Enclosures

I

While the technician prepared the machine and spread the gel on my leg, I asked, "Aren't you going to look at my foot?"

"No," she said. "He wants me to get the veins, thinking maybe there's a clot."

"Oh! That makes sense since my whole leg is swollen, not just the area around the ankle."

I showed her a little bump on the back of my thigh, discovered this morning in the shower. "That's probably just a blood vessel right near the surface. No biggie," she said.

It's a weird thing, lying in a mostly dark room with a machine clicking and whirring at my shoulder, staring at acoustic tiles in the ceiling and reflected in someone else's photographs hung on the wall, while a pleasant stranger is probing into my deep tissue, looking for something out of the ordinary.

Dressing afterwards, I asked, "Mind if I take a picture of that reflection?"

"No, of course not! I thought maybe you wanted to photograph the screen."

"May I?"

"Sure," she said. "After all it's got your name on it and it's your body!"

II

In the car, I wrapped my ankle, and headed out to grab groceries and wash the car.

I love sitting in my car, inside the dark tunnel, facing a treed corner anchored by the Monteagle Inn's sign, letting the car-encompassing machine track itself down and back, spraying and sudsing, brushing and whooshing, rocking the car slightly, creating designs on windows and mirrors. It's almost like being suspended deep in a womb-like whirlpool, only without getting wet.

III

My first day of new enclosures in many days of being shut in proved oddly relaxing (even knowing what the test showed).