"It's cree-sin. You know, like crease in the pants."
"Ohhhh." Blank stare. "Are you German?" Ya, think blondie? Now copy my insurance card so I can sit down and start reading the tattered copy of People while I wait an hour for the stupid doctor. And then I hear my mother in my head, "Be polite, Gretchen." I smile at the woman.
"German and Italian." I pause. "Uh, about how long is the wait?"
"About ten minutes," she chirps back. Liar.
54 minutes later, the fat little nurse bursts through the door right as I'm about to find out the secret to thin hips without exercising or dieting. "Gretchen Cry-son?" Don't these people talk to each other? I abandon the magazine, making a mental note to look up the answer on the Internet because if it's in People and on the Internet, then you know it's true.
She guides me to the interrogation room. "How are you today?" Why are you asking me this? You aren't really listening to the answer. And it's stupid. If I was doing just fine, I would not be here. I would be somewhere with cookies.
"My leg hurts," I mumble. She's totally not listening.
She writes something on the chart and walks out saying, "The doctor will be right with you." Liar.
24 minutes later he stumbles in, reading my chart. "How are we?" I don't know how WE are. I'm having leg troubles. Can we just talk about the leg? We're here to talk about the leg.
"Great." The leg.
"What do you do for a living, Gretchen?" First of all, I would prefer Miss Kriesen. We're not chums. Second, that has nothing to do with the leg which, let's try to stay focused, is why we are here.
"I'm an engineer." Hey, they've been lying to me, I figure I'll lie right back
to them. I want to tell him I'm a writer, but it will be further questions, I'll feel the need to qualify it, and we'll really just waste time that could be spent talking about the shooting pain in my leg when I run.
"That's a very interesting profession for a woman." Seriously? "So I see you have pain in your knee, quad, and the top of your right foot. Have you stopped running?"
"No."
"Stop running." And that's the diagnosis. I've taken two hours out my day to have my name mispronounced, to be lied to, to not find out the secret to think hips without diet and exercise, and to be told by Dr. Obvious to do something I already knew but have no intention of doing. Awesome.
