SO NOW THAT YOU’VE BEEN DIAGNOSED!
We are currently serving other patients, thank you for calling. If this is a medical or psychological emergency, hang up and dial 911. We will take your call in the order in which it was received, please hold, do not hang up, your wait is approximately who knows? We have no idea. Of course, this is a lot for you to take in. You have your frequently unasked questions that tambourine against your brainpan. Search our site for latest medical breakthroughs. Doubts will wrangle around like crawfish in the pot on the stove. We’ll always be here for you, 24/7, at least for stretches of weekday mornings. Ignore the chatter and comparable experience tales told by terminally well-meaning mopes who swing on the family tree or inside the office breakroom. We know what we might do, not that we’re here with advice, and your calls may be recorded for retraining purposes. Let’s first agree, keep the Dalai Lama the fuck out of this. What was that? If we were you—wait a second, do we look like your mother? Which means we’re not you—but if we were: Some say rippling koi ponds are good for gloaming-hour reflection, some, the owls that hoot each to each across the dark, some, reading clouds that drift above the bleached hills across an otherwise apricot expanse of sky, and they’re all solid options as far as they go. We understand why you seek, no disrespect, a second opinion. For our money (and we are seriously underpaid, don’t forget), stick with shoreline birds, who are sublimely indifferent to the diagnosis that is you. Sitting on the shore is good for incorporating this news if you ask us, which we told you don’t do, pay attention, but now we’re back on the line till we lose the connection, thanks for holding, we’re underwater, legions out there diagnosed, where were we? Right: the seashore we were just talking about when you were not listening. On the shore, keep locked in on the seagulls, the terns, the pelicans, and especially the snowy egrets and great blue herons, which are easily confused, as you are these days, naturally, because this is a lot for you to take in. See how they fish in the tidal mudflats? Count on us, we are a team, your personal posse of care providers. And then there are the gulls and pelicans that dive-bomb into the surf, sometimes coming up empty, sometimes fat. That’s one lesson perfectly wasted on the likes of us. Like us, you have much to learn about surveillance and impermanence. If you’d prefer to leave us a voice mail, we pledge to someday call you back, because, sure, the canned music gets old fast, another reason to walk the shore. It will cross your mind—Dalai Lama or no: Change your diet, give the vodka a rest, take up Tai Qi. All excellent resolves, but still your thoughts reel and toss like tumbleweed in sand storms across the Mojave floor. You’re really taking in a lot, we know. Yes, we did say that before, and we’ll say it again, and hours from now it’ll still be true. The new pathology report is available for viewing in your personal folder, access through your Personal Record Number (PRN). Please update your password, which we have rejected (URdead2me, come on). We permit no member of our award-winning staff to use the word irony in your immediate vicinity, keep us posted. The physical body is not physical, and beyond the reach of regret, remorse. So hold close to the shoreline, where nobody will remark they know exactly what you are going through. Birds will never say that. They’re too busy in midair or aswim, without a single follow-up appointment beyond the sea, beyond flight, beyond being caught up in the swells of dissolving time. The sea goes on and on and on, as we—and especially now you—will not, and the seabirds’ second opinion is to let go of what’s to come that was never meant to be. Your wait time is more than any of us can bear. Leave a message and we will call you back sometime, when you’re ready to finally listen.
