“This is bus route 151-Sheridan and Belmont!” The bus driver barked at the commuters impatient to board: “let the passengers depart!” The bus driver’s violent braking nearly propelled Saul directly into an attractive brunette who looked up at him and smiled. Thus, he prepared to exit at his stop with real style. He pushed back his thick, white hair-so what if it was white? Hell, at least he HAD hair! Saul listened for the beeps of the ‘kneeling’ bus, but they never came. He stretched his short legs to accommodate the distance between bus and street, but the gap was just too great. In the end, he hopped down, looking less like the debonair older man and more like a black frog. He projectile landed in mushy grey snow.

He looked at his formerly immaculate black leather boots and sighed. “That’s what I get for trying to impress the ladies”. As if any woman would be impressed at an older man trying to look smooth on his way to a doctor’s appointment. Hurry! Saul knew if he didn’t book it, he would wait longer than two hours from start to finish because Dr. Garcia’s office always overscheduled and one needed a cushion of at least an hour.

He hungered for a steak and eggs breakfast, the sort so appealing presented in the picture at the corner diner…but damn it, this was a fasting appointment! And all because of some random presence in the last blood test called “little protein A”. For something like that he couldn’t even ease the little grumbling miseries in his stomach? What had possessed him to make an appointment at 8:00 A.M. downtown? Oh yeah-it was because he was having chest pain and feared a stroke-or worse. He’d barely made it out the door in time to get the bus.

Irritable, hungry and breathless, Saul settled into a corner chair in the waiting room and grabbed a current (miraculous!) New Yorker another doomed patient left behind. If he didn’t sit in this corner he would never hear the nurse when she called his name. By some munificence of the gods, the nurse actually appeared in under an hour. “Sole Meeneendez? ” Really! A Chicago nurse couldn’t even pronounce his name correctly? Before he could protest, he found himself scurrying to keep up with her six-foot-tall stride, anxious not to get lost in the maze of examination rooms.

Once in the cold, small room, Nurse Malaprop painfully but swiftly drew three vials of his blood, weighed him (tsking his extra five pounds) and cut her eyes disdainfully at his ruined boots. She snapped, “Dr. Garcia will be here soon” and slammed the door. She left him there, shivering in his paper gown of one-size-definitely-does-not-fit-all-or-anybody. He swore he could see his breath in front of him. While he waited, he composed a sequel to War and Peace, and was about ready to begin his own feeble protest movement (replete with mass-produced protest signs: We Patients Are Not Taking It!) when Dr. Garcia finally dashed in, as usual, late. She scanned her chart and successfully avoided all eye contact.

“Now why are you here today-Mr.-Mr. Menendez?” She looked confused. “Damn…should I beat her about the ears, scream, or cry? Just 10 hours ago I called the answering service to leave a message for you to call me back! I told you about the knife pain in my right arm and shoulder. Even after that, you said ‘Don’t panic, take two aspirin, and rest, and to come into the clinic at 8:00 A.M., but be sure to fast beforehand.’ Remember? You can’t be older than 40-is your memory worse than mine? Screw this!”

He thought (but was sure he actually said), “I’m not going to sit here pissing and moaning to you. I’d rather die first!” He grabbed his clothes off the door hook, hurriedly covered his rear end with them, and crab-scuttled out of the room as fast as he could, to change in the adjacent bathroom. Maybe then he could exit the examination room with a hint of dignity, but he doubted it.