I told myself I would go the following week.
Then the following month.
Then, somehow, a year passed.
I never made the appointment.
I also never told my children about the cyst.
I convinced myself that if something serious had been wrong, I would have felt it.
For years, I had no significant symptoms.
And gradually, the memory of that examination became tangled with the grief of losing Samuel.
I did not know that, somewhere among the papers he had left behind, there was another part of the story.
A part he had never told me.
The following afternoon, Michael drove me to the hospital for the CT scan.
I had fasted as instructed and completed the preliminary blood tests. The radiology team reviewed my kidney function before administering contrast, and the nurse explained the procedure carefully.
I lay on the scanner table, trying not to move.
The machine made a series of mechanical sounds as it passed over me.
