I have an appointment this morning. I did not set an alarm. With surface streets, the drive should take seven minutes. I know this, but I’m not driving. I’m distracted. So we rely on Google’s capricious maps and seven minutes on the streets becomes 30 minutes of gridlock on the freeway. I leave my mom and wife to park and hurry in without them even though I insisted they both be here with me today. There’s a rotted feeling, like a premonition, that seizes me at the thought of being alone. I will not be alone today, though I will have never felt more alone. But for now it’s fine. Everything is fine. 

The last time I was here, the security line stretched around the clinic. I brace for that, but there is miraculously no line. It is one of few miracles I will experience today. Security is thin and frayed. I place my two items in the small tray and they usher me through. When they ask what glass is contained in my personal items, and I ask if they mean my phone, they do not ask or answer anymore questions. The elevators aren’t working. They don’t go beyond floor two. I need floor three. Security tells me I’ll need to be escorted to the staff elevators. The nurse who has elected to do this is buying her breakfast at a shop nearby. Slowly. I ask if I can take the stairs, the security guard doesn’t know where the stairs beyond the second floor are. My appointment is at 8. It’s 8:05. It’s fine. Everything is fine. 

By the time the nurse wraps up, a motley crew of sick and injured have gathered in wait. She leads us to the elevators, six or seven people already inside as we filter in. I linger at the very back of the group, behind a man in a wheelchair with rods sticking out of his leg. He carefully maneuvers in. It’s a tight fit. I worry that if I join them I’ll jostle his chair and compound his leg trauma. The nurse impatiently waves me in as she allows the doors to shut. I stop them with my foot and squeeze in, cautious. She asks the man if he’s ok, jokes that she’s bumped the odd leg here and there — has heard how painful it can be. He says he’s fine. It’s fine. Everything is fine.

Floor three is as I remember it, save the detour to get here. One extra turn, but there in green is Radiology. I am not here for Radiology, I am here for Mammography, a blazon of pink in the corner of the greater department. I sit in a chair I have sat in before. I apologize for the delay — the elevators are down. They know. They send me to the waiting room with two wristbands, pink and white like the song. My little sister loves Frank Ocean. In the waiting room I check if she’s sent me any new Tiktoks, she has. This is how we communicate most of the time, second to family group chats, trailed at a distant third by phone calls. The last time I called I told her about this appointment. I told her it was just a small procedure. I told her I’m fine. It’s fine. Everything is fine.

They call me in shortly after my mom and wife find me. The elevators are working again, a small mercy for them as they will be sitting in this waiting room for four hours. I am directed into a small room, what they call the consent room. It contains one small desk, a small chair too close to the door, and a swivel chair across from it. They give me the small chair. As they detail the procedure, I am hit by the door twice before they suggest I scoot closer to the desk. This will not be the last time today that I wonder why so many people continue to enter a room I am in without my consent. I elect to take part in a research study. They do not mention I am eligible for it until I get here, but they are offering $100 and I need the money. It would have been $200, but I am too young for the first part of the research: a mammogram. The research seeks to expand the use of a procedure that is standard of care in private facilities. I say I have watched too much Grey’s Anatomy to deny the potential advancement of accessible medicine. At the end of the day I will wonder if Shonda Rhimes is evil. They reassure me it is a safe procedure, with minimal side effects. It is supposed to make the biopsy I am here for more precise. The biopsy I am here for will not feel more precise. I don’t know this yet, because Everything Is Fine. 

Procedure and protocol should be inextricable from one another, but I find the throughline hard to track. I am told what to do, how to do it,  guided from one fray and into the next until I am lying on my side in a cold room with my tits out. This is the second room several people unrelated to my procedure will enter without my consent. I learn procedure and protocol leave little room for my needs as a patient. I have asked to be seen by women and/or non-men. I have been assured this request can be accommodated. The man who assures me of this is one of the many people who will see my breasts today. I should be feeling every bit of my indignation when a male attending enters the room and asks if he can supervise the procedure, but I am distracted. This is an ultrasound guided biopsy. The extractions feel televised. The anesthetic is local, my eyes are open. I watch what they are doing to me. The operating doctor has just pierced my flesh and hasn’t numbed me properly. I tell her this and she asks if I can hold on tight while she wraps up the extraction she’s just perfectly positioned her instrument for. Procedure and Protocol leave endless room for my trauma as a patient. I feel everything until I feel nothing. I am assured it’s fine. Everything is not fine. 

There are two masses in my right breast. I have known this for months. I am grateful to have health insurance, but the bureaucracy of Medi-Cal is a slow churn. The American healthcare system makes numbers of us all. I consider this as they take four samples from each mass. The instrument is loud when it butchers me. I hear the doctors’ triumph each time they successfully remove a piece of my flesh, their disappointment when they do not. When they conclude their taking, they leave behind a small clip in each mass. The name is misleading. The clips won’t stop any bleeding. They will sit in the lesions as indicators of the bodily excavation that has occurred today. The doctors assure me it won’t be a problem in metal detectors. I don’t mention the regularity with which I, a Black person, am patted down in airports. I don’t imagine this will improve with small pieces of metal lodged in my chest. I don’t mention this either. I know the protocol and procedure here. I know the space for my voice is vacuous. I know better than to waste my breath. When they finish, the operating doctor asks if I hate her. I am unsure if she’s referring to the numbing mishap or the several pieces of my flesh she has removed, but I say no either way. Rather, I feel my mouth shape the response. I don’t know if it passes through my lips. For all that I have been listened to, I wonder if I’ve spoken at all. Perhaps the instrument detoured to my vocal cords. Perhaps that is why I did not scream. The doctor cleans up, removes the bloody plastic covering the ultrasound wand. It’s over now. It’s fine. Everything’s fine. 

I am wrapped in gauze, tight, all the way around my chest. When I first realized I was nonbinary, I would often see warnings against leaving chest bindings on for too long. I have never tried to bind before this, though I often wish my breasts would be less visible. It’s the reason I was at the doctor the day they found the first lump. An attempt to begin the journey to gender affirming care culminating in finding even more breast than I should have at all. I find this all very ironic. 

I am instructed to keep the gauze on for 48 hours. I should ask if it is safe for me to do this, but I am distracted. They tell me results can take up to two weeks. They do not give me discharge papers, I do not ask for them. I do ask for a copy of the consent forms I’d signed earlier and the $100 gift card. I will treat my mom and wife to lunch this afternoon. I will spend the weekend googling recovery instructions that will lead to Reddit threads that will make the wait a lot more frightening. I am 27, too old to remain on my parents’ health insurance, but old enough to be penalized for going without it. Too young for a mammogram, but old enough for a breast cancer scare. But it’s fine. Everything is fine. Is this fine?