DOUG DONNANExecutive
Editor/OMNI-GENRE+MAGAZINE!
donnan.doug@yahoo.com
"The
Check Up"
by
Doug Donnan
[The Pensacola Medical Center / Pensacola, Florida]
As he sat there in the doctor’s office he felt it
impossible to keep his eyes from
focusing on the large bubbling
aquarium tucked away in the far corner. The inside of
the tank was decorated with a
small, pirate style sea chest with its lid cocked open,
a miniature forest of lichen
and algae-type tree configurations, and a substantial carpet
of bright blue aquatic sea
pebbles. Also within, a curious little silver, multi-finned fish
was puckering away at the clean
glass as it seemed to be studying a rather sizeable
woman wearing a white and blue
print dress. She had balanced atop her head a salon shop
quaff of blue hair that was
wrapped about her skull in a hive of elaborate tufts. The portly
bastion had positioned herself
just alongside the aquarium and the entrance door to the
inner sanctum of the doctor’s
office as if doing so might insure her name being called
that much sooner than any of
the other poker-faced patients who were
dispersed around
the library-quiet waiting room.
“Mr. Coldham?” the reception nurse
called out flatly after quickly sliding open the
receiving casement. Leon
snapped out of his Cousteau-like trance and jerked up out of
his seat. He walked in short
calculated steps over to the window as though he might be
making for the gallows. He
fiddled with the collar of his shirt as he dipped down to peer
into the opening:
“Yes, mam,” he almost said ‘present’ as a
sheepish reply. She was a youngish, green
smocked woman with long auburn
hair and a clipboard for a face. He assumed she must
be attractive. “Goldham,”
he said as if the surname error could only have been his fault.
“Leon Goldham.” He
pronounced as he detected the fat lady’s lilac essence. His correc-
tion to her announcement seemed
inconsequential at best.
“Doctor Weinkampf will see you now,” she
declared with a sigh as if that were the
only thing in the world that
could possibly matter. “Room 8,” she finished and whooshed
the window closed.
Leon collected himself and made for the
door just adjacent to the reception window.
He gazed down at the
percolating fat woman and almost found himself apologizing for
being called before she was—but
he didn’t, instead he smiled down on her and went in.
***
Doctor Weinkampf was a diminutive, orb
shaped fellow with a balding pate and large,
jug handle shaped ears. The
traditional white smock with wrap about stethoscope were
part of his medical wardrobe.
He scanned over a metal file that he held up so near
his face that the examining
table seated Leon began to feel self-conscious about his
appearance or body odor. Then
he considered that maybe this entire health care facility
was operated by a group of
clandestine clipboard faced aliens! The twin sparks of his
anger and frustration were
beginning to smolder. He promised himself as he looked
down like some great bird at
the head-shaking Doctor Weinkampf that he would confront
his know-it-all, meddling wife
about suggesting this overall physical check-up and chem-
ical blood analysis business.
It wasn’t cheap by any means! He was beginning to feel
ridiculous as he sat there in
only his Munsingwear briefs. And, then he snapped out of it
as Weinkampf came out from
behind his hide-and-seek chart.
“Mr. Goldham,” he blew out as if he were
late for a luncheon engagement. “I’m
going to let you look at the
results of the physical tests and various blood work-ups I
have here,” he held out the
clipboard like a collection plate at a church service. “I
have to step out for a little
while, and in my absence I would like you to look over the
different test sections.
Please, take your time. If you have any questions use the red
pencil and make a check mark in
the corresponding box. And, after you have read care-
fully the entire report, I
would like you to turn back to page six. Then, if you would, call
for Miss Pantene’ my attending
nurse and she will page me. I’ll come back here directly
and we’ll go over the
‘particulars’ involved in that specific set of tests. Then I’ll try and
explain to you what I think it
all means. Are you amenable to that Leon?” he asked with a
flippant wave of his readers.
“Why…certainly,” Leon tried to sound
professional as he reached down to accept the
chart. He was secretly happy
that he didn’t need to wear glasses to read—there were no
pockets in his current
wardrobe! “Is it alright if I…?” he reddened somewhat as
he nodded in the direction of
his folded clothes on a nearby metal chair.
“Yes, yes—of course,” Weinkampf apologized
as he got up to leave the room. He
shook his head slightly as he
opened the door and stared down at his watch.
***
After a few minutes, Leon had arranged
himself back into his clothes. He could not
remember a time when getting
dressed felt so good! He perched himself back up on the
padded table and flipped open
the chromium clipboard. After spending a considerable
amount of time perusing the
contents, he came to the raw conclusion that most everything
that was tested appeared, for
the most part, perfectly normal! Heart, lungs, colon, eyes
and ears, blood pressure,
reflexes—everything seemed okay. With a deep sigh of
satisfaction he thumbed his way
back to page six.
This…this didn’t look so good he
thought to himself:
________________________________________________________________________
HEMOGLOBIN CHEMICAL TEST
ANALYSIS: Page
6
PCBs [200 TESTED] …… 131
[DETECTED]
PBDEs [40 TESTED] …… 30 [DETECTED]
PESTICIDES [30 TESTED] …… 28 [DETECTED]
DIOXINS [17 TESTED] …… 15 [DETECTED]
PHTHALATES [7
TESTED] …… 7 [DETECTED] PFAs [15
TESTED] …… 15 [DETECTED ]
METALS [4
TESTED] …… 3 [DETECTED]
BISPHENOLS
[2 TESTED] …… 2 [DETECTED]
_________________________________________________________________________
***
“Well
then, let’s see—where do we begin?” Weinkampf said as he leaned back into his
roll-o chair. He seemed to ask
this more as a hapless President readying himself to deliver
a dubious State of the Union
Address than a licensed physician about to go over a pa-
tient’s medical particulars. “I
see you’ve made no check marks—that’s fine,” he pro-
ceded with a light sigh of
satisfaction, “You are very fit for a man in your age bracket…
Leon, twenty-five to fifty. So
I won’t bother you with a point-by-point break-down of the
the overall check up.”
Leon
wasn’t sure whether to feel good or somehow cheated by this rather cavalier
statement.
“However, let’s turn to this page six
matter,” he puzzled as he looked up over the
tops of his reading glasses at
a rather timid looking Leon Goldham as he slouched there
on the examination table.
“What’s it all about Doctor?” Leon
interjected, quickly hoping he didn’t sound too
much like a curious Bugs Bunny.
Doctor Weinkampf stretched out his legs
and struggled mightily to try and cross them.
He
closed the clipboard and stared up at the ceiling as if he might be observing
some far
off star or planet. “You see
Mr. Goldham—Leon, the body is like a country, a small, but
for the most part independent
country. Basically, what it does to keep its sovereignty is a
simple matter of importation
and exportation. It imports food and water and exports its
waste materials—the unwanted
and unnecessary remains of its raw imports.
This trade is
vital to the country’s very
survival. Now, when—” he looked over at a semi-mesmerized
Leon who was staring down at
him from the table like some small dog watching a tele-
vision screen for the first
time. “May I ask you a few personal questions Mr. Goldham?”
“Certainly,” Leon replied secretly wishing
that the doctor would stick with either his
first or last name.
“Where were you born?” Weinkampf tried
again, “I mean raised—where did you
spend most of your adolescence?”
“St. Louis,” Leon pronounced with a kind
of thin pride. “St. Louis—Missouri,” he
added as if there might be a
different one somewhere.
“Nice neighborhood? I mean was it a quiet
rural kind of place or an urban type si-
tuation with traffic and
what-not?”
“More of a suburban community I guess
you’d say, but I don’t see what all this— ”
Leon reflected with a growing
apprehension as to just where this might be leading.
“Please, just hear me out,” Weinkampf
implored. “Were there field dumps, trash
sights or factories of one kind
or another in the vicinity where you lived?”
“It was the south-side. Most of the homes
were brick and mortar affairs not to ter-
ribly far from the Mississippi
River. Sure, there were barge lines and waterfront docks,
sulfur mines, and landfill
sites. We spent our share of time after school and weekends
exploring around. The area was
nothing to brag about, that’s for sure! Won’t you please
tell me doctor, what you’re
getting at with all this?”
Weinkampf unfolded himself and squared his
feet up beneath him. He flipped open
the chart again and positioned
his readers back over his tired eyes. “Here’s what we’ve
come up with Leon. And, I’ll
tell you right up front that there are those who would call
this superfluous information.
That is, in your particular case, information about your
body which I think you could
and have, so far, managed to live without! So, having said
all that—it appears that the
toxic chemicals in your bloodstream are, for lack of a better
term, off the chart.
Apparently, as we can see here broken down for us in parts per bil-
lion, the mass spectrometers in
our labs have gone over your particular specimens and
picked up heavy traces of the
termite killer chlordane, Lead, PCBs and Dioxins of all
descriptions, per fluorinated
acids and phthalates from basic shampoos and the like. On
and on it goes, the
debilitating neurotoxin Mercury, assorted pesticides, etceteras. The list
of toxins in your system is
long and, indeed, rather troubling, I must say. However, the
good news is that all these
potentially harmful chemicals in your, and for the most part, in
‘all’ of our blood streams, lie
dormant! That is, simply put—they’re just there! And, in
fact, they are... everywhere”
There was an awkward pause after this last
word of the doctor’s summation and then;
“So what am I to make of all this
doctor?” Leon asked in bewilderment.
Doctor Weinkampf removed his glasses and
struggled to his feet. He peeked down his
arm at his watch again and
sighed; “Just this Leon, for all intents and purposes—you are
fine. Quite frankly, if I were you, I wouldn’t worry
about it. Just go on with your life and
stay the course!”
“But, what am I to do now, just
disregard and forget about all this toxicity crap that’s
coursing through me?” Leon
called out in desperation. “Like it isn’t even there?”
“Please…just please try and underst—” he
cut himself off with a little headshake,
“why did you have these tests
taken?” he tried a different tack.
“I’ll be honest with you doctor, if I had
it all to do over again,” he rubbed at his
forearm where all the blood was
drawn. “It was my wife’s bright idea. I only have her
to thank!” he said with bitter
disgust.
Weinkampf
made it to his feet and slapped the clipboard thoughtfully against his
meaty thigh. Leon slid off the
examination table in kind. They both stood there a
moment staring at each other.
Then Weinkampf reached out for Leon’s shoulder.
“Listen to me Leon,” he said slowly and
deliberately. “I’ll keep this work-up
in my files and you come back
and see me again in a year or so. We’ll give you
a once-over. But, I’m going to
level with you here, try and forget about this whole
thing. Because, if you don’t,
it will eat you up inside. For all practical purposes you
are fine and should remain that
way. Now, go home to your wife and try and relax.”
They both made for the door
with Weinkampf stealing another quick look at his watch.
Later that evening
As they
both strolled down the street it would have been hard for a casual bystander
to classify the Goldhams as
star-crossed lovers. Betty had suggested that they celebrate
Leon’s good health report with
a bottle of expensive red wine from the new ‘Grapevine’
store. ‘It will help replenish
you!’ she had declared. Leon reluctantly agreed, and so off
they went. He was still a
little tired from the check up, not to mention woozy from the
amount of blood that he felt
was ‘taken away’ from him. He decided not to share the—
‘page six’ particulars with
her, but as they walked back to their little mid-town condo in
the cold evening mist, he
couldn’t help but cringe every time he glanced over at her stu-
pid, self-serving grin. The
little bitch, a secret voice seemed to whisper inside his head.
Leon Goldham was beside himself. Disillusioned
and extremely agitated, he wiggled
in his hand the chromium wine
opener that he had also bought for the special occasion.
Eventually, they turned at a
sharp building corner that lead down their deep cul-de-sac.
“Well,
here we are then—home sweet home!” Betty piped up as if she were talking to
some small child or family
house pet.
It was the last thing that she
would ever say.
***
“Whadda’ we got here Perez?” a large
police officer with dark blue, rolled up sleeves
asked the young paramedic.
“Some kinda’ wino?” he asked looking down at the open
bottle at the foot of the
stairs.
“Oh, evenin’ Sergeant Lockwood,” the young
paramedic sang back displaying a
whole keyboard of perfect,
white teeth. “I don’t think so, just a routine 911 call—anony-
mous neighbors, you know the
drill. He says he lives here,” Perez thumbed over his
shoulder up the steps that lead
to the condo. “Been perched down on these steps here a
while seems like.”
Sergeant Lockwood pushed his massive fists
up into his hips, “You check his papers?”
“Papers?” Perez asked with a
puzzled squint.
“His identification,” he looked
down on Leon from on high. “His I.D.”
“No authority to do that ‘Keemosabe’,
Perez responded in his best Tonto-ease.
Sergeant Lockwood shook his head,
obviously perturbed, “Sorry to disturb you fella’,
but can I see some I.D.?”
Leon flinched ever so slightly and bent
his head back. “Certainly,” he replied. He
placed the dripping corkscrew
at his feet and reached back for his wallet.
“Check out his hands Sarge,” Perez called
out, “that’s not red wine—that’s blood!”
“Hmm,” from Lockwood.
After a slow, concerted effort Leon
managed to hand over his driver’s license and as
he did he stole a peek over his
shoulder. She was still lying there behind the hedges,
her legs and arms twisted about
in impossible, broken angles. Her contorted face a
fixed mask of surprise and
innocence. Betty Goldham was no longer.
The burly officer studied Leon’s license
identification there under the glow of the
incandescent street light for
some time before offering it back. “What the Hell is going
on here Mr.…Coldham?”
Leon looked up into the cop’s questioning
eyes. He didn’t have the will or conviction
anymore to correct the
mis-pronunciation of his name. He felt as though he were alone,
totally alone, hiding in the
pit of some dark, foreboding cave.
“I’m waiting,” he sighed. “I'm afraid... that’s
all that’s left for me to do!”
_____
The End _____
