‘Round Here

90s alternative, MRIs, and existentialism

The room with the MRI in it was surprisingly huge, like a petite airplane hangar. They took my glasses, throwing the far walls into blurred shapes and shadow and making the wispy painted clouds on the ceiling appear even more lifelike, even tricking me into thinking they were moving at times.

I jumped a bit as the tech heaved the door shut, not expecting the unmistakable sound of suction.

I should have probably anticipated the suction from the spaceship aesthetics of the entry itself: the outside of the door was framed in metal, but the door itself was some kind of wood or plastic that looked wood-like. There were glowing green lights around the frame and a large yellow picture of a fire fighter that stated, rather emphatically, “FIRE FIGHTERS STAY OUT”, immediately calling to mind an assortment of improbable events that would lead to my imminent and horrifying death.

I had taken, as the triage nurse had suggested, “a happy pill” — even though they promised my head wouldn’t be in the impossibly narrow tube of doom. “Ankle and knee. You should be fine.” And even still, as the oddly comfortable human sized tray slid me in, my heart rate skyrocketed. (For the record, my head wasn’t in the tube, but it was damn close.)