Right now I’m sitting in a well-lit waiting room at the South medical center, waiting for my brain to be examined. They’re going to slide me headfirst into an MRI machine, like sausage meat into intestinal casing. I’m trying to keep my palms from sweating, but they don’t listen, and I’m forced to wipe them surreptitiously on my skirt. Ugh, the last time this happened was in high school when I had to hold hands with a boy I liked during a dress rehearsal.
I don’t want to be here, today was my day off, I could be doing something today. And why am I sitting here alone, dreading isolation in a brightly lit tube? Well, my mother has health insurance, so she can afford this. I don’t know if I’m thankful for that or not. I’m not even certain if I have a problem, though people seem to agree that something is a little off. The problem is that, well, I have memories of things that have never happened. At least, that’s what people tell me. So I’ve been instructed to take medical action against my mind by my mother, doctors, friends…
“Ma’am, we’re ready, are you?”
I jump from my internal storyline and look up at the technician, who’s been fiddling in his private little room for the past half hour. Leaving me here with sweaty palms. And when did I become a ma’am? Is twenty-three the new old? Asshole.
“Yeah.” I’m not in the mood for more than a word right now.
“Alrighty, here’s your gown, and do you have any decorative piercings or tattoos or any medical screws or plates in your body?” He places the medical gown on the chair next to me and rattles off the list while staring his clipboard. Yeah right, like you don’t already have it memorized, you just don’t want to make eye contact with me. Why? Even the MRI technician thinks I’m crazy?
“I have cartilage piercings in my ears and a tattoo on my neck. No screws or plates.”
“Alrighty, just let me look at the piercings to see if they need to come out and did you get your tattoo within the past six months? The piercings need to come out ma’am.”
I grumble a quiet “no” in response to his practiced inquiry and take my five piercings out one by one. Then he leads me to the dressing room, where I have to take my bra off (DD boobs need real metal underwires- a big nono when you’re going inside of a giant magnet) before putting on the gown. The again I’m led like a sheep to the giant, white, shiny, alienesque tunnel I’m expected to lay flat in for the next hour.
He has me lay down on the padded tray jutting from the machine- just the right size for a human. I try not to flash him my underwear as I position myself on it. I feel his cold hands near my temples, adjusting my head just right between the ugly green velcroed pads that will hold my brains still, so the machine can take a good long look.
“Allllright, that looks good. Are you ready? Remember you need to hold perfectly still while the scanning takes place, and if you experience any fright or have a panic attack, remember that you can speak and we’ll hear you and I also have a microphone in the tech room so we can speak to you while you are in the machine.”
I’m still staring at the ceiling, and I give it a pathetic little smile as I say, “Alright.”
And then he’s gone. Whatever, he had cold hands anyway. Not much comfort he could offer. And Then I’m slowly sliding within the mouth, or womb, or vagina, or whatever anatomical feature a poet would compare to the smooth gaping hole of the machine I’m being inserted into. And then I have to lie there, still, for an hour, while I hear the machine whizzing and purring around my body, and I hear the voice of the tech emanating from the rear of the machine, telling me to remember to hold perfectly still.
It’s not that terrifying, but it’s uncomfortable. I’m sliding into this shiny white thing. It’s not vagina-like at all, I feel like I’m being quarantined in a tiny, space-efficient cell, away from everything, just away. That’s what they do with crazy people right? Try to remove them from sensory input and people- White’s the most rehabilitation-friendly colour, right? It’s supposed to be clean.
I’m spitting sarcasm in my mind. I bet the machine doesn’t like that. It’s done drawing me in now. My feet are cold. I want to look out the opening but I’m not allowed to move my head at all. If I wanted to I could bang it against the inner wall by just moving it a few inches, but I’ll behave. I’m not that kind of crazy.
The doctor my mum made me see acted as though I make up stories for attention, that I have an active imagination. He told me he thinks I have issues with keeping a boundary between dreams and reality, like I have a choice. Told me he thinks I have “False Memory Syndrome”, and kept asking me about potentially traumatic things that have happened to me. Grilled me like I was on the witness stand, I was surprised he didn’t pull out one of those dolls and ask me where the bad man touched me. He had stupid glasses too, the kind you would imagine a stereotypical Freudian shrink to have, and he peered over the top of them. I had nothing for him, so he told my mother to get me scanned, to see if there’s a tumor or something else fucked up in my skull. And I love Mum, I do, but why does she always listen to people?
The machine is still deciding whether or not to eat me, purring and whirring and clicking its metallic mandibles. How much time has passed inside this cell? Has the tech guy seen anything strange? I can imagine him staring closely at an irregularity at the screen: “Oh yes, there it is. That explains why she’s strange.”
I’m not fucking strange, I growl at the technician in my head. Suddenly my throat feels tight- Goddamit, I’m going to cry because of an imagined scenario inside my head? Cut the crap, Allison. That’s what my dad would tell me when I threw fits when I was little. Not tolerant and worry-prone like Mum, but not mean. Just… didn’t acknowledge bad behavior. Dad thinks issues go away by ignoring them. Mum thinks they go away with therapy. It’s kind of a miracle they’re still so madly in love, though there was that one time Mum almost moved out. I don’t know if she was serious about it or not. I’ve never heard her talk about it since, and well, Dad doesn’t really talk about anything unless it needs talking.
I’m only thinking about the past to keep this present experience out of my head. I don’t want to think about lying in this cold white tomb, that’s making a dissection of my brain, that can see all my organs, my bones, all the layers can be stripped away in here. I’ve seen the pictures, I know what this thing does. I know it can slice me up. I should be excited about getting a chance to see images of my brain- how many people have the chance to look inside their physical bodies? But all I feel is invaded.
I pretend I’m an earth, and the humans are cutting through me to see my layers, my strata that show all my history. My eyes have to be closed for this one, but the lights are still blinding through my eyelids, and I can see the glowing pink skin stretched over my pupils. I hear the machine make a series of urgent clicks, and I imagine the scalpel cutting through the soil, the gravel, the roots, right to the bedrock. It’s actually calming, though I wish they weren’t cutting me open. What are they looking for?
All of the sudden I feel my body move. Without opening my eyes, I know I’m being withdrawn from my cell, I’m ready for the world again. I get off the tray before the technician comes out to get me, and I don’t look at him this time, because I know he’s not looking at me. I was expecting to be in there so long that my skin started itching from impatience. I guess I should be relieved, but it’s a little underwhelming. I was expecting more of an experience in there. Oh well, time to keeping looking.
