? Are boxers considered naked or do I have to be naked naked? How sterile is that linoluem? Should I keep my socks on?"

I knew Dr. Chang would be ready to evaluate me any second now, so I decided to stop being indecisive and start stripping. The hand that had adorned the bottom of my chin in a quizzical trance for the last two minutes now held my shirt, pants, and dignity. I looked around the room. I found it quite standard. A bed. A chair. Some medical magazines. A lamenated picture of a funny looking skeleton with arrows indicating key body parts. The familiarity comforted me. I could relax. I put my clothes on the chair and worked on my stance. Should my hands be on my hips? Should I sit on the bed? Do I cup myself? Are these socks tacky?

The slight knock on the door preceded it's opening by a millisecond. For all intents and purposes, they were simultaneous. A wikiHow forum on how to get dressed reveals seven simple steps in the art of robing, but even the best swimmer on the starting block took longer than a millisecond to rock that speedo. The same time frame holds true for jumping out of a window. So I stood there, naked (minus the socks, of course), hopeful that I had correctly interpreted the nurse's directive to kick it au naturale. Of the hundreds of scenarios that played through my head in the minutes leading up to our introduction, Dr. Chang's actual reaction was not among them.

"Hi, you must be Tho...OH MY GOD!"

The door shuts. Dr. Chang is on the other side. One thought runs through my head. 'That...nurse...is.....a....BITCH!'

I don't know where Dr. Chang earned her M.D. or completed her undergrad, but my best guess is that she received a liberal arts foundation that taught her the value of compassion and understanding. She immediately returned to the room I clumsily occupied and, while justifiably tentative, managed to graciously sidestep her way across the room with her head down to shake my hand.

"Hi there. Good afternoon, I'm Dr. Chang and there is robe in the drawer underneath the bed behind you."

"I did not know that."

"Yeah, why don't you go ahead and put that on."

"The robe! Yes. Of course."

I'll never be a nurse, but if I was, I'm pretty sure I'd tell my patients to take their clothes off and then PUT ON THAT ROBE YOU'LL FIND IN THE DRAWER UNDERNEATH THE BED BEHIND YOU!

When my examination was completed and I was given a clean bill of health and a story to tell, I walked out to my car, opened the door, and laughed until a flotation device magically stitched itself around my waist. I had drowned in the Sea of Chang, only to be rescued by a sense of humor.

We all need humility. We don't have all the answers. They say you need to crawl before you can walk. I think you need to sink before you can swim.