Page 25 of Four Weekends and a Funeral

“No pressure,” she assures me. “But I have to say, I thought you’d be more excited.”

Josh’s knock against the glass interrupts our conversation. “He’s gone.” Josh looks left and right before he mimes strangling himself.

He can hardly wait until our office door is closed to spill. “I hate that you guys aren’t HR.”

“Does Kyle still have a bee in his bonnet about ‘reply all’ emails?” Patty prods.

Josh types so furiously, smoke should be pouring from his keyboard. “I can neither confirm nor deny,” he says.

Underneath his buttoned-up corporate drone appearance, Josh is a massive gossip. I suspect it’s why he went into HR. A healthy penchant for gossip is my favorite trait in officemates, but since Josh is cursed with a confidentiality requirement, our meeting postmortems require a bit of inference.

My inbox dings with a new email from HR detailing the grievances of an “anonymous” concerned team member on email reply etiquette.

I snort. “Josh! Let Kyle get back to his desk before you unmask him as the email hall monitor.” I’m 87 percent sure Kyle steals my Sharpie rollerball pens when I leave for the day, but he’s still a person.

“If someone wants to waste my precious time detailing their every minor issue to HR, they should be named and shamed. I don’t want anyone thinking I’m personally upset about email etiquette or deviating from the fridge cleaning schedule.”

Patty’s index fingers are poised above her keyboard for her tiny game of whack-a-mole. “Joshy, no one suspects you care about the chore wheel. We see how little effort you put in when it’s your turn.”

“And everyone knows if it weren’t for Kyle, you’d be on Reddit all day,” I pile on.

Josh never ceases typing as he raises his eyebrow in challenge. “Oh yeah, Mullally? As opposed to all the time you spend logging self-help books on Goodreads? The dry-erase board behind you is reflective.”

“Leave her alone. She’s had a tough week.” Patty steps in as mother hen.

I change the subject. “Josh, do I have enough vacation stored up to go to South America in January?”

“You? Probably. You never go anywhere.”

“You’re going on the trip? Is it for Sam?” Patty’s heart is in her eyes, as if this might be a display of doomed romance and not whatever indescribable part of me needs to do something like this even if the idea of backpacking through mountain ranges without access to plumbing makes me shudder.

“Maybe.”

On my way out the door for the day, I pop into my boss Daniella’s office to let her know I’ll be leaving early for an appointment.

“Put yourself on my cal next week to talk about Patty’s position,” she says, because Daniella Torres is the kind of corporate American who chops one syllable off of words for efficiency and uses synergy unironically.

The coffee in my stomach turns at the thought of meeting with Daniella to discuss a promotion I’m not sure I want, but that’s a problem for Next Week Alison. Between packing my ex’s apartment, playing the bereaved lover in front of the actually grieving best friend, and the ovarian ultrasound I nearly forgot about, This Week Alison’s dance card is full.

For lunch, I eat a sad, wet turkey sub—it’s been sitting in the office fridge for so long, I don’t dare calculate its age—and pass the jealous faces of my coworkers who incorrectly assume I’m leaving early to enjoy a long weekend in the crisp afternoon air. Instead, I drive to the imaging center, fantasizing about alternate Friday afternoons for alternate Alisons with unremarkable breast tissue and ovaries.

Dragging my feet into my semiannual ovarian ultrasound, I flop onto a gray couch with uninviting wipe-clean fabric. I try to occupy myself with my phone but am immediately foiled by a text notification from my mom. It’s a link to an article, showing only the title: “Facing Hereditary Risk: Why Are These Empowered Women Preventatively Removing Their Fallopian Tubes?”

Irritation swells in my belly at my mom’s obvious ovarian agenda. She stopped ramping up to BRCA chitchat long ago, preferring to open with some variation of “Remember your ovaries? They aren’t safe either.”

I stuff an AirPod in my right ear; press play on my latest audiobook, featuring a man who shakes himself awake from his unfulfilling life by quitting his job to bike from Oregon to Patagonia; and hide my mom’s message in my pocket—out of sight, out of mind—until a nurse in scrubs calls my name. A giant diagram of a woman’s reproductive organs greets me on the other side of the double doors.

As someone who’s had mammograms, breast ultrasounds, and chest MRIs multiple times per year for the past six years, I’m no stranger to an unpleasant examination. Still, the ovarian ultrasound takes the cake.

The problem with this exam is that ovaries are hard to image, making ovarian cancer difficult to detect. But since my BRCA mutation is linked to an estimated 46 percent risk of developing ovarian cancer in my lifetime, frequent ovarian ultrasounds are a necessary evil until I remove the spiteful little sacks.

After I change into a gown, the ultrasound tech gestures for me to lie back on the exam table, which looks like an unholy marriage of gynecological stirrups and a La-Z-Boy, and starts in with the transabdominal ultrasound. The warm gel on my belly does nothing to offset the overall chill of the cold, dark room. We stay there for a couple of images before it’s time for the main event: the transvaginal ultrasound. A transvaginal ultrasound involves inserting a long, thin wand—covered with a plastic sheath and conducting gel—into my vagina. Fun, right?

What makes this experience so uncomfortable is not the length of the procedure (no more than ten minutes) or even the size of the ultrasound wand (though it’s not small). It’s how the ultrasound technician roots around my body in search of each ovary.

“Excited for the weekend?” Marie, today’s ultrasound technician, asks.

Am I excited to pack my dead ex-boyfriend’s belongings with his friend who obviously doesn’t want me around? No.

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