Chapter 9
As we walk in, I look around. Not one of my platoon members is here. We sign in and are sitting down when the nurse opens the door that leads to the examination rooms.
“John Bates.”
“Here,” my father calls in surprise, looking away from the magazine he had picked up. Normally, it takes hours to see the doctor. My father puts down the magazine, and we follow the nurse back through the door that separates the patients from the doctors. The nurse checks my weight, my height, my temperature, and my blood pressure and leads us back to exam room number three. My father has not yet even picked out another old magazine before the doctor comes in. Dr. Wilson has been my government assigned doctor since I was an infant, but it is not Dr. Wilson who comes through the cream door dressed in a white jacket with the medical folder displaying my name on it.
“Where is Dr. Wilson?” my father asks with his body tense as he thumbs through a magazine that is over three years old. By his tone, I can tell my father is concerned. He has taught me to know my surroundings and look for inconsistencies. Already, yellow flags of warning are going up in my mind. Between us getting a request for an unscheduled exam and getting into our appointment immediately, and now a new doctor we have never seen or heard of, something is not right.
“He’s on vacation,” the doctor answers.
I look at my father questioningly. I have never known Dr. Wilson to take a vacation. “I’m Dr. Smith and I am filling in for Dr. Wilson for a short time.” My father nods, but he is examining Dr. Smith, and I can tell he is not fully accepting his explanation of Dr. Wilson’s whereabouts. But he sits down and proceeds to thumb through the aged magazine.
Dr. Smith checks my reflexes, examines my eyes, looks into my throat and my ears, and does all the other things that have been done at my other checkups. But then for the first time ever, he orders a number of tests to be done: blood work, x-rays, MRIs. I have always spent as little time at the doctor’s office that I possibly can get away with, but even I know getting all these tests will take all day, if not the rest of the week. But after Dr. Smith walks us to a separate waiting room, where people wait to get their blood work done, we are seen right away. Then again at the x-rays and MRIs, we are given first priority.
So after only a few hours, we are once again in exam room number three. We both sit in silence, but I can tell something is not right. I am unable to put my finger on it, but I know the State would never bother putting these types of resources into any individual unless they had a reason. A reason that would benefit them. But I am only a fifteen-year-old with little to no great accomplishments. I’m smart but not a super genius.
My father sits quietly with his eyes closed. He must be trying to understand what is on going with his only son.
Still, after all these tests, I assume they will find nothing. I’ve never been sick, have always exercised, and eat very well; surely nothing is wrong with me. So it comes as a surprise when the doctor comes in, carrying a stack of test results, that his face is grave and stern. I am leaning against the examining table. Father is still sitting quietly, meditating like he is in another universe.
“Mr. Bates, John, I think you better sit down for this.” I hop up on the examining table. “No, John, I think it would be better, if you sat in one of the chairs,” he says, pointing to the black plastic chair next to the one my father is already sitting in.
I slide off the exam table and sit, my father now has his eyes open, looking directly at Dr. Smith, waiting on news that seems to be urgent. “I’m sorry to be the one that has to tell you this but John has hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.”
“What does that mean?” my father asks, putting his arm around me.
“Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is a disease of the heart muscle in which a portion of the heart muscle is thickened.”
“When did this happen? How did it happen?” my father questions, giving the doctor his full attention.
“Most likely, John was born with this condition and over time for reasons we’re unsure of, his heart began to thicken,” the doctor says as he rustles through his pile of papers, to find some sort of literature on the subject. He gives a pamphlet to my father, who ignores it and presses the doctor with more questions.
“What?” my father questions the doctor, almost yelling, with his stern voice. “How can that possibly be? We have no family history. John is healthy as a horse, and now you tell me he has a heart problem?”
I have never seen my father this way. He is always calm and collected and has always instructed me to control my emotions or they will control me. My mind is becoming foggy, unclear, with this horrific news. I am going to die. It is a death certificate. No more credits. I will be deemed unworthy. Dad and Mom will have to feed me on their credits until I will perish. The Johnson children will now die because no extra food will come for me from the Young Army.
“Sometimes these things just happen.” I can tell the doctor is concerned with my father’s reaction, but he maintains his composure. “See here,” the doctor says, pulling out a picture of a heart, which really could have been anyone’s heart. “This is John’s heart and this is what a proper heart should look like.” He pulls out another picture of the heart, and honestly I can’t tell the difference between the two pictures.
I can tell my father isn’t buying what the doctor is selling. “Why hasn’t anyone ever noticed this before?”
“Besides his heart, John seems like a perfectly healthy young man. Sometimes people don’t think to check these things.” The doctor opens his clipboard. “We need to take care of this right away. Birmingham is the best place. Do you think you can have John in Birmingham at the UAB Hospital by Monday?”
They are going to treat me? Why? Why me? Are there not hundreds of others who deserve the help more than I? I have never seen the State move like this for anyone, and now they are going to go through the expense of helping me, a fifteen-year-old in a small city, heal my heart. I know I am in the Young Army, but to go through such an expense makes me question their motives. For a moment, I place my right hand over the place where my heart is and feel my heart beat, trying to see what the doctor is even talking about. I feel no abnormality or shortness of breath. Just the day before, I had taken on the State’s most elite tactical group and felt no residual affects, and now this doctor is telling me I have a major heart issue!
“Monday?” My father leans forward in his chair, his whole face questioning the doctor.
“Yes, we’ll make sure you have a pass for work and tickets loaded to both of your watches, so you may take him.”
“Surely there are other patients in line for a surgery like this?”
“Of course,” the doctor says, his hands waving off my father’s question, “but the government feels they have an investment here with your son. His potential to serve the greater good is vast, and the time and money already put into him in training, food, clothes, and equipment warrants his move to the top of the list.”
I guess I should feel honored that the State finds me so valuable. But how many people have suffered and suffer now because the State does not see their value, or cares what happens to them or their family, based on a system they have implemented? Where is the humanity of saying that one individual is more valuable over another, yet here we are. It just happens, for whatever the reason, my life is considered valuable enough by the State to be given this treatment.
Fear starts to fill my breast, not knowing what will be asked of me now that I am receiving such attention, something I don’t want to even conceive. What will they want in return for such a gift?
Saying we have no other choice is an understatement, so of course, my father answers, “We will be there.” He is shaking his head as if he doesn’t quite believe the words of the doctor, but what can we do?
There’s no option for a second opinion. It is surgery or nothing, not doing what the doctor deems medically necessary for you could warrant your dismissal from all
medical care for your entire life. When a government doctor says it is so, it is so. If I don’t get the treatment, I might be taken away from my parents, the State accusing them of child abuse and placing them in jail, with me forced to get heart surgery, anyway. Why now? How did this ever come to this point, my mind again is filled with uncertainty. I can only imagine what my mother will think when she is told concerning the heart surgery.
“John, of course, is not to attend school until he has recovered from surgery. We don’t want to push that heart of his. I will call the school today and let them know that you’re permanently excused.”
My father nods with blank eyes, eyes that no longer seem to see the white and cream examination room but are somewhere else entirely. My father, who has always been a picture of health and vitality in my life, suddenly seems frail and old. I have to help him out of the black chair, out of the exam room, out of the doctor’s office, out of the elevator, and out of the glass and metal building.