M.D.
I had a doctor’s appointment this morning. I had forgotten it, but Roz reminded me last night. She said, “I know you won’t get up before I do, but if you do, don’t eat or drink anything: you have a doctor’s appointment.
“And if you get up after I’m gone, don’t eat or drink anything: doctor’s appointment.”
I said, “Okay.” Then, “Are you going with me?” She said, “No,” it wasn’t that kind of appointment, they were just going to look in my ears and listen to my chest and take some blood.
Then she said, “But Albert can go with you if you like.” I said, “Okay.”
So, he did. He was glad to get out of the house, he said. And he was excited about meeting my doctor because they could speak French together.
I thought: Even if he comes, is he going to meet Rikka? (That’s her name.) And how does he know she speaks French? (She does, because she comes from The Republic of the Congo, and she studied in Lyon.) But I said, “Okay.”
So, he came. And he came back with me. I had to ask, “Can my uncle come back with me?” – and they said, “Yes, if it’s okay with you.” He held my jacket when the nurse weighed me, and he watched her take my temperature and oxygen level and blood pressure. (They were all good.) Then she left.
And very soon Rikka knocked, as she always does. And I introduced Uncle Albert, and he said “Bonjour,” and they started prattling away about the weather and Lyon and Trump and Marine Le Pen and shaking their heads at each other.
Rikka told me to go have my blood drawn, so I did. You go across the hall.
While that was happening, she came in. And when Denise, who was pulling the blood out of me, was finished, and she left the room, Rikka put her hand on my arm and asked me how I was doing.
I said I didn’t know, and I felt like crying, but I didn’t. Then, “Okay, I guess. Ça va.”
Uncle Albert and I stopped on the way home at Corner Coffee for a cuppa and a donut.
Not long after we got home, Roz called. She asked me, “How did the doctor go?” I said that “It went fine.
“Ça va.”
01.12.17
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