Everything Changes

only after an hour or two of sweetly urgent lovemaking, does she let the tears come, burying her face in my chest as we lie hopelessly entangled in a damp, naked embrace.
    And the thought of it arouses me in a way that no subsequent thoughts can diminish, and what the hell, I do have to kill time, right?
Either way,
I say to myself as I step out of the shower a few minutes later,
you are one sick fuck
.

    At eleven thirty, I cave and call the doctor’s office from the kitchen. Jed and Norm are in the living room, watching CNN. “Hello,” I say pleasantly to the receptionist, as if her goodwill might help my case. “Can I speak with Dr. Sanderson?”
    “Who is this calling, please?” She speaks in a deep voice with a Russian accent, her words formed with the careful precision of a neophyte.
    “This is Zachary King. I was in earlier this week for a cystoscopy.”
    “The doctor is not available now,” she says.
    “Can you tell me when he will be?”
    “Monday.”
    “Monday?” I say. “I’m supposed to speak to him today.”
    “He is not in today.”
    “Well, is he at the hospital or something? Can we page him?”
    “The doctor is off for the weekend,” she says. “Dr. Post is on call. Would you like I should page Dr. Post?”
    I can feel the seeds of panic germinating in my belly. “Listen,” I say. “What’s your name?”
    The receptionist is taken aback. “Irina,” she says.
    “Irina,” I say. “The results of my biopsy are supposed to be in today. I don’t know if I was supposed to call him or he was supposed to call me, but I’m supposed to hear today. Will those results be sent to Dr. Post?”
    “No,” Irina says. “They come here.”
    “Do you know if they’ve come in yet?”
    “Only the doctor opens the lab results.”
    “Which is why I would really appreciate it if you would page Dr. Sanderson.”
    “He has no pager,” she says. “He is not on call this weekend.”
    “Surely, though, you must know how to get in touch with him.”
    “He is out until Monday,” she says firmly.
    “Let me be clear on this,” I say. “You’re telling me that I have to sit here all weekend and wonder if I have cancer because you won’t make a simple phone call?”
    “The doctor will call you the moment he has your test results.”
    “But the test results are there,” I practically shout at her. “Someone just needs to call the lab, or open the envelope, or something.”
    “I’m sorry, Mr. King. There is nothing I can do.”
    I bang the phone down and let out a frustrated scream. “Zack?” Norm calls from the living room. “You okay?”
    I join him and Jed on the couch and tell them what’s going on. “That’s bullshit,” Norm says, instantly getting to his feet. “Let’s go.”
    “Where?” I say.
    “To the doctor’s office.”
    “What for?”
    “I’m much more persuasive in person,” Norm says, tucking in his shirt.
    “What are you going to do?”
    “What I always do,” he says. “Kick ass and take names.”
    I open my mouth to object, only to realize that I have no objection to offer. Norm’s blind obstinacy has proven to be highly effective over the last few days, and I can’t really see a downside to harnessing that energy to work on my behalf. I can sit back and let him take care of things. I’ve heard stories where fathers actually do that for their sons as a matter of course.
    We’re almost at the door when we hear the television go off. I turn around to find Jed climbing off the couch. He shrugs self-consciously, then grins at me, last night’s awkward encounter forgotten for the time being. “Just give me a minute to get dressed,” he says.

    The three of us walk into the grim, leaden silence indigenous to waiting rooms, not one silence but a collection of separate silences, the patients there to see other doctors in the practice peering discreetly over their
Newsweek
s and
People
s to charily mark our arrival before retreating back into their contrived oblivion. Irina turns out to be a large, middle-aged woman with sad Slavic eyes, a bearded mole on her leathery cheek, and a fierce expression etched into her features, maybe from years of squinting into the stinging wind of bitter Soviet winters. But nothing in Irina’s considerable experience has prepared her for the likes of Norm, who shatters the quiet of the reception area like a boulder dropped into a pond, spouting nonsensical legal jargon with a convincing ferocity.
    “The doctor is off