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“So, how long have you had the bloody discharge from your left nipple?”

“I noticed it about three weeks ago.”

“Move in with your shoulder. Keep your right hand on the bar.”

The technician walked around me into her shielded station and pressed a button, sending x-rays through my pancaked breast with a sharp buzzing noise. She returned and released the apparatus’ tenacious hold on my torso.

“We’ll call you with the results in a week. In the meantime, make an appointment at the front desk for a consultation with the surgeon.”

I put my left arm back into the shoulder of the thin, oversized hospital garment, preparing to return to the dressing room where my work clothes hung on a hook inside a skinny metal locker.

“You know,” said another, male technician who had entered the room unnoticed and perched himself upon a tall stool, ”with bloody discharge from only one side, there’s a 15% chance that it’s cancerous.”

I looked at his impassive face. “No kidding,” I responded, half-consciously mimicking his blunt, I’ve-seen-it-all-before manner. And, remembering something from a list of procedures I’d researched on the web, I asked, “Aren’t you going to do a smear slide of the discharge?”

The male technician gave me a faint, condescending smile. “We don’t do those, the results aren’t reliable. You’ll receive a ductogram to show what’s happening inside the breast.”

With nothing more to say or do for the time being, I headed for the dressing/locker room, idly wondering if my clothes would look as smashed from hanging inside the cramped locker as the left side of my chest still felt.