From the moment you pull into the parking lot, something in your stomach flutters, butterflies, perhaps. Your hand shakes slightly on the shifter, but wouldn't be noticeable unless those looking knew what it was they were looking for. You let out a sigh as you open the door and step out, your brain swirling with the news that is about to come.

You hit the button to lock the car, and listen to the familiar beep. It sounds different today, so defined in the full lot, so much louder than a normal day. It's almost as if you've taken the littlest thing for granted, like you may never hear that beep again. The trees at the edge of the lot sway softly in the breeze with their slight, barely audible rustle.

So peaceful.

The birds sing their songs and frolic from tree to tree without a care in the world.

You hit the lock button again, just to be sure.

The walk seems longer than normal, but that could just be your mind playing tricks on you. You always park in the same spot, its no longer than it ever was before. The electronic double doors open and the serene and quiet parking lot landscape turns into an entire world of spit, snot, coughing and obnoxious children.

There is always some overweight woman with bad hair and a resting bitch face behind the desk. A woman who works in a doctors office but was never good enough in school to become an actual doctor so she makes $14.50 an hour being a doctor's paperwork pusher.

The woman always has a smile, though. Despite all the bullshit she hears and sees, the always seems to fake a smile. You admire that.

You give your last name as the woman sighs despite the sigh, picking up a clipboard and using her finger to scroll down a sheet. She clicks a pen with her other hand, the 100 plus time she's done that today and its only 9:30, and tells you that you are all set. You may take a seat and the doctor will see you shortly.

Basically, fuck off and waste more time as the person in a white coat who makes triple your income gives other people bad news before you.

Your eyes scan the lobby for an empty, uncomfortable chair. One of those wooden armed ones with the too-thin padding and atrocious floral pattern. Too long in one of these, and you'll have another symptom to tell the doctor....ass pain.

You finally find a seat and sit down, crossing your legs with a little foot bounce, and scan the surrounding area for the next must-have. Those awful magazine's that nobody would read otherwise if not in the most boring place on the planet. The old wooden used-to-be-in-somebody's-home coffee table is filled to capacity with Reader's Digest, US Weekly, Sports Illustrated's from 8 months ago whose information is now irrelevant to the ever evolving sports landscape, PEOPLE, IN STYLE that has someone wearing something hideous (you chuckle to yourself at the irony of it), Consumer Reports. That is just the first row. All of the magazine's are worn too. Ove-read by people just scanning the words and browsing the photos before setting it down and infesting the next one with their germs. You can't forget the Better Homes & Gardens prominently displaying food that doesn't come from either a home or a garden on the front. This is usually paired with an edition of GOOD HOUSEKEEPING from the summer time (mind you, its already the following spring) with a piece of pie on the cover. It doesn't have anything to do with housekeeping, but it does make you hungry, however. You wonder how long this is going to take with a sigh.

After realizing that none of these magazines were going to work for you, you decide to fall back onto the option of the second best thing to do in a doctor's office. People watch. The best place to people watch (besides Wal-Mart on a Saturday afternoon) is in one of these offices. Your eyes land on the little kids putting their snot covered hands all over the Bead Maze. There is ALWAYS a bead maze, like its 1985 all over again. They call it a "developmental game" when all it is is a fuck all for the parents to shove their kids onto when they get tired of their children climbing on them. This usually only lasts a few minutes until the child is bored with it, but that little bit of respite from their demonic crotch goblins is the goddamn lottery for some parents.

Waiting for the child to inevitably get bored with the outdated toy and begin throwing matchbox cars out of the toy chest in the corner and all over the stained grey (or maybe its tile, if you're super unlucky), you scan over the woman on her phone with someone she doesn't want to talk to, sitting under the unbelievably poorly drawn photo of an orchid bouquet behind a cloudy glass frame.

This woman will be yelling at her mini-car tossing, coughing into everyone's personal space, stayed home from school for a stuffy nose and wasting everyone's tax dollars because she wants them to "bill the copay", child soon enough. You decide to get a shred of entertainment from the patients who are fortunate enough to have some sort of priority.

“Here,” says the nurse, wearing a horrific green colored outfit and a mask that looks like a headdress from "The Handmaids Tale", handing the patient a urine specimen container. “The bathroom’s over there.” A few minutes later, the patient comes out of the bathroom.

“Thanks,” he says, returning the empty container. “But there was a toilet in there, so I didn’t need this after all.”

"STOP THROWING THE CARS BRADLEY", you don't even need to tilt your head and look, you knew this was coming.

You could already see the news headlines in your mind. “Breathing oxygen linked to staying alive”. Some of these people would "OOOHH" like they just had an epiphany.

On the other side of the waiting room, an elderly woman was talking to one of the doctors (not yours, unfortunately).

“You remind me of my third husband,” she said coyly.

“Third husband?” he asked. “How many have you had?”

“Two.”

YEAH, GET IT OLD LADY. You chuckle to yourself again, thinking about how this will be you in 50 years after an interaction with a hot doctor.

Another rhode scholar at the front desk.

Patient: I slipped in the grocery store and really hurt myself.

Bad hair lady with fake smile and clipboard: Where did you get hurt?

Patient: Aisle six.

Real smart people at the doctor's office. The type of people who have call 911 because they got stuck in the blood pressure machine at the grocery store and couldn’t get out.

"BRADLEY, I SWEAR TO GOD IF YOU THROW ANOTHER CAR--I'm sorry, I'm sorry, he's just irritable today, he hates the doctors." Mouthing "stop it" to him.

Among all of this chaos, your senses highten and you seem to be able to hear conversations that you weren't meant to hear. Even ones in hushed tones behind the desk between two other bad hair fake smile and often times overweight women.

"Mr. Harper sued the hospital, saying that after his wife had surgery there, she lost all interest in sex."

“Mrs. Harper was admitted for cataract surgery. All they did was correct her eyesight.”

The door opens and the more-important-than-the-others "nurse" comes out, looking straight at you before calling out another name. The man two seats down who had been drinking the same cold gas station coffee for 30 minutes at this point peels himself out of the worlds most uncomfortable floral pattern chair and saunters over. The door shuts behind them. It was like he was being marched to the gas chamber at Auschwitz. Would anyone ever see him again? The Imperial March from Star Wars chimes in your head.

"B-R-A-D-L-E-Y!"

The magazine kiosk that harbored the less read magazines stared at you from around the corner, almost urging you to get up and grab one to break this cycle of nonsense.

The fluorescent lights gave everything a dull glow, and the hiss was audible even over fucking Bradley and his frustrated matriarch.

Pulling out your phone, you re-cross your legs in a different direction and hope to God above that Candy Crush will put you out of this world and into a world of sugary goodness.

After about an eternity (in reality, about 11 minutes), of this, the door opens again and your name is read off. The dread comes back again. You groan your way out of the chair and not cannot feel your gluteus (note that to the doctor, maybe he'll give you something for it), and shuffle over to your impending doom.

They walk you down a lifeless white hallway, all with trying-to-be-funny-but-not pictures and signage.




They finally get you into the room and sit you up on the "exam table"--why do they have to phrase it that way? Sounds so sci fi--that they try to get "clean" by putting a piece of clear construction paper over the padding that shifts every time you move.

The wall in the room has that infamous pain chart that the doctor thought was cute, and you actually have to decide in your brain what is more horrifying, the pain you're in or the sense of humor he tries to display.


11 seems fitting, but its mostly because of how much of a clusterfuck this place is, not necessarily your aliment. You're in for a routine checkup, a physical, and just as you're about to lay down on the loose clear paper you come to realize that the doctor is going to be a while. He always is. Your day is already shot anyway, and the bitchy nurse with a trade school LPN certificate from a local online college already took your vitals. You have nothing but time to kill.

You wonder if Bradley is still hucking cars across the lobby and how many Wine & Spirits coupons his mother uses on a weekly basis.

You begin to tap along to a beat in your head, looking at all the equipment in the room, reading and re-reading the not funny pain chart. For someone who makes six figures, he sure isn't very good at customer service----

The door opens.

"Hello Jennifer."

Ugh, you're full name. Gross.

"My name is Doctor D'ville, but you know that already."

Part of you just wants him to strap on the latex and do the cavity search already........

"....and I see we're here for a physical. Well, young lady, you seem to be physically okay to me."

He chuckles.

Was this doctor hitting on you?

Add "bile rising in your throat" to the chart on the wall.

There is something about a routine visit to this particular doctor that makes the blood curdle like left-over milk. Something about him. Like, even good news will be bad news. He will win, no matter how good you are or how not sick....somehow, even when delivering good news, you feel like you've been punched in the ovary.

The entire thing feels like a set up.

What is he hiding? What does he have up his sleeve?

What is he going to tell you that you don't already know?

What news could he possibly break to you that you aren't ready to hear?

For both of you, this is routine. This is Day 1 shit. This is what you do. For him, though, you feel like he gets a sick pleasure out of it. All of the chaos around this interaction, the world around going to see the doctor, is a whole lotta nonsense but then when you get there, one-on-one and you can see the whites of his eyes it hits you like a freight train with the brakes cut.





























He isn't all that scary, after all.

All the hype, all the build up, all the anxiety. Every single time. The small panic tearing away at you from within, threatening to burst out of your chest like Alien from the movie...........

You leave the office the same way you came in. Sometimes, it isn't about the destination, its about the journey. You put up with a lot of bullshit to get here, what the fuck can he say really scares you anymore?

Your car clicks and blips as the locks unhinge and you swing into your driver seat. As you put the car in gear you see the same frolicking birds in the softly swaying trees. The static-like hum from the breeze blowing the sticks and leaves.

Sometimes, you're just happy to be alive.