A Quiet Night

Distraction, good

I think most of us had a strange night last night, a stomach-lurching roller-coaster ride—only a brief part of the ride, the part when you teeter at the top of the track and then plunge straight down.

I added an element of extra-strangeness to my night. Earlier in the month, my doctor suggested I get a bone density scan, since it had been several years since my last one. I went online to schedule it, and was puzzled by the hours offered: Six am, six-thirty, and so on. I considered myself lucky to get the latest one, at eight. I knew it would be on Election Day, but I figured I’d get it out of the way early and then have all day to bite my nails.

The automated reminder popped up the night before. I looked, and looked again, and realized it wasn’t eight AM; it was scheduled for eight PM. I couldn’t believe the imaging center operated at night. I read the message multiple times, and checked my online medical portal, and indeed it was at night. I thought about canceling: Did I want to drive to Cedars Sinai in the thick of election returns? Wouldn’t we have already popped the champagne?

For whatever reason, the sheer weirdness of the idea—a bone scan, at night, and not just any night but Election night—appealed to whatever part of me likes contrariness and oddity, so I decided to keep the appointment. By the time it rolled around, I was happy to get out of the house; happy to have something to do that had nothing to do with politics.

It was dark and still and deserted outside. The drive from my house to Cedars is usually choked with cars dribbling slowly from one side of the hill to the other, a clamorous mess with lots of stops and goes. This night was eerily quiet. I breezed over the hill, not a car in sight. At the big intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Laurel Canyon, a slim guy with four bulging Trader Joe’s bags skittered through the crosswalk. Was he taking snacks to his Election Night party? Were such parties still raging, or had they quietly disbanded, as the returns poured in?

The Imaging Center is usually bustling, the waiting room full of impatient people staring at their phones. It was empty enough that I once again wondered if I had misread the appointment time; I didn’t even see someone at the front desk. Finally, a drowsy young man appeared, logged me in, and directed me to a secondary waiting room down the hall. I had decided to enjoy this interlude away from the news, and luckily the television in the waiting room was playing an endlessly looping public service announcement about the value of regular colonoscopies.

After a few minutes, a cheerful woman ushered me into the room for the scan. I wanted to ask her what it was like to be cosseted away in her soundproof, lead-lined room as the world outside was in free fall, but then I decided to embrace the moment of detachment, splayed on the table with the scanner arm poised above me, ticking up and down and measuring my bones, as if it were an ordinary night.