The Older Doctor's Examination

Chapter 1

The magazine in my lap is from two years ago.

I know because I checked the date on the cover without meaning to, some kind of nervous tic, like knowing exactly how outdated the waiting room is will make the next twenty minutes go faster.

It doesn’t. My knee won’t stop bouncing.

I clamp my hand over it to make it stop and it starts again the second I look away.

I’m the youngest person in this room by at least twenty years.

There’s an old man across from me working a crossword with a pen that keeps running dry, and a woman near the door who hasn’t looked up from her phone since I sat down.

Nobody looks at anybody else here. I get the feeling that’s the whole point of a clinic like this, a waiting room built for people who don’t want to be seen.

The intake form is clipped to a board in my lap. Name. Date of birth. Insurance. Then, near the bottom, reason for visit, a blank line with too much room on it.

I write discomfort and immediately feel like an idiot. Like the word is doing all the work of not saying what’s actually wrong so I don’t have to write it down in a room full of strangers who aren’t even looking at me.

I’ve had this for a month. Low, dull, a pressure that shows up when I sit wrong, when I’ve been on my feet too long at practice, when I lie down at night and try to get comfortable and can’t.

I’ve told myself it’s nothing a dozen different ways.

Pulled something in the gym. Sat on my wallet too long.

Anything that isn’t the thing I actually know it probably is, because I looked it up online at two in the morning like an idiot and then closed the tab so fast I nearly threw my phone across the room.

I told my roommate I had a doctor’s appointment for my shoulder.

I couldn’t say why I asked for a male doctor when I called to book this.

The receptionist didn’t ask why, just said okay, and I told myself it was because it’d be less embarrassing, one guy to another, easier than explaining anything to a woman I’d have to make eye contact with over an exam table.

I don’t look at that reasoning too hard.

I’ve gotten good at not looking at things too hard this past month.

A nurse calls my name. I stand up too fast and my knee cracks the underside of the clipboard.

“Right this way,” she says, already walking, and I follow her down a short hallway that smells like antiseptic and old carpet. She stops at a door, taps it open, gestures me in. “Dr. Garrett will be right in.”

The exam room is smaller than I expected.

A table with a strip of paper across it, crinkling under me the second I sit down.

A rolling stool. A counter with jars of cotton balls and tongue depressors like something out of a dentist’s office.

A wall of cabinets, locked, little keyholes in the handles.

My hands are sweating. I wipe them on my jeans, which does nothing, and stare at a poster on the wall about colon health like it’s the most interesting thing I’ve ever seen.

The door opens.

He’s not what I expected.

I don’t know what I expected, honestly, some old guy in glasses maybe, somebody who’d make this feel clinical and forgettable the second I walked back out.

Instead there’s a man built like he used to play some kind of contact sport, broad through the shoulders, gray coming in at his temples in a way that looks deliberate even though I doubt it is.

He’s got to be pushing forty-five. He moves like nothing in this room could possibly rush him, and that alone throws me off more than I expect it to.

Every guy my age I know moves like he’s late for something.

This man closes the door behind him like he’s got the whole day.

There’s a wedding band tan line on his hand where a ring used to sit and doesn’t anymore. I clock it and then feel stupid for clocking it, like it matters, like any of this is something I should be paying attention to beyond getting through the next fifteen minutes without embarrassing myself.

He sets my chart down on the counter, deliberate, and glances at me with an assessment that feels different from any doctor I’ve had before, less clinical checklist, more like he’s actually looking at the person in front of him instead of just the symptoms on the intake form.

“Tyler,” he says, checking the chart, not really a question. “I’m Dr. Garrett.”

“Hey.” My voice comes out higher than I want it to.

He sits on the rolling stool, wheels it a few feet closer, and looks at me instead of the chart. “Tell me what’s going on.”

I open my mouth and nothing useful comes out for a second. I’ve rehearsed this in the car, twice, and every word of it evaporates the second his eyes land on me. “It’s, uh. There’s been some discomfort. Down there. For like a month.”

“Down there,” he repeats, not unkind, just precise, like he wants me to actually say it.

“My, uh.” I clear my throat. “Rectally. It’s uncomfortable when I sit sometimes. And after I work out.”

He nods like I’ve told him something completely unremarkable, no reaction at all, and something about that steadies me more than I expect. “Any bleeding? Pain during bowel movements?”

“A little. Not a lot.”

“Okay.” He sets the chart down. “I’ll need to do an exam. Rectal exam, standard procedure for what you’re describing. Is that okay?”

My throat goes dry. “Yeah. Okay.”

“You can undress from the waist down and lie on your side, knees toward your chest. I’ll step out and give you a minute.”

He does, the door clicking shut behind him, and I sit there for a second just breathing before I start undoing my jeans.

My hands aren’t steady. I tell myself it’s nerves, normal nerves, the kind anybody would have getting a stranger’s finger anywhere near their ass for the first time, and that’s mostly true.

I fold my jeans over the back of a chair like that matters, like precision is going to make any of this feel more normal.

There’s a gown, paper thin, folded on the counter, and I put it on because it seems like what I’m supposed to do, even though it barely covers anything and I feel more exposed in it than I did in my own clothes.

I think about Madison for a second, the way she said it near the end, gentle but not gentle enough to not sting.

You’re just not that into it, Tyler. Any of it.

I push the thought away fast. This isn’t about proving her wrong.

This isn’t about anything except getting looked at and fixed and getting out of here.

I get on my side on the table like he said, knees pulled up, and stare at the wall until there’s a knock and he comes back in.

He pulls on a pair of gloves.

I watch his hands and forget how to breathe.