She adjusts herself on the sheet. The technician straps her in and steps out of the room. The table slides her towards the scanner’s large ominous doughnut.
“Hold your breath,” the computerized voice says. A whir, then: “Breathe.”
They saw it first on the x-ray, the little dot now an invading force. “Hold your breath.” Pause. “Breathe.”
It colonized one lung, lymph nodes, spleen. “Hold your breath. Breathe.”
This is what it must feel like to be Iraq, she imagines. “Hold your breath.” Her bones ache with cellular Abu Gharibs and Basras. How much has fallen?
“Breathe.”
“Hold your breath.”