White or Red

Jim Ross

I need a new doctor. The old one’s not tracking. I find a website for a sole practitioner who sounds too good to be true: available 24/7 and every patient receives “unlimited time.” If all his patients want him on an unlimited basis at the same time, won’t they start bumping into each other? It sounds like a sales pitch, but since my doctor’s getting the squeeze, doctor 24/7 sounds worth a try. I call, and his receptionist schedules my first appointment for an hour and a half.

When I arrive at the converted condo, a 30-something couple of Vanity Fair models are exiting. I identify myself to Gloria, the haute couture receptionist. Instead of demanding my insurance card, she asks, “Can I get you anything to drink: water, coffee, tea?”

She serves my water in a real glass with a golden haze. Nothing about the reception area suggests “medical practice.” Brochures advertise spa services with an Asian motif.

The business manager—the doctor’s uncle—wanders by and introduces himself. He tells me he moved to DC from the Midwest. “We want to recreate the small-town feeling where the doctor sees patients in his living room.”

The doctor comes out, extends his hand, “Hi, I’m Bill,” and beckons me to his office. A basket of whole fruit and an open bottle of red wine stand by the coffee maker.

Bill says he played basketball in college, coached for a year, considered running for elected office, went to grad school to become a research scientist, and finally chose medicine. “I make sure I have enough time for each patient and to see my kids play sports.”

Bill’s dog, an Akita, growls almost inaudibly the first time I reach down to her.

“If she bothers you, we can put her outside,” Bill says.

“No, she can stay. I love dogs. They make the best people.”

“The spa revenues let me practice medicine the way I like, small and slow. It takes me a whole day of seeing patients to make what we earn from a single spa client.”

Bill coaxes me into the examining room so his just-out-of-college medical

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assistant, Jackie, can take vitals and draw blood. “She’s brand new. Let me know how she does.”

Jackie starts by taking my temperature. Her “my thermometer’s been slow today” doesn’t inspire confidence.

When the time comes for the blood draw, I consider asking Jackie to skip using an alcohol wipe because the smell can cause me to faint. Dad was a fainter, too; so is my son. I can tell she’s nervous already. And mentioning my proclivity to faint tends to cause the blood drawer to make accommodations like having me lie down, thereby increasing the odds I’m going to fall asleep which can be mistaken for fainting. Trust me; there’s nothing more disconcerting than waking from a restful sleep to the sight of a crash cart!

After tying a tourniquet around my left arm, Jackie asks me to make a fist, taps the only visible vein, and unties the tourniquet. As she waves an alcohol wipe by my face, I think about holding my breath. Then she re-ties the tourniquet and gets to work. I exhale.

“You okay?” she asks, opening up the possibility that maybe I shouldn’t be.

“I’m fine,” I say. “How about you?”

“I suppose I’m fine,” she shrugs. “I just wish I could figure out why I can’t do this.” “Should I look?” I ask.

“No, no, you definitely do not want to see this.” After tortured silence, Jackie adds, “I haven’t been able to get anybody’s blood all day.”

When I feel her wrapping tape over the puncture site, I ask, “You done?”

“You kidding me? I can’t get a drop out of this arm. I’m switching to the other one. It can’t be any worse.”

“You want to try a hand instead?” I ask, extending my left hand in front of her face.

“No, hands hurt.”

It’s time for another alcohol wipe. I breathe slowly. I imagine I’m at the edge of a cliff, looking out over the ocean as the surf crashes on the rocks below.

I’m not good with heights and start feeling vertigo.

“It’s going,” Jackie exclaims. Apparently, things are working better with the right arm. Twenty seconds later, she grumbles, “It stopped.”

I lean to my right to take a peek. The flow had stopped inside the tubing.

“Would it freak you out to hold the syringe for a while,” Jackie asks, “so I can try to figure things out?”

Freak me out? Is she kidding? An alcohol wipe freaks me out. Asking me if I’m okay freaks me out. But telling me there’s no blood in my left arm, and you haven’t been able to get anybody’s blood all day? And asking me to hold

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my own syringe? I figure it’s safer lying.

“I feel sanguine about that,” I say.

“Sang what?” she asks. “Is that a type of pasta?”

“No problem,” I say, crossing my bandaged left arm across my body. I take the syringe from Jackie, whose hand feels cold, clammy.

I hold the syringe—still stuck into my arm, holding an empty vial attached to thin tubing—as if I grasped a rope from which hung a child being hauled from a mining cave-in.

“You got it going! How’d you do that?” Jackie exclaims.

“Is it going?”

“Yes, I could’ve used your help all day.”

“That’s what sanguine means,” I say.

Jackie says, “You filled it up.”

I exhale. “We done now?”

“I wish,” she laughs. “Bill wants lots of tests.”

“How many more vials?”

“Four to go. But we’re rolling. You’re cranking it out now.”

“Thanks for letting me know.”

Jackie says, “Your cheeks look really white.”

“They’re not sanguine,” I say.

“You like pasta?” she asks.

“At this rate, will I even make it home for dinner?”

“You could always get a facial while you’re waiting,” Jackie says. “You prefer white wine or red?”

65 On the Right: Traveling Inward by Cristina Iorga

Monoprint, Printmaking