Page 227 of ClickBack

Eventually I stopped bringing it back.

I don’t miss the man who made me wait. I miss the woman who thought the waiting meant we were working toward something together. She kept making room in a life he had already decided was full.

Across from me, a young woman leans against her partner with her eyes closed. He is holding her bag and scrolling through his phone with one hand. When her name is called, he gets up before she does.

I return the magazine to the table.

The nurse weighs me, takes my blood pressure, and asks what brought me in. I tell her about waking hot enough to pull off every cover, then reaching for one ten minutes later.

“How long has that been happening?”

“A few months. It’s more frequent now.”

“Anything else?”

“I’m tired. My daughter moved, I’ve had a lot going on, and I’m not sure which part is keeping me awake.”

She enters that into the tablet without choosing for me. We go through my medications, allergies, and cycle. The IUD has kept my bleeding light for years, so I don’t have a tidy pattern to give her.

“Any new sexual partners since your last visit?”

“One.”

“Are you having any pain or other concerns with sex?”

“No.”

It feels peculiar to give such an unremarkable answer about something that has become so remarkable in my life. She moves to the next question. I almost want to stop her and explain that no, really, this is going very well.

Instead, I answer the questions she asks. We discuss testing, and I ask to include screening today. She makes a note for the doctor and hands me a gown.

I undress, put my underwear beneath my folded pants, then move my bra on top of the pants and reconsider. A woman is about to examine parts of me I can’t see without equipment. Apparently she must not know what I wear over them.

When Dr. Holder knocks, I am trying to flatten a crease in the paper across my lap.

“You can leave that,” she says as she comes in. “It’s not going to improve.”

I lift my hands. “I thought I’d try.”

She smiles and sits on the stool across from me. Her red glasses are the same ones she had at my last visit. There is more gray in her twist-out, and she has on small gold hoops I would have asked about anywhere else. Here, I am aware of how much of my ass is on the table.

“Tell me about the heat.”

I describe it. The suddenness. The sweat at my hairline. Standing in front of my daughter’s freezer while everybody else loaded the moving truck.

“Rae moved?”

“Charlotte. New job. A house she likes. Zion has already found somebody’s basketball hoop.”

“How are you doing with it?”

“I made it through saying goodbye without getting in the trunk.”

Dr. Holder smiles. “And the nights?”

“Those have been less impressive.”

She asks what time I wake, how often, whether I’m soaked or just hot, whether I can get back to sleep. I give her the answers I have and admit where I haven’t paid attention. She asks about other symptoms and goes through what has changed since my last visit.