THE FOURTH EYE TEST

After seeing the neurologist this week, it turned out that my MRI scan would be today. This morning in fact.

“Any piercings, any implants, any tattoos?” asked the radiologist, making sure I’d filled out my form correctly.

Are tattoos magnetic? I wondered, thinking about the multitudes of people out there who’d got tattoos and never realised. Piercings and implants I can understand - you don’t want those things being ripped out of your face and ears by a giant magnet.

I said no to all. I am thankfully unpainted and metal-free.

The scan itself is a bit like preparing to go into space. They made me lie on the sliding bed, gave me two yellow ear plugs and then sandwiched my head between rubber pads. There will be no moving. The nurse gave me a squeezer to hold, presumably an emergency stop, though I couldn’t quite hear what she said once the ear plugs were in. Then she clasped a plastic mask over my head like Darth Vader, and through the two eye holes I saw the roof of the machine as I was slid into it. 

I decided to close my eyes. I figured that was the best way to get through, rather than looking at the strips of electronic lighting that ran lengthways down the machine. And so I did.

It is loud, the MRI scanner. Even with ear plugs in, I was deafened at first, by the thumping, the thudding, the buzzing and the clicking. There is no way I could ever be launched into space. Any longer than fifteen minutes and the sound and the claustrophobia would have got to me. As it was, my eyes were shut, and I was determined to somehow be somewhere else. Somewhere peaceful, far away, where the sun breaks through the clouds in beams, and sparkles its way across the lake. Somewhere, where I can sit at the water’s edge and watch the tiny waves ripple in, and I can breathe: breathe in and out, and in and out, and in. I dug my fingernail into my thumb.

“Hey,” says a voice. He sits next to me on the bank, watching the sun and the lake. “It’ll be okay you know. Whatever happens, it will be okay.” He scoops up a handful of earth and dusts off a stone from the crumbly soil. I smile and watch for a while. He catches my eye and he grins.

I laugh. I can’t tell why, but my face suddenly feels tight, as though those muscles haven’t been used in a while.

He sits there, gently blowing the mud and rubbing the smoothed-out stone. It just catches the sunlight and glistens wet for a moment.

“Is it ready?” I ask. “Is it time?”

He pauses.

“It is always time,” he replies thoughtfully, holding the pebble between a grubby thumb and forefinger. “Some the biggest things can be achieved with the smallest things in time. Often the tiny, hidden stone is enough for the largest and loudest of giants, in time, wouldn’t you say?”

Thud went the machine. It tapped loudly for a while as it fired the last batch of radio waves at my head. One final loud crunching beep, and I slid out feet-first, back into the bright world of the mobile radiotherapy unit at the Bracknell Healthspace.

“There you go,” said the nurse, smiling sweetly. “Pop your ear plugs in the bin and you’re free to go.”

And so I did. And so I was. Hopefully, the results will come through next week. Though of course, it will be okay. It really will.