Rain hammers at the window as Androulla hoists herself up onto the examination table. It spans the wall of a utilitarian office above Makarios Avenue, a street vibrant with swimwear shops and, now, girls shrieking to escape the weather. The window rattles. Turning her head, Androulla notes that its sill could do with a clean.
“We’ll check everything,” the doctor says, brandishing his transducer, “to be sure. Lay back.”
Androulla draws her knees up. The paper towel shifts up the table with her, and she leans forward to straighten it. As though oblivious, the doctor advances. Androulla stammers apologies as she fumbles with her zip. She didn’t know, when she pulled on her jeans this morning, that she would be shimmying out of them on her back. If she had, she might have worn looser trousers. Or accepted her mother’s offer to accompany her to this appointment.
“For all the cowboys they have here,” Olympia had muttered, this morning.
“Lift up,” the doctor says.
Olympia is wrong about Cyprus, Androulla tells herself as she pulls up her top. Her first short sleeve of the year. The rain comes harder at the window.
“Up,” the doctor repeats, exposing the band of Androulla’s bra.
Her cheeks warm to a matching red. Before she can ask the doctor what he is doing, why he needs to see her undressed, he spurts cold gel onto her stomach.
“Relax.”
“Sorry. It tickles,” she says, as her gasp gives way to a giggle.
He is rubbing the gel around her stomach with the nose of the transducer, making her tense up.
“Relax,” he says again, this time looking away.
She follows his gaze along the wire to a hulking grey machine. On top of it, a screen echoes her insides in black-and-white. She turns her eyes up to the ceiling, commanding her body to soften as the transducer digs deeper into her abdomen. Her bladder cries out, sharply.
“Okay,” the doctor murmurs.
Androulla catches the scent of coffee on his breath. The pressure moves higher up her torso, over her belly button and ribs. As he comes to her breasts, she stills. She takes in his grey stubble and his sun-ripened skin, the rectangular lenses through which he is staring back at her. The cold creeps over her chest before he retracts his transducer.
“Turn your head,” he says.
Heart thudding, she looks to the window. It is a panel of grey, a rare sight in Cyprus. Androulla wills the rain to wash away her discomfort as the pressure returns to her neck. This is it, she thinks. The doctor pauses over the lump that she has been prodding for days. It isn’t a visible protrusion, but one that she felt as she rubbed at the base of her neck. A hardened ball, about the size of a pea, that slid out from under her finger like it didn’t want to be discovered. Not until it had grown, Androulla feared, into something larger and altogether more sinister.
The doctor lets out a grunt. She looks sideways at him. He is leaning closer to the screen, pressing harder at her neck until the growth catches and she whimpers.
“Turn on the other side,” he instructs her, pulling back.
Androulla does as he says. “Am I okay?” she asks, in a voice made small by the weight upon her windpipe.
The doctor keeps his lips pressed firm until the machine gives him an invisible sign.
Finally, he lifts her right forearm. “Where was the previous cyst?” he asks.
She points to the pink-white scar beneath her elbow, grimacing at its tenderness under the transducer. Then she exhales.
“Okay,” the doctor says, as he hangs it up.
