Bringing in Finn (5 page)

 

On the morning
of the MRI, I gave myself plenty of time to drive to the hospital. At six fifteen, the sun had already risen high in a clear sky. Spring, which in Chicago can come as late as May or not at all, had arrived in April that year, and the young pear trees and azalea bushes were bursting with flowers. A good number of people were already outside, watering tulip beds and tending dutifully to their small city yards.

I'd chosen to go to the MRI on my own. The hospital's confirmation letter didn't mention bringing a support person, and I didn't see any reason for both Bill and me to spend the morning inside.

“It's a good thing I'm not getting an MRI,” Bill said, kissing me goodbye before I left. “I'd freak out in that thing.”

A doctor friend had told us at dinner the night before that some people had to stop the test and be sedated in order to proceed. I tried not to think about it as I parked in the hospital's lot and followed signs to Radiology. I had never been to a hospital for any outpatient procedure. I felt odd walking through the sliding doors feeling healthy. I had always thought of the whole hospital as the ER—full of crisis and fear.

Taking an early-morning appointment boded well for being seen on time.

I came prepared anyway; I'd brought a book, my journal, and my iPod, onto which I'd downloaded a variety of guided meditations.

I signed in at the front desk with the receptionist, a plump, gray-haired woman named Gladys who wore her glasses on a chain around her neck. She handed me some forms and a waiver absolving the hospital of any responsibility if I experienced any ill effects from the
procedure. Trying not to picture any of the catastrophic outcomes, I scanned the form quickly, not fully reading. I would come to loathe these forms. If I really allowed myself to think about any of the outcomes as actual possibilities, I never would have gone through any of the medical procedures I ended up subjecting myself to.

I took a seat, leaned my head back against the wall, and started one of the meditation sequences I found especially useful for combating anxiety. I had drifted just to the edge of sleep when someone shook my arm. A blond, pleasant-faced man in blue hospital scrubs apologized for waking me and introduced himself as Sam, the technician who would be administering my MRI.

Sam looked fit and outdoorsy. I imagined him running marathons and mountain climbing on his days off. He pointed me toward a set of wide swinging doors and told me the MRI team would take good care of me. As he walked me to the procedure room, he briefed me on the test, saying that they would give me an injection of radioactive dye and then insert me in the MRI tube for thirty to forty-five minutes.

“The machine will be very loud at some points,” Sam said. “That's the part that really gets to people.” I asked if people had to be sedated, as I'd heard. “Sometimes,” he said. “You look pretty tough, though. I think you'll do great.”

When we got into the room, I sized up the machine—a sleek, colossal thing—and hoped Sam was right. It was larger than I had envisioned, the size of a small bus, filling the room. Sam told me I couldn't have my iPod with me during the test, and I felt confident I could meditate without props, even in an MRI tunnel. The only thing that concerned me was the injection.

“It's pretty neat, actually,” Sam said, showing me the needle up close once I was lying flat on the table. “We inject the dye right into your vein . . . ” He waved to another technician, standing in a
control booth. “The dye will move through your body and will show us what's going on in your brain.”

It didn't sound neat to me, and I immediately wished I had asked Bill to come. The needle looked alarmingly long and the dye looked toxic, dark and slick, like tanker oil. Sam twisted a rubber band around the upper part of my arm and deftly inserted the needle into my vein. I felt a brief searing pain, and then coolness as the dye entered. I imagined it barreling through my capillaries and looping through the coiled grooves of my brain.

Sam fastened me to the MRI table, which was more of a tray, securing my body with straps at my chest, waist, and legs. He joined his colleague in the booth, dimmed the lights, and began pushing some buttons. The machine started to whir, and I felt the table begin to move toward the center of the machine. Sam gave me a wave, which I tried to return before remembering I was restrained. As I moved into the mouth of the tunnel, I thought of the scene from
The Exorcist
where the possessed girl is taken into a white room with crashing large machines, glaring lights, and electric shock therapy.

The rest of the test was anticlimactic. I found it boring more than anything else; the clanging noise was distracting, but not scary. I couldn't tell how much time had passed, but I'd restarted the counting meditation I knew about a hundred times and was relieved when I felt the tray finally start to move and heard Sam's voice on an intercom saying he was going to slide me back out of the tube.

“Piece of cake, right?” Sam said with a grin.

“Well . . . ” I said, not really answering but thankful for his positive attitude. I felt tired now that the test was finished and wanted to leave the hospital as quickly as possible.

“We'll send the results directly to Doctor . . . ” He paused, scanning my folder. “Bizan,” I said. I'd been so focused on the MRI test itself, I'd forgotten I was there being tested for something. I'd
purposely avoided reading anything about empty sella on the Internet. “Medical websites are pure poison,” my friend Kaitlin often said.

I figured that if I didn't have empty sella, I wouldn't have spent two weeks imagining catastrophic scenarios, but if I did, I'd receive better information from a doctor than from my own “enough to be very harmful” Internet research. Also, Bill had checked a few sites and told me that the condition didn't have major overall health implications. I turned my attention back to Sam.

“It will probably be a week or so before you hear,” he said, walking me to the door. I searched Sam's eyes, wondering if he knew something already. “A doctor in the department reviews the film,” he said, anticipating my question. I thanked him and then hugged him impulsively. It struck me how much his kindness had meant to me. He reciprocated with a big bear hug of strong arms and confidence.

“Good luck!” he said as the doors swung open. “You're strong, remember!” I gave him a thumbs-up and a smile.

 

The sun reflecting
off the asphalt in the parking lot was blinding. The radiology department was windowless, so I had no sense of the time. The digital clock on the dashboard read 9:25. I felt mentally exhausted but full of nervous energy. I needed to ground myself.

I realized if I took the side streets, I could probably make the Saturday-morning meditation group I'd been attending regularly since I'd moved back from England. The meditation groups and classes met on Belmont Avenue and Clark Street, a grittier part of town. I liked that the group gathered in a room on the second floor, devoid of metaphysical accoutrements, outfitted only with metal folding chairs and a blond-wood desk where previous occupants, probably there for some kind of city-mandated after-school program, had carved their names or phone numbers into the wood.

Regulars in the group took turns leading the meditation, signing
up on a clipboard that was circulated at the beginning of the session each week. I made it into the room while announcements were still taking place. I waved to a couple of people I knew. One was an opera singer, another a stay-at-home mom. There were a couple of men who attended regularly, too: an attorney, a psychotherapist, and a man named Louie who lived in a halfway house. These were people I likely would not otherwise have come into contact with had we not all been drawn together by a calling to this mindfulness practice.

Mary, a chic woman in her fifties with a neat gray bob, was facilitating. She announced that the meditation was about to begin and read a passage from Eckhart Tolle about listening to the inner voice, before guiding us into silence.

I went into the meditation with low expectations. I felt vulnerable and tired from the MRI, like I was hungover. I hoped to let go of any anxiety about the test. Any other meditative benefits would be a bonus.

I dropped deep right away. I had a sensation of floating, as if carried by a river with an easy current. I felt so content that I was only vaguely aware of the time. I forgot about listening for the inner voice, the MRI, empty sella. And then, moments before Mary rang the meditation bell, I felt something swoop in, a thought that seemed almost to hover in the air in front of my closed eyes.

The thought came again, clearer this time, not outwardly audible and yet audible nonetheless—perhaps what Mary had read about: the inner voice. The inner voice was not a regular feature of my meditations; I could in fact recall only one or two other times I had heard it.

Mary chimed the bell. “Come back to the room, come back to your body.” Her gentle voice filled the room. I struggled to hang on to the ocean, the peacefulness, the floating, but the idea came again:
Open your heart to your family.

I felt an instinctive resistance rise up, a default response to protect myself and my heart. I pulled my arms in close to my body. “Take one more deep, cleansing breath,” Mary instructed, “and when you're ready, open your eyes.”

The lights in the room were disorienting. I blinked several times and the room seemed off-center, as if it had enlarged and then contracted while we had been meditating but had not been set back exactly the way it had been before.

A few people discussed going out for tea, but I declined. I gathered my bag and car keys and moved toward the door without entering into any conversations. I was unnerved by the message I had received and not entirely sure what opening my heart to my family entailed. But I had the idea it involved going beyond the respectful cordialness we'd established, with which I'd grown comfortable in the past several years.

I felt exhausted by the time I arrived home. Bill had left a note saying he'd run out to do a few errands. I climbed into the dark oak four-poster bed we shared and collapsed into the pillows.

I fell into a hard sleep and dreamed that I was in the hallway of a school and that arms and hands were reaching out to me from the classrooms. I tried but was unable to grasp them, even as I extended my arms as far as I could toward the doors. It was four o'clock in the afternoon when I woke to the sound of Bill unpacking groceries in the kitchen.

“I didn't mean to wake you,” he said. “You never take naps. How was the MRI?”

I filled a pint glass with water and told Bill about the test and Sam's being so nice, and then about the meditation group and the thought that came to me at the end.

Bill picked up a knob of fresh ginger from the counter and began shaving it into a bowl.

“We're going Indian tonight,” he said, gesturing to the jars of cumin, turmeric, and star anise on the cutting board. “I wanted a project.”

I waited for him to continue.

“You know how I feel about messages in meditation,” Bill said. “But you seem moved. Is there something specific you want to do?”

There was. The idea had come when I woke up, after the dream.

“I want to invite my parents to stay with us when they come to Chicago next week,” I said.

Bill set the long Shun knife he'd been using to cut vegetables on the counter.

“If you are open to it,” I said, eyeing the knife.

Bill waited a moment before answering. “You know I like your parents,” he said. “I'd be happy to have them here. If,” he paused, picking the knife back up, “you think
you
can be okay.” He waited until I met his eyes. He wanted some assurance. Neither of us wanted to relive the past.

“I think I can,” I said, interested to note that I felt as confident as my words.

“Then let's do it,” Bill said.

We made the call to Alexandria together.

 

My dad sounded
surprised at the invitation but quickly thanked me. He called my mother to the phone, and she affirmed that they would be delighted to stay with us. “We'll see you next week!” she said.

“Great!” I said, meaning it.

The weekend felt easy and pleasant, effortlessly so. The weather was eighty degrees and sunny, the lakefront and downtown heavy with people and blooming trees. Everyone wanted to be outside. My father reported that he thought the conference was excellent.

On Sunday, Bill and I gave my parents a tour of our garden, which we'd built on the deck that extended over the back of our
house. Bill pointed out the five varietals of heirloom tomatoes we'd chosen for the summer, and he and my mother spoke rapturously of the best ways to enjoy them.

“Plain, or on cottage cheese, with lots of salt and pepper,” my mother said.

“Sliced thick on a turkey sandwich,” Bill chimed in. My father was amazed that anyone would take the time to cultivate a garden in the city. “How often do you have to water?” he asked, peering at the boxes of herbs Bill had planted along the wall that abutted the kitchen. “Twice a day; three times when it's really hot,” Bill said. “I enlist Sara for watering support as needed,” he said, giving me a nudge.

“I'm a good assistant,” I said.

When it was time to call for their taxi, Bill suggested that perhaps we could come for a visit in late August, when the tomatoes would be at their ripest, and bring my mother a basket of her favorites. She gave him a hug.

While my father went inside to gather the last of their things, my mother sat outside on our front steps. The late-afternoon sunshine cast kaleidoscopic shapes through the leaves onto the sidewalk.