Smoking in the girls’ room, sneaking a drink, napping
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Walter M. Robinson is not the Boston Globe journalist recently portrayed on film by Michael Keaton, nor is he the painter and Artspace critic. He is a physician and writer living in Boston, Massachusetts, whose work can be read in The Literary Review, Harvard Review, and now The Sun.
It is time for him to mark the spot that he will cut out. I turn around in the chair, and the starched edge of his white coat brushes my naked shoulder as he moves behind me. I can smell the magic marker and feel the cold circle he draws on my back. He asks if anybody is here with me, and I say no. I know what he’s thinking: that he won’t have to come out and talk to the relatives in the waiting room after the surgery is over.