After the Sample

S. G. Hamilton

You skip Urgent Care and take medications from the master bathroom. Antibiotics for bronchitis. Ciproloxacin for urinary tract infections. Silver nitrate sticks for when mouth ulcers get serious. It isn’t until you’re in your teens that you learn that most people need prescriptions for basic pills, but Dad brings them home from the oice, whether he’s supposed to or not. He brings his work home, too. He has established a nest in front of the living room television. A green chair, the cushion now imprinted with his behind. The too-small side table with the day’s local newspaper and a Diet Coke. On the evenings that he’s home, he turns on Bill O’Reilly and pecks at his work laptop with his foreingers. Sometimes he gets so fed up that he pays you ifty dollars to transcribe his notes for him. You’ve suggested Mario Teaches Typing. He says he’s too old to learn anything new, and besides, what can Mario do that you can’t? So, you transcribe notes on urinalysis results, prostate cancer, adult circumcisions, and testicular torsion. You come to understand the penis not as a sexual object but as an appendage to which many, many bad things can happen. What Dad normally accomplishes in an evening, you inish in thirty minutes, but this never turns into a daily routine. Hiring his teenage daughter to type his notes, even with patients’ names hidden, falls into a moral gray area. But more importantly, you’re a high school student with your own work to do. You have your own future that does not revolve around old men’s crotches. Someday you’ll realize that if Dad didn’t bring his work home, you would have hardly seen him at all. You’re seventeen now, and life is changing. You drive Dad’s old sedan. College application deadlines are fast approaching. You have your irst boyfriend, but you never kiss him. The male body is repulsive. You pack your own lunch in a brown paper bag, the same meal every time: two dinner rolls cut in half and stufed with provolone cheese and pepperoni. You throw a banana in there as well. The night before school, you place the bag on the top shelf of the refrigerator and go to bed. Now is the day of the big calculus test. It’s ifteen ‘til eight, and there’s no

time for breakfast. You cram last minute integrals while smearing concealer across your pimples. You grab the brown paper bag from the fridge and drive to school on an empty tank. Four hours later, with your calculus test completed, you begin your lunch period. At the urology clinic on the other side of town, Dad opens the refrigerator in the urinalysis lab. He takes a brown paper bag from within. Inside, he inds a banana and two dinner rolls stufed with cheese and pepperoni. You, in the high school cafeteria, open your sack lunch and ind a tightly sealed urine sample. You roll the bag closed. Time passes without you. Your friends discuss math problem number two. You clutch, in your lap, a bag of number one. Whose number one? You didn’t look at the label. You don’t want to look at the label. You will never forget what you have just seen. The white plastic cap. The translucent cup. Golden, sloshing, room temperature luid. You stand. You deposit the brown paper bag in the trash bin. If you were hungry, you could buy a school lunch. You’re not hungry anymore. You don’t say a word for the rest of the school day. When you get home, Mom asks you to help her put the leaf in the dinner table. The two of you grasp opposite ends and pull. The two halves slide apart. You wonder if it was Mom’s urine that you disposed of today. Is she getting screened for a disease? She appears healthy — and strong — as she its the heavy table segment into the issure. The table is set. Mom, your sister, and you are in your seats. Dinner does not begin without Dad. Mom’s attempts at conversation izzle in the void. You smell spaghetti sauce simmering on the stove. Your sister sits with her elbow on the table. She has just started an acne medication. Does she need monthly urine tests? Dad comes home at eight. He tells us he’s sorry. He needed to inish his notes. Wash your hands, Mom says. I washed them at work, Dad says. They’re sanitized. It’s the same exchange every night. I know where those hands have been, Mom says. Wash your hands. He washes his hands. Mom brings the food. So much spaghetti. So many

meatballs. You serve yourself. You haven’t eaten today. Dad tells us about the testicle surgery he performed this afternoon. Sometimes, you don’t know how much luid there’s going to be until you get in there. You stab a sauce-drenched meatball with your fork. Was it Dad’s urine? Does he need to test himself for prostate cancer? No, it couldn’t be him. He doesn’t need to store his urine overnight in his home refrigerator, not when he could produce a sample at the clinic. Forks on ceramic. Quiet slurping. Ice cubes against glass. Dad tells you this interesting thing he read: did you know that in ancient Rome, they would brush their teeth with urine? No one responds. The urine sample hangs over their heads. As years pass, the vision will fade, but it will never go away. Dad will start leaving his laptop at work. He will come home later. Sometimes, you will hear the door open after you’ve gone to bed. Then his footsteps. The crack of a Diet Coke. The schedule has changed. You may go days without seeing him at all. Can you see him? The clinic has closed, but there he is, pecking away at the keyboard.