I Went to the Doctor and the Doctor Said

"Your blood pressure's up," the doctor says as he reads my chart.

"I thought it might be," I tell him as I wonder what he's scribbling. "I can feel it."

"Not much, but a little," he says.

I think that a little can be enough, but I don't say this.

"Any idea why?" he asks.

"A few ideas," I say, and I drag a couple off the top of the list and hand them over. I always wonder if he really wants to hear these things, or if he's simply like a disinterested spouse who asks just to be polite.

Neither of us is overly concerned, so he moves on to other things. He does some stuff that I don't particularly enjoy but have come to tolerate, and he tells me to make an appointment for a couple months in the future. The woman at the counter takes my money--check or cash, no credit cards or debit cards--and asks me when I want to come back. We negotiate a date, and she uses a pen to write my name in the appointment book. I tell her that using a pen instead of a pencil is a sign of confidence that I'll come back, and moments later I'm on the road back to the office.

That night I never do find a cool spot on either side of the pillow. I toss and turn as quietly as I can and wonder what gets the blame for tonight's insomnia: caffeine, the heat, the things I told the doctor about.

After a few hours of marginal sleep, the alarm sounds and 15 minutes later I'm out the door and on the road to the office again--wash, rinse, repeat. Somewhere in the middle of the day I remember being on a ship down near Guam. I was standing on the catwalk outside the compartment I worked in, gathering fresh air after being cooped up inside with radio receivers and cryptographic equipment and the heat all that gear generated. Other than the sounds of the ship's bow sliding through water and the radar rotating on the mast, there was no sound as I leaned against the guardrail and counted stars. The quietest darkness I've experienced was on a road between Sandy, Utah, and Ely, Nevada. The only thing I could hear when I got out of my car and stood on the pavement was the clicking of the Ford's engine.

Returning mentally from the Pacific Ocean to my landlocked cubicle and the computer screen in front of me, I think of the movie Requiem for a Dream, the scenes in which the television seems to come to life. It's strange to go from being at sea to reviewing last weekend's movie. Maybe it's because as my blood pressure is going up my vision is going down from staring into a computer monitor so long every day, and perhaps the monitor has a life of its own and is plotting something just like the television does in the movie. I jump off the third horse in this daydream trifecta, and I imagine getting into my car and taking a little road trip across the country or at least into the middle of Utah. Just a little jaunt I think right as my email program reminds me I have a meeting in 5 minutes. My monitor seems to flicker a wink at me as I lock my computer. I grab a notebook, find a pen, walk into the conference room, sit myself down, and get my mind back to work.