Still Today

Still Today — the AI-made song and lyric film made from this essay (captions available). Watch on YouTube →

There is a part of being sick, or of maybe being sick, that nobody gives a name to. It is not the test. The test has a time and an address. Somebody tells you what to bring and what not to eat, and a nurse calls your name, and then it is over. The hard part comes after, on the drive home, when the paper they gave you is folded in your pocket and the only instruction left is: wait.

They called my name at a quarter to nine,
a needle, a gown, a signature line;
now a slip of paper sleeps in my coat,
and “wait” is the only word that they wrote.

Waiting for a result is its own kind of weather. The phone gets heavier. Every unknown number is the one. You read the same few lines on a screen until they stop being words. At night the mind does what minds do with a blank: it writes an ending, and it almost never writes the kind one. By the third day you can feel as if you have already been told something, when the truth is that nobody has told you anything at all.

Here is the plain thing I want to say: nobody has called yet, so today is still today. Whatever the result turns out to be, your fear is not writing it, and your rehearsing at three in the morning is not changing a word of it. What you can still decide is what happens to the days in between. They are not a waiting room you have to sit in with your coat on. They are days. You can eat a real meal in them. You can sit on the step with the cup in both hands. You can laugh at something, and the laughing does not mean you are not taking it seriously.

That is easy to write and hard to do, so here are some smaller things that help with the waiting itself.

Before you leave the test, ask two questions: who will tell me the results, and when? Every guide to a test on scarletbeast.com ends with questions to ask, and this is one of them for a reason. A wait with an edge on it is easier to carry than a wait with no end. Write the answer down, on the card the guide gives you or on the back of the paper in your pocket. If that day comes and goes and nobody calls, you are allowed to call them. Asking is not being a bother. It is your body and your news.

Before I left I asked the nurse, plain and slow,
who’s going to tell me, and when will I know;
I wrote it on the card beside the bread,
and if the day goes quiet, I can call instead.

Some results come quickly and some do not. The site’s page on a liver biopsy, for example, passes on that the results come in a few days or longer. A long wait does not, by itself, tell you what the answer is.

Do not wait alone if you do not have to. Tell one person, and tell them what you need, which is often not advice. Sometimes it is just someone who will text you at four o’clock, the hour you said the call might come. If you go back to hear the result in person, you can bring someone with you, and they can write down what is said while you listen. Fear makes it hard to hold on to what you hear. That is not weakness. It is what fear does to a room.

And if the waiting turns into something heavier than worry, if you are scared of what the results may say in a way that makes you think about not being here, call or text 988, any hour. If someone has trouble breathing, or faints, call 911.

I will not tell you it will be good news. I do not know, and nobody who loves you knows either, which is part of why the waiting is hard for them too. What I can say is that whatever the call says, it will be about your body. It will not be a verdict on whether you were worth the worry. You were a whole person the morning of the test, and you are one today, and you will be one on the day the phone rings, whatever it says.

Whatever it says, it will speak of my body,
not whether I was worth the worry.
I was whole the morning they called my name,
I’m whole tonight, and when it rings, the same.

So if you are in the waiting right now: put the phone face down for an hour. Open the window. Call someone about something else. Nobody has called yet. Today is still today, and it is still yours.

Nobody’s called yet,
so today is still today.
I’ll warm the cup in both my hands
and let the morning stay.

If you are waiting on a result

• Before you leave the test, ask who will tell you the results, and when. Write the answer down.
• If that day comes and goes and nobody calls, you are allowed to call them.
• Some results take a few days or longer. A long wait does not, by itself, tell you what the answer is.
• Tell one person, and tell them what you need. You can bring someone with you to hear the result.
• If you are scared of what the results may say, or thinking of ending your life, call or text 988, any hour. Trouble breathing or fainting: call 911.
• Free guides for getting ready for a test, each with its questions and a card to print. They keep nothing: Medical tests: find the right page.

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