Snip
Aidan Bissell-Siders
The pathologist carried a picnic basket at her hip. Its wooden confines held microscope slides and needles, each individually sealed. At the back sat fixative bottles and their lingering smell of stale bread.
I navigated through the Radiology Department’s double doors, down the quiet hallways, and into the CAT room. On each wall, beside each radiation-sealed door sat a line of unused computer banks. Above their artificial glow, windows revealed new rooms with big grey scanners, their dozens of swarming wires and tubes, and one plastic bed with an attached patient). Pain showed through his squinting eyes and pursed lips.
The pathologist retrieved a manila folder from the basket. Its contents told the journey that our patient had taken to the CAT room. Last year, he had emigrated from Guatemala and brought his chronic stomach trouble with him. His new physician got him an endoscopy, which got him proof of advanced and widespread cancer. Another CAT scan would show where the cancer had spread; a fine-needle aspiration would decide how advanced it was.
And here he was. I donned green gloves and slipped a surgical mask over my mouth and nose, though the pathologist donned them faster. I pulled his gown back from his skin and mopped it with an alcohol swab. The pathologist asked him his birthdate–answered