THE CLOSET IS NOT EMPTY

By Nicholas Smith

I had cancer. That’s what the Internet told me, after I ran a web search on “mild pressure in ear.” And if there was anything I had learned from all my years in high school doing online research, it was that the Internet is always right about everything, all the time.

It tore my brain apart. Why did I have to ask? Why did I have to know? Why couldn’t I have just continued on living without the burden of this insurmountable but irrefutable truth?

I freaked out for a few days until finally deciding that it was time to consult an actual professional. Yes, perhaps I had been too hasty in my willingness to trust Google’s diagnosis. I would call up my doctor, have him examine me with his amazing doctor eyes, and then he would describe to me in precise detail why I had nothing to worry about. Yes, he would surely know what was wrong with me.

He didn’t know what was wrong with me.

My doctor put a thing in my ear. Then he left the thing in my ear. Then he took the thing out. Then he looked at the thing. He had no clue what the cause of my ear pressure was. So, he sent me to another doctor, who followed a similar thing-related examination procedure.

After processing all the information, this second doctor looked at me and said, “You shouldn’t be worried. I’m not saying that it’s cancer or anything. You’re probably fine.” That’s what he said.

What I heard, though, was, “Let’s throw you a cancer party, because you have all of the cancer.” I may have imagined it, but it was enough to flip my anxiety switch from “Off” to “100 Percent Not Off.”

He had me get an MRI scan, which was highly uncomfortable. Afterward, the nurse told me that they’d have my results in a week. I nodded and thanked him, but internally I berated him for making me wait another 168 hours to find out how much cancer I had.

During that week, I planned how I would react to learning about the invasive tumor surely percolating in my brain. I thought about how I would spend my remaining days cursing that I’d never get to see the new Star Wars.

Plot twist: The scan was negative. The cause of the pressure in my ear was reportedly allergy-induced swelling. The doctor gave me a nasal spray. And that was the end of it.

I may have been in college at the time, but I felt like such a child. Like a child who trembles beneath his covers when he hears a bump in the night and assumes that it’s the work of monsters in his closet. I needed a grown up to turn on the lights, open the closet, and say, “Look. There are no monsters in here. Go back to sleep. Everything is fine.”

Everything is not fine. Because I know that I have a brain tumor until the doctor tells me it’s just the sniffles. I know that the hurricane will get me until the weatherman explains that it’s just a tropical breeze. I know that there are monsters in my closet until someone shows me that the closet is empty.

Nicholas Smith creates Metro‘s Ninja-Man and myriads of other farcical web comics. To check them out, visit neoduskcomics.tumblr.com.