The hospital corridor was crowded with signs about H1N1, and hand-sanitizer dispensers mounted on poles. In the lobby people milled about, casting furtive glances at each other, and I kept walking quickly, past the canteen with its vending machines, past the cafe and the restrooms toward the elevators, noticing that I was keeping my body well away from the walls, as if I had some notion that infected hands had been stroking the polished beige granite surface. Stop being ridiculous, I said to myself, and just then an older couple came out of the elevator, the woman wearing a face mask and coughing. I pressed the button near the bank of elevators with my finger behind two layers of my scarf, and the doors to the one on the far right immediately opened. It was empty except for a young woman standing at the rear, holding the handles of a wheelchair in which an elderly man sat, her father perhaps. She smiled wanly; he seemed vacant. I looked at the floor-indicator buttons and saw that she had already pressed the one I wanted; the door closed and we rose directly to the tenth floor; when the door opened I stepped back and let her go out ahead of me, feeling a little startled; it was the only time I'd ever had a direct, non-stop trip in one of these hospital elevators.
At the breast clinic I went up to the desk; the receptionist was on the phone. A nurse in a white uniform asked me if I had an appointment. "I'm here to pick up my films," I told her, and she said she was going to give me a number because she had to call some other people first. "That's fine," I said, taking the large numeral "8" printed on laminated teal-colored paper that she handed me, and went into the waiting area where I sat down.
A few women and half a dozen men sat in chairs on two sides of the narrow space, facing each other. Everyone still had their coats on. A TV played silently above our heads, but only one person was watching it. A youngish woman filled out a questionnaire, two men read newspapers, most of us stared at the paintings -- watercolors of soft, serene, watery landscapes with pine trees that might have been in Canada -- or vaguely turned toward the window, though we were high enough above the city that hardly anything but sky could be seen. I'd had enough mammograms here to know that the men were waiting for their wives who were also waiting, in another hallway, for their tests and then for their results. A cell phone went off, and a large black woman sitting next to me, wearing a hat and a dark yellow coat, got up, fished the phone out of her pocket and answered. She spoke in a low voice, bending her head toward the floor. "Ma'am," said a woman seated on the other side, "No cell phones are allowed here." The talking woman didn't seem to hear. "The equipment..." the other woman concluded, helplessly, her voice trailing off, and the black woman brought her conversation to a gentle end just as her number was called by the nurse.
Just this morning I'd read the news about the change in recommended mammography schedules in the U.S., and realized they were almost identical to what Canada has been recommending for years. Women like me, with dense breast tissue or other reasons for more frequent screening, have no trouble receiving annual exams in Canada and I'm quite sure they won't in the U.S. either, but the emotion surrounding the American announcement didn't surprise me; no matter where we live, women today are all frightened about this disease, and not one of us has been untouched by it.
I was next - "huit" called the disembodied voice of the nurse - and I got up and went back to the desk, saying I was there to pick up my films from last year because I was going to a different institution; I'd called ahead. "Yes, they should be right here, dear," said the receptionist, taking my medicare card and getting up. I wanted to ask why the waiting time here for routine appointments that they'd quoted me over the phone had been four times longer than in previous years, but she was clearly busy; the phone rang several times during the few minutes she was helping me. "Here you are, dear," she said, handing me the heavy package and a form to sign. There had been no hassle at all; in Canada it's understood that your medical record belongs to you. I thanked her and went back down the corridor; I'd been able to get a much-earlier appointment at a different imaging center with digital equipment, but I felt a little sorry not to be using this clinic again.
I joined four people already in the elevator. Between the 10th and 9th floors, an orderly with a small cart asked a nurse when her next vacation was. "December," she replied. "Where are you going?" "Toronto." He nodded. "When's yours?" "February," he said. "Where are you going?" "Further away," he said, and hesitated long enough that I thought he wasn't going to elaborate. Then he cleared his throat and said "London, then Morocco, then back to London, then Paris for a few more days. A big trip." The nurse raised her eyebrows and glanced back at him before exiting at the 6th floor. "I'll talk to you more tomorrow," she said
The elevator stopped at every single floor, admitting more and more people. At the third floor the orderly moved forward with the cart, saying, "Excusez moi, tout le monde." After he exited, an Indian man entered and looked at the button panel, then around at the rest of us; in French he asked if the exit for the street was on the first floor, and people nodded yes. Two floors later, he and I got off together; he looked both ways, turned to me, and asked, again in French, if the entrance was to the right. I hesitated for a Montreal moment and decided to speak English. 'Yes," I said. "This hospital is very confusing. I've lived here five years and I still have to think where I am in it."
He looked at me with relief and answered, as I'd suspected, in excellent English. "Yes, I know what you mean. I'm just getting used to it." We talked until we reached the lobby; he said goodbye and went out the front door while I went down the corridor leading to a side entrance where J. had said he'd pick me up. By the door I stopped and pressed the button beneath the hand-sanitizer dispenser and rubbed my hands together, wondering if it actually made any difference at all, and stepped out into the fresh air.
(Note: Not to worry, insh'allah, this is just the time of year when I have all my routine preventive checkups and medical tests. Today it was a visit to the eye doctor...Health is not a subject I especially like writing about; it's too personal for me, and also too fraught with anxiety and politics familiar to me from our work connected with health care reform. But the mix of recent news and my own day's activities seemed too relevant to ignore, though what I was most interested in were the human interactions in the hospital spaces.)
