One thing about a treadmill
is you don’t get anywhere,
but you do it rather fast.  
And if you stumble, as I’m prone to,
never quite capturing 
that left-right-left-right rhythm—
lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub—
you might get to see the doc a lot quicker
instead of waiting for results
with a roomful of less-than-perfect strangers
pretending to be engrossed 
in Cardiology Today.
 
The med-tech, she warned me, 
that I’ve got to keep up 
or fall off the back of the hay truck.
That’s the way she talked, this country girl
I kept flirting with to keep my mind off my heart, 
moved to the big city to make her way,
but here she is with me,
stuck in another chilly room 
without a single window to look out of
and onto any part of the world. 
Which I’m an hour closer to leaving, and she—
after too long a time with the likes of me—
might really enjoy getting to know.

Though young, it seems like he was born for this,
the way he can tell an old guy
there’s a problem without revealing much at all.
But who could refuse more blood work—
sort of free on Medicare—
though the waiting could wear you down to a nub?
I try my ought-to-be-retired Geritol joke
and he says, What’s that?
and I answer, For tired blood,
and he goes, Hmmph, with half a smile
and one eyebrow gently raised
to acknowledge—while mostly consumed by his phone—
he hasn’t the faintest what I’m talking about.
Then he chokes my arm with a rubber band to pop my vein,
no gentle man, this one, for all his politesse
and says, You’ve got good veins,
and I wish he’d address me as Pop.
And I’d say, Thanks, Son—cause we’re beginning to feel like family—
with all the attending discomfort
of knowing everything about each other
that we’re ever likely to know.
And this visit just the beginning;
and, sure as I’m sitting on the edge of his table
chilled in my undershirt,
it will not be a happy end.