MRI

"Okay, Miss MacDonald, just climb up on here and lay down for me."

Joyce does as she's told.

"Great." The technician kindly touches her shoulder. "Now get comfortable because we'll need you to lay very still during the scan."

"I'll add this support cushion under your knees." He hoists up a square piece of foam and waits.

Joyce hesitates until Mr. Maseko slides a dark hand beneath her right knee and lifts it gently. She complies, lifting the other knee, and he puts the cushion in place.

"And these side rails will help you relax your arms."

Joyce was instructed that she could not wear any metal for her MRI tonight, so she chose her favourite and most comfortable loungewear set: a soft pink pullover with a large cat face on the front, and matching sweatpants with the word "Purrfect" along the butt.

"This is the panic button." Maseko pulls a type of squeeze ball attached to a long pneumatic tube from the wall and hands it to her.

"If at any point you need to stop, just squeeze this and we'll come let you out, okay?"

"I am nervous, Dr. Maseko." Joyce admits.

"Oh, it's just Mr. Maseko. And that's okay, it's normal. But everything will be fine, and we're here to look after you."

It's late. Joyce's appointment was set for 11:15pm. Normally, she would be at home watching television with her cat, Phillis, after a long day at the department store. They both love detective shows and true crime documentaries.

"Let's put these on your head. They'll block out much of the noise from the machine, but also allow you to listen to the music you've selected, and to hear me over the intercom in the booth just over there."

Joyce wiggles her ears under the large headphones. Earlier, she asked to hear Alanis Morissette's "Jagged Little Pill" during the scan. Alanis always makes Joyce feel strong and free, and she figured it would help in such a space that makes her feel scared and constrained.

Her relationship to healthcare spaces has always been complicated. Hospitals and other such places, in which guests are generally referred to as "patients", make her terribly anxious. And yet, she's always been attracted to doctors and men in healthcare. She feels relaxed by their warm authority and sense of control in a space that is so often sterile and cold.

"Finally, I'm going to put this frame piece over your head that will improve the brain scan. All this will help us determine what might be the cause of your migraines, okay?"

Maskeo touches her shoulder again.

"Okay, Dr. Maseko" says Joyce.

"Mister. Now I'll ease you into the machine..."

Joyce's bed-like platform is slowly inserted into the large, cylindrical machine. It's a very tight space. She takes a deep breath.

"Okay, Miss MacDonald, are you ready?"

"I think so."

"Great, I'm going to head into the booth, and you'll hear me through the intercom in a few moments."

At the lower edge of her sight, she can see the warm pink colour that she chose for the lights in the room. It brings her a little comfort.

"Can you hear me, Miss MacDonald?"

"Mhm."

"Good. Now we're about to get started. You'll hear some odd noises from the machine, but that's all completely normal. Just lie very still for me, and try not to move your head or face, okay?"

"Yes, Doctor."

"Um--here, I'll put your music on now."

Joyce closes her eyes and hears the familiar opening of her favourite album. Electric guitars play around each other as a harmonica fades in and out. Then Alanis sings.

"Do I stress you out? My sweater is on backwards and inside out and you say, 'how appropriate'."

Hearing her old friend, Joyce feels a little more at ease. And she thinks of her teenage son. Mark lives in a neighbouring city. He moved in with his father after he and Joyce split up. There was no resentment in his choice; Mark simply wanted to follow his boyhood idol. But it still stung. She felt doubly abandoned and desperately uninteresting. Joyce remembers how Alanis helped her through that time. How she helped her regain some confidence.

"Okay, Miss MacDonald, I'm going to--"

"Please--Call me Joyce."

There's already something deeply intimate about the experience. Dr. Maseko's soft, low voice in her ears, the tight space, the dim lighting, the late hour, and her overwhelming sense of vulnerability.

"Oh, uh...okay, Joyce. I'm going to start the first set of scans. Just relax and try to remain still."

As the whirring and distorted, electronic sounds of the MRI machine fight to wrest her attention away from the music, Joyce tries instead to imagine things that usually help her to relax.

There's a lavender scented candle in her living room. She always loved that smell. The colour, too. In high school she had a tie-dye shirt dominated by a pale, blueish purple. Though it was just a cheap shirt she dyed herself, she loved the way it draped over her perky, braless chest. To this day, Joyce is convinced it played a critical role in catching the eye of a classmate whom she lured into a small closet during a house party. They made out in the dark for twenty minutes surrounded by someone else's clothes.

"Okay, Joyce, you're doing great. I'm going to adjust the machine and do the next set of scans."

She finds his voice very soothing, too. It's low and mellow, with just a hint of a grainy edge.

Joyce gently flexes her elbow to bring her right hand into her lap and waits to see if Dr. Maseko has anything to say about the movement. The machine initiates a new set of pops and thunks, but he adds nothing.

Longing to hear his voice again, she imagines they're now in a closet together. The scent of clean denim and shirts washed with an unfamiliar detergent fills the air around them. His voice gently rumbles by her ear, muffled in the confined space.

"An older version of me. Is she perverted like me? Would she go down on you in a theatre?" Alanis sings.

Joyce dares to stroke herself through her sweatpants for just a moment. Then she waits, frozen.

"And every time I scratch my nails down someone else's back I hope you feel it," Alanis continues in her slightly unhinged way.

Joyce gently rubs her fingers over her crotch again.

"Is everything okay, Joyce?" Maseko chimes in over the intercom. "We're progressing well."

"Yes, sir, thank you. I mean--Doctor. I'm fine." She doesn't remove her hand so as not to draw further attention.

"Okay, then I'm going to go ahead and continue."

Back at that party, so many years ago, she trembled, overwhelmed by what she'd managed to accomplish. She'd successfully coaxed that boy into a strange closet with her, but it had taken all her focus to maintain an air of seductive confidence to do so. Once they swung the door shut behind them, Joyce's sense of her own body changed in the small, dark space. Limbs felt at once too long and too short. The tie-dye shirt was too tight and twisted. And her hair no longer sat right on her head. But the pretty boy didn't seem to notice. Or, if he did, it must have seemed like the gentlemanly thing to do to brush past it and simply kiss her with more gentleness and care. After all, it's not that she wanted to leave.

Joyce drifts back out of her memories. Some time has passed, and she's been passively stroking herself over her sweatpants again. Dr. Maseko seems unbothered, focusing his attention solely on her head. Her knees are slightly raised by the support cushion, and she's encouraged by the assumption that he can't see how she's choosing to distract herself.

Subtly, Joyce slides her hand underneath the waist band of her pink sweatpants. In a self-soothing manner, she plays softly with the curly black hairs her fingertips meet there.

"Okay, Joyce, I know you've been feeling anxious but we're almost halfway through now. I'm just going to remind you to remain as still as possible, okay?"

"Oh, it's okay, Doctor. Take your time. I think I'm okay."

"But that means no moving, Joyce."

Joyce's hand freezes, a coil of pubic hair wrapped around her middle finger. She doesn't know what to say.

"Are we ready to proceed?"

"Dr. Maseko, I just feel more comfortable this way. Is it interfering with the scan? We're only looking at my head, right?" Joyce can't believe she's become so bold.

"I--well, yes, but--"

"It keeps the anxiety at bay. I promise not to move my head, Dr. Maseko."

There's a pause. Alanis fills the silence:

"I'm free but I'm focused / I'm green but I'm wise / I'm hard but I'm friendly, baby.

I'm sad but I'm laughing / I'm brave but I'm chicken shit / I'm sick but I'm pretty, baby."

Maseko finally responds: "I'm starting the next set of scans."

Joyce keeps her head and neck perfectly motionless, dutifully fulfilling her promise. Meanwhile, she's taken the liberty of massaging the soft spot on her pubis, just above her vulva. When her fingertips reach the top of each circle they trace, her clitoris is gently tugged upward. Without concern about achieving an orgasm, she relishes the small sensations and pleasures she gives herself. She feels at ease, in that cramped, loud space. And, surprisingly, in control.

When the two teenagers emerged from the closet, she hoped to return to the party unnoticed. He tried to hold her back, but Joyce explained that her mother would be there to pick her up soon. They parted ways when he said he needed to use the bathroom anyway. Then, when she slipped into the living room, she was quickly swarmed by her closest female friends.

"Oh my God, where were you?" Hannah winked.

"Were you with Marcus?!" Stephanie inquired.

"Holy crap, shut up!" Joyce hushed her friends, trying not to giggle.

She felt embarrassed, but unstoppable. And she loved the attention. She wasn't normally the one to regale the group with salacious gossip or juicy stories about her experiences with boys. Usually because she didn't have any.

"So, did you suck his dick?" Maria reached up and brushed a finger across Joyce's lips.

"What the fuck!" Joyce squealed, batting Maria's hand away.

They all giggled.

With her left arm lain flat, supported by the arm rail Maseko thoughtfully installed, she caresses her hip and shifts her right hand lower to start masturbating in earnest. She taps her clit playfully a few times, then get's down to it. Under the right conditions, in the right mood, Joyce could touch herself without direction for what often seemed like hours. Every now and then she'd lay in bed, or in the bath, and just explore her body, gently encouraging her tensed or sore muscles to melt into her daydream.

"Very good, Joyce. You're doing well. We're almost there."

She lets out a small sigh of satisfaction but maintains her general stillness. Dr. Maseko must be proud of her, she thinks.

When they finally broke up--Joyce and the closet boy--two weeks later, it was over a relatively significant matter. He thought prom was stupid and suggested that he wouldn't be attending.

"It's just a bunch of people playing dress up and pretending they're interesting so that our boring parents can take pretty pictures of us with flowers and ties on," he said, one spring evening on her porch. "It's just so embarrassing."

"What? How can you say that?" Joyce was offended. She hoped they would go together since before they made out in that closet. They sat beside each other in math class, and she admired the sketches he made surreptitiously. One day, he gave her one, and then invited her to his friend's party. She could barely contain herself. To keep her cool, she stared directly at the drawing of a mallard swimming in a kiddie pool when she answered "yes".

"Besides, dancing is dumb. The music will be shit. And I hate dressing up." He continued.

Joyce was really set off now. She didn't notice the insecurities behind his words and focused instead on his unwillingness to take her to the biggest event of their entire high school experience.

"Wow, you're too embarrassed to go with me? You think I'll look too corny in my dress? Will all your cool friends laugh at us?" she said, with venom.

"No, Joyce, that's not it."

"Well, it's important to me! If you're too ashamed to be seen with me, then I guess I'll go with someone else!" She slumped back in her patio chair, angrily flung the hood of her black sweater over her head, and crossed her arms.

"Baby, what are you talking about?"

"Don't! We're through. Get out of here."

"Hey, come on--"

"No!" She shoved him off the porch and stomped back inside the house, slamming the door behind her.

Reflecting now, aroused but calm and confident, Joyce finally releases some of those old resentments. It wasn't about her, she realizes. She didn't have to doubt herself as she did. To question the quality of her looks, or the pleasantness of her personality. Nor even the attractiveness of her nipples peeking through that old, tie-dyed shirt that once made her feel so brave.

"Okay, Joyce. You did great. We're all done. I'll come help you out of there in just a minute."

Maseko enters the room with a clipboard in his hand. He doesn't look at it, but simply holds it by his side. He pushes a button, and the bed starts to retract from the large device.

When she emerges from the cylindrical machine, Joyce feels more relaxed and freer than she can remember. There's a lightness to her body. Maseko removes the supports one after the other with one hand. Joyce sits up and hangs her legs off the side of the bed, facing Maseko. He isn't looking at her, but elsewhere in the room.

"Well, Joyce, that'll be all. Your doctor will be in touch with you in a few days with your results." He continues to look back to the booth in which he sat, both hands holding the clipboard down in front of him.

"Thank you very much, Doctor. You really helped me feel at ease." Joyce gives him a polite, but genuine smile.

"Oh, of course." Maseko has only managed to glance in her general direction a few times, his eyes falling here and there on her pink outfit. When he finally does make eye contact, it's with the smiling cat on her chest.

"Goodnight, Dr. Maskeo." Joyce stands and leaves the room.

After a few moments, once Joyce has had time to leave the radiology department, Maseko leans through the doorway to tell his assistant that he'll need a few moments before the next appointment. He then steps into the restroom, and into a private stall.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" He mumbles to himself.

The technician quickly heaves his throbbing penis out of his metal-free pants and strokes himself feverishly.

"Who the fuck does that?" He goes to spit on his cock but realizes it's completely unnecessary. "What kind of woman...?"

He wonders if she came. No, she couldn't possibly.

Maseko glances at his watch, then doubles his efforts. He closes his eyes, tightens his grip, and imagines how wet she might have been. How it would have felt to kneel her down in front of him, in her pastel sweats, and cram his cock into her mouth. Maybe she would have sucked him off then and there if he hadn't hidden his erection behind his clipboard.

She looked so plain, wore no makeup, and her hair was neatly tied into a ponytail, he recalls. But somehow still so damn hot, with her simultaneously shy demeanour and audacious behaviour.

"Come on, bitch. Take it all in," he whispers to no one. He puts his free hand up against the wall and leans forward.

"That's right, just like that. Don't stop. Right to the back, you slut." He lowers his head and braces himself. "Here it is!"

Maseko comes hard and even somewhat painfully in his haste. He groans quietly as white spurts dress the tank of the toilet in front of him, then ease to a dribble down his knuckles. He sighs, relieved, then lazily opens one eye to peek at the mess before him.

"Fucking hell."