Vignette #2 (409 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 0.69 on 15 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by John Kim (View user info) at 2008-09-24 13:17:30 EDT
For a long moment Amy stared at the backlit X-ray of the boy's upper thoracic region. She began to see it as a stylized Rorshach inkblot and her mind fought to create order out of the monochromatic mess before her. Gradually she imagined color where there was none, and flat gray bronchioles in the lung structure became vibrant reds and yellows. Soon she saw an inverted butterfly superimposed over the X-ray film. Like finding shapes in clouds, once seen, the image was hard to shake.
Amy blinked three times until the butterfly disappeared and once again she was looking at an X-ray of a boy's lungs. With one finger she pushed the bridge of her glasses back up on her nose. She smoothed out the wrinkle in her blue green scrub pants and then finally forced herself to look at the image again. No amount of fanciful day dreaming or procrastination would change it. The image remained the same. A biopsy would be needed to be absolutely certain, but in her mind there was no mistaking what the mottled spots in the left lung were. At age thirteen Ray Morales had cancer. And now it was Amy's job to tell his parents.
Resigned, she pulled the film from the backdrop, set it on the boy's clipboard, and turned off the backlight. With the boy's medical charts under one arm she walked out of the cramped shared physician's office and into waiting room four. Ray was sitting on the examination bed with his palms pressed down on the mattress at each side of his hips. His bare feet dangled over the floor. He was tall for his age, and his black hair was cut short. He was wearing a blue green smock that contrasted well against his olive drab complexion.
Ray was in good spirits, laughing and talking with his mother in a low voice. Their conversation ceased as soon as Amy walked in, but she caught the last bits of their conversation, like the last cough of smoke emanating from an extinguished flame. The words were in Spanish, and therefore arcane to her, and she felt it was somehow irreverent of her to disturb them. The boy's mother turned to her, they both did. She was a round homely woman, as plain in feature as she was pleasant in demeanor. They were expecting her to speak now, but she felt a lump in her throat that no words could bypass. Instead she went to the backlight, turned it on, and set the X-ray in place.
"Well," she said, then took a deep breath. "I took at a look at your X-ray." She found herself speaking to Ray, knowing that his mother didn't speak English well. She pointed to the mottled spots on the left lung. "You see these dark areas here?" The exam bed squeaked as Ray hopped off it and took two padding footsteps of bare feet on linoleum to get a better view.
"Yeah," he said.
"Well, they shouldn't' be there. They represent some kind of growth in your lungs. That's what's causing the pain in your chest and the shortness of breath." Ray strained to see what Amy could see in the fuzzy black and white image. His mother asked him a fast paced question in Spanish to which he responded with a few quick, harsh syllables of his own.
"What does that mean?" He asked. Unlike his mother, Ray had the benefit of attending American schools his whole childhood and his speech had no hint of accent save for a bit of the hood twang that was common in the poorer sections of town.
"Well, it could mean a lot of things. It could just be a benign growth of some kind. It could be nothing serious." Ray stared at the image a moment longer, then looked at Amy.
"Could it be... cancer?" he asked.
Amy opened her mouth, then closed it. All she could think of was the butterfly.
User Reviews
Submitted by locksly (user info) at 2008-09-24 18:51:26 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
-2nami
Submitted by John_H_Kim (user info) at 2008-09-24 17:53:13 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by no1hasdis (user info) at 2008-09-24 17:37:24 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by John_H_Kim (user info) at 2008-09-24 17:05:16 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
what the hell is "retal"?
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It's when some gives you a negative rating, so you go to their last post and -2 just to be a pissy bitch. Note however that I gave you a +2 on both oyur posts. Therefore, you should click on the user info button and go rate all my majestic offerings with a nice big +2. That is considered good form. ;).
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Thanks for explaining that. I even hit the urban dictionary trying to figure out what it meant. I thought it was an accusation that I reposted the same thing I did earlier or something.
I'll go check your stuff out in a second. I just want to finish something I'm working on.
Submitted by no1hasdis (user info) at 2008-09-24 17:37:24 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by John_H_Kim (user info) at 2008-09-24 17:05:16 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
what the hell is "retal"?
---------------------------
It's when some gives you a negative rating, so you go to their last post and -2 just to be a pissy bitch. Note however that I gave you a +2 on both oyur posts. Therefore, you should click on the user info button and go rate all my majestic offerings with a nice big +2. That is considered good form. ;).
Submitted by sandmantate (user info) at 2008-09-24 17:28:19 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
aaaaarrrrrrggghhh.
Submitted by John_H_Kim (user info) at 2008-09-24 17:05:16 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
what the hell is "retal"?
Submitted by EmissionImpossible (user info) at 2008-09-24 16:37:45 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
retal +2!
;) ;)
Submitted by sage104 (user info) at 2008-09-24 16:09:06 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Interesting. Felt it stopped a little short, though. Vague can be good, though.
POINTS!!
Submitted by scourge (user info) at 2008-09-24 15:47:53 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
haha @ retal -2
Submitted by FALLEN (user info) at 2008-09-24 14:39:11 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
+2 Rorshach
**waves comicbook geek flag**
Submitted by Shlongy (user info) at 2008-09-24 14:21:35 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
I'll have mine with the red sauce.
Submitted by wookie (user info) at 2008-09-24 14:04:23 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by monkeyswithguns (user info) at 2008-09-24 14:01:27 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by kaos-king (user info) at 2008-09-24 13:58:10 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
For better formatting...
Submitted by weather (user info) at 2008-09-24 13:50:30 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
You should learn to like the weather a little more.
Submitted by orphelia (user info) at 2008-09-24 13:25:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
you found the enter key. this is nice.