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The Vanishing of Doctor Jane Smith

The Vanishing of Doctor Jane Smith

Last updated on: September 19, 2016 at 2:47 pm by Mary Pezzulo

The Vanishing of Doctor Jane Smith 2016-09-19T14:47:22-04:00 Mary Pezzulo

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It’s time for my daughter’s regular check-up. Or, rather, it’s time for me to call and make an appointment for my daughter’s regular check-up. This could take awhile.

The last time it was time for my daughter’s regular check-up, the insurance company had just sent me a friendly notice that my daughter would no longer be allowed to see her old pediatrician, and they would be sending me a new card for a new pediatrician shortly, so I waited. Eventually, the new insurance card got here, with the name of a sour neighborhood physician whom I disliked immensely– which was irrelevant because I knew she retired three weeks previous. It took a month to get a new insurance card. By that time, I was having one of my own severe chronic illness flares and seeing doctors right and left, so it took a few months to get the household back under control and make a doctors’ appointment for a healthy person who just needed a check-up.

I’m finally at the end of that flare, thanks be to God. It’s well and truly time for my daughter’s regular check-up. I talked with her ahead of time; I told her that there would be shots, but that shots were necessary and I would take her to Dollar Tree to get a dollar item for every injection she endured without fighting the nurse the next time we got paid. I had her watch the episode of Mr. Rogers where the little girl goes to the pediatrician. She was ready.

I steeled myself for the ghastly task of making a phone call– a frightening task for any awkward introvert. I took deep breaths. I was ready.

I looked around for my daughter’s insurance card, but I couldn’t find it. It must have fallen out of the drawer in the desk where I keep all our cards. So I called the insurance company information hotline, unaware that in doing so I was going to take part in one of those classic Sesame Street comedy sketches where Grover attempts to work as a waiter for some poor beleaguered Muppet. The customer service representative was Grover– polite, conversational, precise in her speech and useless. I couldn’t give her the number on the back of the card, because I didn’t have the card, so I had to confirm my identity by stating my address. Unfortunately, Grover didn’t have our address written correctly in our records, despite the fact that the insurance company sends us junk mail twice a month and it always gets here. So I had to give her my daughter’s social security number. I did so in a whisper, afraid, as I always am, of a clever burglar hidden in the walls wiretapping our phone for just such an occasion. It’s the sort of thing writers think about.

Grover took several minutes to jot down our correct address for their records. Then she gave me the name of the doctor, whose name wasn’t Jane Smith but was something as commonplace as Jane Smith. The kind of name you’d write on a hotel register if you were having an affair, or were on the lam with a posse of desperate lawmen hot on your tail. Grover spelled the name out carefully in case I didn’t know how to spell “Smith,” stated and repeated the phone number, and then gave me the office’s address. I thanked her. I got off the phone. I called the new number.

We’re Sorry. The number you have dialed is no longer in service.

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