Note: Dusting off some older drafts, this popped up. This event took place a few years back.

♪If it seems like I’ve been lost In let’s remember♪

I can see the putty-colored wall in front of me. Experience tells me it’s the same all around in this plastic covered tube. I move my eyes around, but all I see is the plastic wall and pillows. So many pillows. I’ve been twisted and stuffed into the tube the way I stuff a washcloth into a narrow jar to clean it. There is nothing orderly about it. The exception is my right shoulder. With much twisting of the rest of me, it is flat in the center of the tube. To hold the position, pillows have been jammed above, behind, and between any space available. Knees bent at different angles and back spiraled, I am not to move. Nor am I to touch the walls, which have become hot from the magnetic imaging take place.

♪If you think I’m feeling older
And missing my younger days♪

My left arm, with the IV trailing from it to the room beyond, is an inch from the top of the tube. The lights of the exam room filter in from the direction of my toes. I try, but can’t see what is beyond my head. Everything is close. The machine doesn’t hum so much as it groans all around me. Loud clicks and movement take place behind the wall I stare at. I think of the garbage shoot Luke, Han Solo, and Leia were trapped in when the walls started closing in on them. I think of the panic button nestled in my hand. In an emergency, I can move my thumb and the staff will be alerted. Occasionally they say things to me. I have to piece together what they say. I can’t wear my hearing aids in here, and the sound through the headphones is garbled and far away. I get phrases like “next one will be 5 minutes,” and “doing good.” Amid the noise is Billy Joel singing about keeping the faith. I wonder if the music is really coming through the headphones or just in my head. The song seems to never end.

♪Oh, then you should have known
Me much better
‘Cause my past is something that never
Got in my way♪

The MRI had been ordered earlier in the day, but got delayed due to emergencies at the hospital. This is just another scan in the long list of tests and evaluations over the the past month. A delay means more time to obsess over a diagnosis that is unthinkable, so no doctor will declare it with certainty.

♪Still I would not be here now
If I never had the hunger
And I’m not ashamed to say
The wild boys were my friends♪

I’m not alarmed by an MRI. I’m on edge, though. I feel the weight of it. There’s something in my arm, and the doctor needs to know what it is. It could be nothing, like a freckle in my bone. Or, it could be a second instance of the cancer found in my neck. Metastatic. One word determines how we move forward. The cancer I am presumed to have is so rare, the doctors don’t want to believe it. A sample from my neck has been sent to a specialist across the country to confirm. If metastasized, the prognosis is dismal. So, no, I’m not alarmed by the MRI, but I’m frozen with fear over the outcome. To put a patient at ease, experts have found a way to pipe in music through headphones I wear in the tube. Headphones in a tube where no metal is possible. If I wasn’t so distracted by my medical nightmare, I might marvel at the technological advances that allowed me to tap the “play” then “repeat” buttons on my playlist, attach my phone to a computer in one room, and listen to that music through headphones containing no metal inside a magnetic tube in a different room.

♪Cause I never felt the desire
‘Til their music set me on fire
And then I was saved, yeah♪

Once packed in the tube, the techs set to work. My playlist opened with Billy Joel’s Keeping the Faith. I try to do just that as the bed of the MRI moves. With each movement, the pillows bunch up around me. I’m starting to understand claustrophobia. I focus on my breathing while I lay in pretzel pose trying to find my namaste. Let the techs and the music do the rest, I tell myself. It’s not working. I try counting backward from 300 by 3’s. This requires some focus, and it works until somewhere around 273 when I think, “is that the same Billy Joel song?”

♪Combed my hair in a pompadour
Like the rest of the Romeos wore
A permanent wave, Yeah♪

It is. I must have selected the shuffle option and my playlist is not shuffling very well. Back to counting. 270. 267. 266. Around 183, I notice Billy again. I can’t NOT notice Billy. “Keeping the Faith” is on. Again. Still? That’s when I realize the problem. I hit “repeat” on the song instead of the playlist.

♪Learned stickball as a formal education♪

Billy continues to repeat himself, so at the next break, I ask the tech if she can fix my music. She cannot. Sorry. Not allowed to access my personal phone, she explains. Billy and the MRI continue. The pillows are tight. The air in the tube is hot. It crosses my mind that, in an emergency, I could end up stuck inside the tube. I’m starting to freak out. How will I get out? If we lose power, the bed won’t move. I can’t extricate myself from these pillows. I’m going to suffocate in here!

♪Lost a lot of fights
But it taught me how to lose O.K.♪

Halfway through the scan, I am moved partially out of the tube to add something to my IV. This serves only to bunch up the pillows more, and their hold on me tightens when I’m rolled back into the tube. As we carry on, I start to get tremors from holding my body in place. I do everything I can to keep from moving as muscles cramp. Meanwhile, Billy is still keeping the faith, and I can’t stop thinking morbid thoughts. I am not ready to die. I can feel the tears burning their way out. Don’t move. Don’t cry. Tears fall anyway. Please, I pray, don’t let the crying make this go on longer. I try to stop and it’s worse. The panic button is hot in my hand. A choking sob is stuck in my throat. I’m going to choke on it or throw up. I press the button. The machine stops.

♪We were keeping the faith
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Keeping the faith♪

“Are you okay?” the radiology tech buzzes in.

I say, “No, I need a break.”

Then I hear what I can only assume is Charlie Brown’s teacher over the static of the walkie-talkie radio.

“What?” I’m outright crying now.

“Mwah mwah mwah mwahmwah mwah,” they repeat.

Through sobs, I cry out, “I! Can’t! Hear! You!”

Silence. A second later, a door opens and I think, this is it, they’re going to let me out! Instead, the headphones are removed from my head. The hell? I break all the rules and tilt my head back an inch. Well, hey, the tube is open at the top! My head is about a foot from freedom. I can crawl out the top! That’s my aha moment in the MRI — the realization that the pillows are at the bottom and I can crawl out the top of the tube if I need to. The tech tells me it’s going to be 10 more minutes. Can I hang on for 10 minutes? With a hole at the top for my escape? You betcha! Ten minutes to plot my escape from the tube in case of emergency. They restart. And, so does Billy Joel.

♪Ate an awful lot of late night drive-in food
Drank a lot of take-home pay
I thought I was the duke of earl
When I made it with a red-haired girl♪

True to their word, we are done about 10 minutes later. My body shakes as I am extracted from the tube; muscles week from holding in place for so long.

♪I told you my reasons for the whole revival
Now I’m going outside to have An ice cold beer in the shade♪

As soon as the IV is out, I stumble to the waiting room and my wife. After 45 minutes of Billy Joel’s “Keeping the Faith,” I lose my shit. I fall onto the hard chair and collapse sobbing.

“I am done with the tests,” I declare. It is time to move on.

What I don’t say, what I can’t put words to yet is that I’m terrified will die. Instead, I tell her about Billy and Keeping the Faith, and we find a way to laugh through the tears. Something that will soon prove to be our greatest weapon in the coming fight.

♪Oh, I’m going to listen to my 45’s
Ain’t it wonderful to be alive
When the rock ‘n’ roll plays, yeah.♪

*With gratitude to Billy Joel’s “Keeping the Faith,” 1983.