Healthcare

A week ago, I went to see my doctor because of an intense pain in my testicles. I thought it might be testicular torsion, or worse, syphilis.

I receive my medical care from a man named Dr. McBride. He practices medicine in a building on the outskirts of town. McBride is known to be the best medical doctor in the area, and more importantly, I trust him.

I drove out to McBride's office in my old Mercedes. The car has held up well over the years. The butter-colored interior still had the faint smell of leather. I parked the car and walked purposefully into McBride's office. I often wondered to myself if I was his only patient, because I had never seen anyone else coming or going during my trips to McBride's office. McBride worked alone. He answered his own phone calls on a heavy, black rotary telephone that still had his number listed partially in letters and the rest in numbers.

When I walked into the office, McBride was standing in the middle of the austere waiting room. The sickly, yellow glow of the florescent lighting made his skin look pale. McBride was a gaunt figure. His clothes hung from his bones. We went into his consulting room and I sat on the deli paper wrapped examination table. McBride went through a full run of standard check-up tests, checking my pupils for dilation and measuring my weight. Everything was normal. That was when I told him about the sharp pain in my testicles.

McBride's black, beady eyes shifted around in their sockets. He handed me a tongue depressor, a copy of the New York Times and a plastic specimen cup, and asked me to excuse myself to the restroom for a stool sample. I carefully laid the New York Times under the toilet seat, and after some straining, defecated on it. Steam wafted off of the bowel movement in the frigid air of McBride's unheated bathroom. I broke off and pushed a piece of the bowel movement into the specimen cup. I crumpled up the feculent New York Times and put it into McBride's red biohazardous medical waste jug.

I returned to the consultation room and handed McBride the specimen cup. He set the cup down on the counter-top and clutched his lapels with his spindly fingers. His brow furrowed. I had come to McBride because he was a well-known injectionist. I knew he would give me a series of shots of procaine for the pain in my testicles.

McBride released his grip with his right hand and reached into one of the drawers under the counter.

"Great. Relief at last," I thought.

McBride produced a heavily tarnished pewter spoon. With the speed of a man half his age, he tore open the specimen cup. The doctor eagerly spooned a walnut-sized piece of the tarry stool into his mouth. He chewed rapidly. I could hear the preternatural grating of his teeth against one other. The bowel movement was as black as obsidian, and had an oily sheen to it in the flickering light of the room. It looked like a shiny, meatball-sized lump of opium. McBride spooned another heaping nugget into his emaciated maw, and somehow, I felt greatly at ease.

I can still feel the overwhelming feeling of tranquility that I felt on that day.