Nonfiction by Kate Marshall

“So many of my patients love the bridge,” the new bone doctor says, readjusting his lowriding mask.

“All well and good, but I’m really not a bridge person.” We’ve just talked about bone-enhancing medications after and I’ve brought up how if I succumb, I might not be eligible for certain dental procedures should the need arise.

The doctor tells me about other options; self-administered daily shots, twice-a-year infusions, and a once-a-month new-improved coated esophagus burner.

I nod and stare at a series of anatomical charts of urogenital and skeletal systems, predominately male, anchored to the off-white walls, while the doctor types into his web portal. I don’t say that copays for the shots and infusions could run 50 grand a year with insurance.

“Hmmmmmm. We wouldn’t want you to fall and break a hip.”

“No, we wouldn’t want that.” I think of my aunt who’d fractured a hip after being knocked over by a neighbor’s Irish Setter after a bird club meeting. Aunt’s final bedridden years bemoaning life’s unfair burdens and cursing the neighbor and her horrible red dogs before her lungs gave out in the middle of a particularly dark night.

“Let’s take another peek at your results.” He readjusts his mask while he studies my longitudinal DEXA scans, which peg me as having the bone mineralization strength of an eighty-five-year-old woman despite my being twenty years younger.

As I wait for further wisdom or elaboration, I slide back that day in Nepal. My Ph.D. reward trek that included a four-week stint in a Buddhist monastery. On that day the wind was up, the river wide and the canyon walls high. The slated wooden footbridge swayed over the water. Most of our group had decided to cross upstream beyond the canyon. Three of us hefty Americans and a Nepali guide elected to walk the bridge. We ignored the sign in Nepali, English and French, forbidding more than two at a time on the bridge at the same time. I followed the marathon runner, and my pot-smoking friend, Big Jake from Fraser, Colorado who lumbered across with the help of some black market weed he’d secured in Kathmandu. From the far side, he and the runner waved, shouting encouragement.

If they could do it, I certainly could. I was prepared for the wind-sway and could fight the urge to look down. Don’t slip, don’t fall, eyes on the prize. Don’t look down. Don’t look down. One step at a time. As the bridge shook, I brought in every self-help cliché until I came to a section where loose and missing boards had opened a one-meter gap. Was that what Big Jake was trying to convey with all his shouting? I looked back at the guide who watched silently from the start side.

Just do it, the marathon runner yelled. Three feet is nothing. You can’t give up now. Give up? I was at least fifty percent in, and I wasn’t even sure that turning back was a safer option. Up the creek without a paddle. I spat out Buddhist mantras like I was on a timed game show. May all beings have safety including me and be spared suffering and come to equanimity, especially the equanimity part.

The doctor looks up from his computer screen. “If it was my mother or sister, I would definitely recommend medication. Life in a rehab center is not pretty.”

Forward or back. A plunge seems inevitable.

I scratch my cheek through my KN95. “Do you have a sister?” I know I’m playing gotcha. But what else can a woman do when she’s up against a “Good Doctor” and “Doogie Howser” combo?

“I’ll think about it,” I say, after he blushes, shakes his head, “no” and admits he’s an only child.

But I know when I leave, I’ll do my best to move beyond charts and pills. I’ll practice ass-falling without hands until I rewire my instincts. I’ll spend an hour a week one-foot balancing on a yoga block, while repeating the same damn Buddhist mantras that helped me over the chasm in Nepal where in the end I backtracked to the place where I started, joining the upstream group, where we cold-water forged the river, abandoning poor Jake and the runner to finish off the last of the pot.

Kate Marshall is a freelance writer living in Boulder, Colorado. She has been published in 50GS, Iowa Writes: The Daily Palette, The Selkie, The Ravensperch and The Chalice.