The Fast

"Rather three days without food, than a day without tea..."-Chinese proverb

Jazz plays on the morning radio and there's a fire. Otherwise there's a curious silence about the house. I sip water, the only thing I am allowed to have for the next three and a half hours.

For the first time in five years I am going to see a doctor. Just an annual checkup, Sabina's idea. That whole thing of we've been paying for insurance and should reap the benefit of a free checkup. Nevermind the rare as hen's teeth occurrence of me taking ill.

Practically speaking, it can't hurt. My father would growl that my mother did not get herself checked out regularly. When she finally did go to the doctor after noticing something was amiss, the cancer that would eventually eat her alive was in its second stage. Granted, it was cervical, and, unless we are speaking in vertebral tongues, it is anatomically unlikely I could get the same strain.

So, I would say this is no biggie, but it is. See, we must fast for up to twelve hours. Nothing but water. I don't mind water at all. However, I cannot have tea.

I tried to lament this circumstance to Sabina. Don't eat? Okay, I probably need to watch my slim and girlish figure, after all, at nearly six foot six I have gotten up to one-hundred and sixty pounds. I might get a gut. No coffee? I can take it or leave it. No wine or beer? An indulgence.

But no tea? Madness! This is catastrophic.

"Oh, just pretend your the Dalai Lama and drink hot water instead of tea," Sabina said when I tried to explain my devastation.

"And shall I shave my head and wear yellow and saffron robes as well?" I asked, and she had the outright audacity to shoot me a look as though I was being melodramatic.

"It's just blood work," she said.

No sympathy at all. Clearly, she doesn't understand. Fucking woman.