I spent 12 hours in a New York ER last Saturday and upon discharge was given ten pages of test results and now I have more information about myself than I know what to do with.

I went into the ER on my own steam, by taxi, no siren, because I had experienced a few surprising memory lapses (name of principal physician, name of building I reside in, what I did the previous week), blanks that a few minutes of research could’ve filled in, but my love was alarmed so I left the West Side where the novelists live and went to the East Side where the neurologists practice, where they put me through CT, MRI, had me follow their finger with my eyes, and now I’m feeling fine, thank you, but now I must look at long diagnoses of lobes and fissures, global this and that, and the word “transient” bothers me. I know they don’t mean it this way but I imagine myself with baggy pants, holes in my shoes, holding a wine bottle, the kind with a screw top, and I don’t drink.

There was no intracranial haemorrhage, praise the Lord, and I do wish that a neurologist or a physician’s assistant had written “patient was focused and well-spoken and presented a chronic sardonic sense of incongruities that brought care providers to the verge of amusement,” but I will take what I can get, which was discharge and a cab ride home.