Someone Somewhere Is Building an Ark

MRI Appointment, May 12, 2020

             The morning of the MRI, rain poured down in sheets, so torrential I joked with my son that someone, somewhere was building an Ark. Rain was no joking matter for Mom. I knew she was sitting in front of her TV watching the weather doppler images on the radar grow with time lapse. The colors starting green, then yellow, then to shades of red centered with pink indicating the heaviest rainfall. She’d be worried, but she’d also be a little excited, because she might have an excuse to get out of doing the MRI. 

            Mom had an irrational fear of flooding that rooted back to when she and Dad were in grad school living in Pennsylvania. The story, which I’ve heard almost every time there’s rain, is that they lived on the top floor of a three-story apartment building, when a full day of rain turned into flash flooding. The flooding forced the neighbors living on the first floor to flee up to my parent’s apartment for safety. Water never entered their apartment, but the experience would leave Mom with a lifelong fear that all rain would ultimately turn into a flash flood. Right on cue, my cell phone rang, Mom, scrolled across the caller id.

            “We’re fine. I drive in the rain all the time,” I said, curtly, as I answered the call.  The same conversation about flooding I’d had so many times over the years played out like a script, finally ending with Mom conceding.   

            Cameron, like everyone during the pandemic, was looking for any opportunity to get out of the house and offered to drive us. The mix of Mom’s incessant worry and my son’s 20-year-old driving skills produced a car ride worthy of a Xanax prescription. Mom simultaneously clutched the door for dear life, while giving Cameron painstaking step-by-step driving instructions. Sprinkled in were the, “Be careful!”, statements that startled more than helped the driver. When we arrived and learned that only Mom and I could go inside the building due to COVID restrictions, Cameron wasn’t upset at all. NOT AT ALL!  

            We entered the lobby to find social distancing was in full effect. Chairs sat under harsh fluorescent lighting, evenly spaced six feet apart. Medical clinic lobbies are rarely cozy, but the pandemic made them feel uncomfortably organized and impersonal, like an orderly social experiment. If you weren’t sitting upright in defined rows, you were standing on circular blue stickers, also spaced six feet apart, forming a line at reception. Introverted, I took a seat, relishing the distance between people. The chance of someone leaning over to start a conversation in the awkward six-foot gap was slim.  

            Cautiously, keeping space between people, Mom stepped from one blue dot to another, until she received her intake paperwork. As she walked back, I noticed a strange expression on her face. That unsettled, almost queasy feeling began to settle in the pit of my stomach. Her face was expressionless, completely flat. The human face always has expression, a tiny crease by the mouth or a microscopic smile. A completely expressionless or flat face makes you take notice. It’s a little creepy and it sticks with you, like Samara from The Ring movie.  

            Mom, now sitting in her chair six feet to my right, was staring at her paperwork, but not putting ink to paper. 

            “Do you want me to fill it out?” I said, my chair teetering on two legs, as I tried to close the six-foot space so she could hear me. She didn’t put up a fight, just shoved the stack of papers into my hands. This small interaction would be forever etched in my mind as the beginning of my job as scribe. Mom would never fill out another form.  

            There’s a certain amount of privacy you count on in mother-daughter relationships. That privacy is like a protective coating around a pill. That pill, the embarrassing information about your mom. There was no protective coating when filling out medical paperwork.  

 Gosh, this is really thorough, I thought, as I continued down the medical history form. I cleared my throat. “Have you ever had a sexually transmitted disease?” I said, as I held my breath in anticipation of the answer.  

            “No. Well, not that I know of,” she replied, laughing. I’m just going to mark the little box for no and move on. This simple act of filling out medical forms was the beginning of Mom and me reversing roles. My role now, more maternal and her role, more childlike. 

            “Kay, we’re ready for you,” a nurse said, smiling, gesturing for us to follow her.

            You’ll never find an MRI on someone’s bucket list. They’re loud, the magnetic clanking frays your nerves, and all your phobias about being trapped are brought to the surface. If you're claustrophobic, it’s living out your worst nightmare or in therapeutic terms, exposure therapy. That being said, Mom who was riddled with anxiety on a normal day, was pretty unfazed. She’s probably worn out from worrying about flooding, I thought.  

            As I sat alone in the private lobby adjacent to the MRI room, I thought about the night I’d sat alone in my living room holding a filled to the brim glass of white wine that I’d sworn I wouldn’t have that night. If you can just get the boys off to college, they won’t need you anymore and you can just drink yourself to death, I’d thought. I’d tried for almost a year to moderate my drinking. First only drinking on weekends, then only on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. When I couldn’t miss a night of drinking, I knew I was in trouble. I couldn’t imagine my life if I kept drinking, but I also couldn’t imagine my life without alcohol. 

            Now sitting in this lobby six years later, sober, I wondered if I’d be able to get through the pandemic and Mom without relapsing. The pandemic alone was a playbook for relapse. Isolation, no jobs, no accountability, what could go wrong? If you're sober, EVERYTHING! Let me get this straight, I can isolate without judgment, AA meetings are online, and there’s unlimited quality time with my family. Seriously, anyone would understand relapsing, I mean it was just shy of the apocalypse for pete’s sake. I’d read a book in early sobriety, where each chapter started with a scenario that the author would justify relapsing. For example, aliens landing on earth or diagnosis of a terminal disease. Just as I was thinking a global pandemic definitely would have been a chapter, I heard Mom’s voice.  

            “Let’s go!” she said, grabbing her purse from the seat next to me, throwing it over her shoulder with some urgency.

            “You need to change back into your clothes,” I said, looking at her hospital gown now accessorized with her purse. She gave me a half smile and turned back toward the dressing area where her clothes were waiting. I watched her hospital gown sway, as her exposed little, veiny legs strode down the hall, shoeless, with her purse still slung over one shoulder. 

            As we headed for the exit, I could hear the rain pummeling the roof. From the lobby I shot Cameron a quick text.

                                    We’re done, can you come grab us out front?  

            Mom and I stood at the windows that overlooked the parking lot, holding umbrellas, waiting for just the right time to b-line it for the car. Cameron, who had pulled the car into the parking spot directly in front of us, peered through the windshield eyeing us. Rain pelted the ceiling, torrential and loud. I could see Cameron shrug his shoulders, throwing his hands up, the universal “What the fuck” gesture. The minute his hands fell to the side, I heard my phone ring.

            “Are you guys going to come out? You’re holding umbrellas!” he said, a little bit of sarcasm lacing the word umbrellas.  

            Our feet sloshed through what was once a parking lot, but now looked more like a lake. I helped Mom get into the car, my umbrella balanced on the roof and door, as I felt water seep into my shoes, pooling, and soaking my socks. I slammed her door shut then waded through puddles, as tiny white caps hit my ankles. Sliding onto the front passenger seat drenched, I heard Mom from the back seat mumbling about flooding under her breath. Cameron rolled his eyes next to me. I glanced at the clock; it was only fucking 10 am.  

            Several days later while I was at work I received a call from the doctor. I quietly stepped out of the common living room at detox where I’d sat down with the clients because like watching a train wreck, I’d been pulled in by an episode of Tiger King. “The MRI was unremarkable,” the doctor said. Unremarkable, what does that mean? 

            “Okay. I’m not sure what to do with that?” I said, stumped, listening with my free ear to the client’s chatter about Joe Exotic in the other room. “What does unremarkable mean?” 

            “There’s atrophy in areas of the brain as people age,” the doctor explained. “Your mom’s scan is showing typical atrophy for someone her age.” What now? I felt guilty for wishing Mom’s brain had atrophied more, thinking that might explain the hallucinations. 

            “I would recommend seeing a neurologist,” the doctor said, filling my awkward silence.