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We get in my Trans Am and I take him to Midtown Medical. We have to wait forever, because it’s Saturday, and because “coughing” isn’t exactly a high priority in the ER. Plenty of people stumble in with head wounds or dangling arms, plus one dude who shot a nail right through the palm of his hand, during a little home improvement gone wrong.
“Now you know how Jesus felt,” a blue-haired grannie tells him.
“Jesus didn’t have to sit around looking at it,” the man says, staring at the nail with a nauseated expression.
Finally, a nurse takes us back and we have to wait even longer while they run a bunch of tests, including a chest x-ray.
I’m so stressed out that I don’t even recognize the technician for a second.
“Hey!” Patricia greets me. “Is this your dad?”
“Oh, yeah.” I smile weakly. “Dad, this is my friend Patricia.”
“I like your scrubs,” my dad says. “I didn’t know they made them like that.”
Patricia’s wearing a set of lavender scrubs with a pretty floral pattern on the top.
“Oh yeah.” She grins. “It’s a regular fashion show back here.”
Patricia sets up the x-ray, then has me stand safely around the corner with her while she takes the images.
“How does it look?” I ask her nervously.
“Uh . . . well, I’m not really supposed to say anything until the doctor takes a look,” she says.
But I see a little stress line appearing between her eyebrows when she looks at the images forming on the screen.
My heart clenches up in my chest.
I’m thinking he probably has pneumonia. There was blood in his cough, but nobody gets consumption anymore, or whatever that disease was that killed all the Victorians. It’s gotta just be pneumonia. They’ll give him some antibiotics and he’ll be fine in a couple of weeks.
After the tests are done, Patricia leads me and my dad to a little curtained-off cubicle.
“They’ll be with you soon,” she says, giving me a sympathetic smile.
Another forty minutes drags by, then a young, chipper-looking doctor comes in. He looks like Doogie Howser, if Doogie were Asian and wore Converse sneakers.
“Mr. Rivera,” he says. “I have the results back from your x-ray.”
He pins the images up on an illuminated board, so the white portions of the x-ray glow brilliantly against the black. I can see my father’s ribcage, but not the lungs themselves. There are several grayish masses below the ribs that I assume are organs, or maybe his diaphragm.
“So we’ve looked at your lungs, and we’re not seeing fluid down here.” The doctor points to the lower half of the lungs. “However, you’ll see that there is a nodule or mass right here.”
He circles his index finger around a slightly pale area, to the right of the spine. It’s not bright white like the bone. In fact, it’s hard to see at all.
“A nodule?” I say, confused. “Like a cyst or something?”
“It’s possible,” the doctor says. “We need to get a tissue confirmation before we can diagnose. We can do this by a CT-guided biopsy or through bronchoscopy—”
“Wait, diagnose what?” I say. “What do you think the problem is?”
“Well.” The doctor shifts uncomfortably. “I can’t say for certain until we get a sample back . . .”
“But what else could it be? If it’s not a cyst?”
“Cancer,” the doctor says gently.
“What?” I’m staring at him, open mouthed. “My dad doesn’t smoke.”
