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field of translucent yellow. Damn.
    Washing my hands, I find myself wondering what a tumor actually looks like.
    I spend the next hour scouring medical Web sites, searching for possible answers. The presence of blood in the urine is called hematuria. It may be caused by an injury to the urinary tract or by the passing of kidney stones, but my lack of pain seems to rule out those possibilities in favor of various vascular diseases, kidney ailments, tumors, and of course bladder cancer. My phone rings. I ignore it.
    I retrieve my doctor’s number from my PalmPilot and call his office. He’s with a patient, I’m told by the receptionist. Would I care to hold? I would. I am treated to the Muzak version of the Stones’ “Ruby Tuesday.”
Ruby red,
I think, and we’re back to the blood in my toilet.
    “Hello, Zachary,” Dr. Cleeman says. “How are you?”
    In no mood to exchange pleasantries is how I am, so I dive right in and tell him. He asks me a few questions. Has it ever happened before? About how much blood? Was there any pain? He puts me on hold for a minute and comes back with the number and address of a urologist.
    “Dr. Laurence Sanderson. He’s on Park Avenue. Go see him as soon as you can.”
    “Do you think it’s something serious?”
    “Probably nothing,” he says with less conviction than I’d like. “But you need to get it checked out. Tell Dr. Sanderson that I said he should see you today, okay?”
    I hang up and quickly call the urologist. His receptionist grudgingly squeezes me in for a lunchtime appointment. “You might have to wait a little,” she warns me in a clipped Russian accent before hanging up.

Chapter 5
    Dr. Sanderson has salt-and-pepper hair, an impeccably trimmed beard, and sharp eyes behind gold-rimmed spectacles. He looks exactly like what you would want your doctor to look like, except that at thirty-two years old, you don’t want your doctor to look like anything, really, because you shouldn’t need a goddamn doctor, shouldn’t have to attempt to articulate the sensations you may or may not have felt in your dick while you were pissing blood this morning.
    “Has this ever happened before?” he asks me.
    “No.”
    “Have you had any injuries recently, any trauma to your stomach or sides?”
    “No.”
    “Any pain during urination?”
    “No.”
    “Are you a smoker?”
    “No,” I say. “I mean, I was, back in college, but not anymore. I mean, not regularly. Sometimes, in bars, you know? When I’m having a few drinks.”
    “Would you characterize yourself as a heavy drinker?”
    “No. That is, um, sometimes. Rarely.” I have to remind myself that I’m not interviewing for a job.
    “Do you jog?”
    “No.”
    “Play any contact sports?”
    “No.”
    “Are you on any pain medication?”
    “Tylenol or Excedrin, sometimes, for headaches.”
    “Do you get a lot of headaches?”
    I’ve got one right now.
“Not really.”
    I wish he would just cut to the chase and look inside me already. I’ve already filled out enough forms in the waiting room to apply for a loan and, on the instructions of the pretty Hispanic physician’s assistant, disrobed and donned a gown made out of the thinnest cotton known to man. I’ve done my part; now let’s get on with it. Dr. Sanderson finally has me lie down on my side on the examination table and squeezes some clear gel onto my side and lower back. The gel is shockingly cold and my whole body clenches in surprise.
    “I know. It’s cold, isn’t it?” he says.
    “Yeah,” I say. Fucking sadist probably refrigerates it to watch his patients squirm.
    “What I’m doing is just a routine ultrasound, to get a look at your kidneys. Hematuria can be caused by any number of things, kidney stones, urinary tract infections, jarring physical activity. . . .” His voice trails off as he begins to rub the probe on me and a colorful image appears on the machine’s small television screen. After a minute or so, he tells me to roll