looking

I always panic when they break out the needles. I know it promises to hurt very little, and that compared with other pains I have experienced, the prick of a needle is, well, just that. Even so, I breathe quickly and tap my hand frantically until Jason comes to hold it. And while the nurse is wishing I would just calm the fuck down already, he mouths to words to terrible pop songs to distract me. In the end, it's never as bad as I think it will be.
I panicked again when the bone scan monitor zeroed in on me like a slim, high-tech light box printed with grid measurements. It sank quickly toward my face, stopping just short of my nose to hum and scan, like being pinned under the abrasively curious eye of a robot, suspiciously lacking the breath that ought to have been heaving in my face, searching my bones with such invasive rigor, clueless as to the consequences of its findings.The attendant strapped a tight band of elastic around my arms and feet as though patients are apt to make a break for it. I understand the temptation.
I prefer the CT scan, which, while very similar to the bone scan, is significantly shorter and only entails passing through a narrow cylinder where x-ray beams work in concert to create a complete image of my insides. 
I knew that we wouldn't learn anything today, but the hopeful puppy in my heart kept its nose upturned, sniffing, thinking that maybe--just maybe--some kind doctor would come out of the control room and declare these scans undeniably clean. Just so I could sleep tonight. Or read. Or write the many lessons I haven't yet written. Or do anything but wait.  
No such doctor appeared.
And so we wait, again, with hope and fear, thumbing each possibility over and over. Learning a pocketful of beach stones by touch.
Metastatic disease is just...sitting there, being possible, a sinkhole under the road waiting to be discovered. Unknowable. Disastrous. Nonexistent?
Please, Monday, get here quickly.