Joe McGinniss Jr. - Carousel Court

“Where is it coming from?” he says, meaning her anxiety.

She sighs. “You know, the usual tribulations. Can you write me something?”

“What other medications are you taking?”

“Effexor.”

On her way here, stuck in traffic, Phoebe had watched a skinny, wrinkled woman with bleached-blond hair in a floral bikini and Coke-bottle shades push a stroller with two big kids in it along the side of a six-lane thoroughfare. Those kids, she thought, had to be at least seven years old. The woman looked fifty. The exhaust and heat and sun beat down, and Phoebe had wondered how far she herself was from that, how much debt and desperation until she would be reduced to walking through the vapors.

“Where are you from?” the doctor asks.

“Boston. Delaware before that.” She exhales and crosses her legs again, and the doctor’s not looking. “We were moving to New Orleans.”

“And?”

“At one point. Now we’re not.”

“You don’t sound too happy about that.”

“We had other plans.”

He stares at her with a sympathetic smile. “What brought you out here?”

The question makes her femur throb, and she feels a flash of pain from the fourth and fifth vertebrae to the top of her skull. “See this?” She pulls up her top, touches a long thin scar along the right side of her torso.

“Ouch.”

“A UPS truck I didn’t see.”

“What does your husband do?”

A long pause. “A PR firm. He’s a filmmaker,” she says, referring to Nick’s position that prompted the move here. “Produces films for corporate clients, mostly.”

“Get undressed.” He hands her a white paper gown and walks toward the door.

Phoebe watches him go, sees the exam table on the other side of the large office. Before she can say anything, the door closes and he’s gone.

• •

Hung on the wall: a framed spread from the Los Angeles Magazine Best Doctors issue. As she undresses, Phoebe studies the picture of the physician and his wife, casually seated together in an oversize white Adirondack chair. Wrapped around them are two beaming blond children, a pair of Chesapeake Bay retrievers at their feet. She loses herself in the lush green lawn and the sprawling estate. She’s pretty sure they’re not staring down a readjusting ARM. Their smiles are so easy and infectious that she feels the corners of her mouth begin to rise as the physician knocks on the door and pushes it open in one motion.

With Phoebe on her back, the physician slides the paper gown to her hips, leaving her upper body exposed. He presses his fingertips too firmly into her midsection, checking for organ swelling, unusual masses. “What is that?” he asks, breathes in through his nose. “Like cotton candy.”

“Like a teenager?”

He laughs. “Is that the goal?”

“Some days.”

“You have how many children?”

“A son. Two and a half.”

His hands hover over her abdomen. She feels warm and sleepy. Her throat is dry.

“I can’t stand in line at Whole Foods without getting dizzy and my heart racing,” she says.

“Are you sleeping?”

“I keep dreaming about water. About my son drowning. Is that normal?”

His finger traces a thin scar. “Cesarean?”

Phoebe nods. She shifts on the table.

He rests both hands on her forearm. “Recovered nicely. My wife struggled after.”

“She looks well-rested. What does she do for a living?”

“Bikram yoga,” he says flatly. “Spinning. Swimming.”

“I hate her.”

“She gets bored.”

“With which part?”

“All of it.”

“Let me guess: his-and-her vanities.”

“Of course.”

“Hot nanny.”

“Check.” He laughs.

“You’re a cliché. Did she have work done, too?”

“Right here.” His hands press softly against the area just below Phoebe’s navel, where they stay. “Some excess here. Not on you, though.”

She stares overhead, connecting the dots in a single ceiling panel. “I try.”

He stands back, arms folded. “You know what I think?” he says.

Phoebe grips the edge of the exam table with both hands.

“I think you need to give yourself a break.”

“Funny, I was just thinking I’ve been too easy on myself.”

He turns away. Phoebe clears her throat. He pulls on a pair of white latex gloves and says, “Would you prefer that a nurse be present?”

Phoebe shakes her head.

“The anxiety,” he says as he slides his fingers inside of her, “is something worth keeping an eye on.”

Phoebe considers the physician and his firm fingertips. She could lie here for just a bit longer, his fingers inside her, gently being encouraged to give herself a break.

She flinches. Her eyes open. “What are your thoughts about Advair?” she asks.

His fingers slide out. He removes his gloves. “Do you have asthma?”

She sits up, light-headed, the paper gown still at her hips. “The black-box warning from the FDA: Has that impacted your thoughts about prescribing?” She pulls the gown up.

He’s laughing. “This is a first,” he says. “You’re working me?”

“Because it’s really just a product of the stricter FDA guidelines. There’s no new science or interactions that you need to worry about.”

He’s shaking his head with a tight-lipped smile, almost disbelieving, then suddenly with a stern expression, “You’re clearly not playing for the set of steak knives. This is a Cadillac-worthy effort.”

She dresses. He makes no effort to avert his gaze.

“Your practice is about to triple in size.”

“It is?”

She nods.

“What if it is?”

“Any concerns or questions you have about Advair, I’m happy to discuss now or any time. Allergy season is around the corner, we have the number one med, it’s in my portfolio, and”—she exhales—“have I not earned it?”

He laughs. “I do love you guys,” he says. “But this — you’ve set a new standard.”

She mentions the Dodgers and luxury boxes and dinner and other perks, anything he’d like, as she jots her cell on the back of her GSK Pharmaceuticals card.

He takes it and nods. Then he says, “Do you want a name, Phoebe?”

She tilts her head, plays dumb.

“To talk to. To help with these episodes, the anxiety.”

She pauses. “I just need a refill,” she says. “And one that won’t force me to come back every other month for more.”

“I can’t just write you ’scripts without giving you someone’s name.”

“You can do whatever you want.” She’s pressing now.

He’s standing with his arms crossed, leaning against his desk, not buying it.

“It doesn’t stop,” she says. “I go a little nuts. I put a thousand miles on the car in the past two weeks. And no, I don’t sleep. The more tired I am, the more impossible it is to sleep.” She’s lying to him. She won’t admit to the Klonopin blackouts, the inability to drag herself up the stairs, to lay her son down in his crib with a dry diaper and his pacifier and a night-light. She won’t tell the physician that her son falls asleep instantly on the living room sectional, sitting up, then tipping over, falling to the plush carpeting, knocked out from his own marathon days. “It never, ever, ever stops.” She exhales. “This was amusing, though. This was—” She almost says “nice.”

“Get a nanny,” he says, and hands Phoebe a single slip of white paper.

Their hug is tight.

“It’s generous,” he adds. “But you have to watch these. Driving as much as you do.”

“Strong, too,” she says, finally letting go of the physician. “Nice shoulders. Nice life.”

“See you in three months,” he says and smiles. “Rest assured: You’re a very healthy young woman.”