“It will only take fifteen minutes,” the pretty blonde smiles and continues, “but you’ll have to keep perfectly still or we’ll have to do it all over again.”

I smile in acquiescence.

“Are you okay?” she asks sympathetically. (Obviously my smile has not hidden my feeling of dread.)

“It looks like an iron lung,” I say, trying to make light of it, realising as I speak that maybe there isn’t such a thing as an iron lung anymore.

“You’re right. I hadn’t thought of it like that…” she responds as if she can imagine such a machine and adds, “Now press this button if you have any problems. See you in fifteen minutes.”

Now alone, ear plugs in, and ensconced with safety button device in my right hand, I feel slightly panicky about the confinement even though my head is outside. I can look up at the lights or down the extent of my body. I choose the latter. I am like a potholer in a narrow tunnel – I’ve never been drawn to potholing – too akin to being buried alive. I think: I wonder how really fat people fit in these machines. Do they ever get stuck or are there special machines for the over-sized? I must go on the Dukan Diet again. 

Sounding distant and indecipherable (with my earplugs  in), a voice comes through a speaker; it must be the man in the operations room outside. I guess it’s about to begin. There are green lights and red lights and knocking sounds – short raps, long taps and rattatats – and I close my eyes.

Poetry! I’ll think of poems. “If you can keep your head… “ Rattatat, whirr, knock, knock, knock, whirr, rattatat. “Four horsemen rode out from the heart of the range, Four horsemen with aspects forbidding and strange, As forward they rode through the rocks and the fern, Ned Kelly, Dan Kelly, Steve Hart and Joe Burn”. (Well I am an Australian!) “Look at a fragment of velvety brown, Old man platypus drifting down, Drifting along the river…”  Knock, knock, rap, rap, rap, whirr, rattatat! 

“I love a sunburnt country, A land of sweeping plains, Of rugged mountain ranges, Of droughts and flooding plains. I love her broad horizons, I love her jewel sea, her beauty and her terror….” Rattatat, rattatat, rap, rap tap! “The wide brown land for me!” What was the rest of it? Can’t think. More poems….

Ah, “Abu Ben Adam – may his tribe increase – awoke one night….um… Awoke one night from a night of peace…”. Ah, um… Whirr, knock, knock, tap! “I must go down to the sea again, To the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship and  a star to steer her by…” Um… 

It is quiet. The machine is thinking. The machine is moving and I’m sliding deeper into the tube.

Oh no, my knee is aching. What if I move it? If only I could move it a fraction. I need (kneed) to move it, but if  I do… Oh no! Another fifteen minutes. Please Mrs Robinson… not another fifteen minutes!

Da, da, dat, dat, dat, whirr, tat, tatta, tat,tat! 

What was that poem I wrote at primary school? Ah, “We will die and so will our successors, Our loved ones and our friends, But time will keep rolling by, Yes time will never end.” Shame I can remember only the last verse. Perhaps I can rewrite the missing verses. “Time….”  Rattatat, dah, dah, tat! “Time…” Whirr, bip, bip, tap, tap,tap.

Knee aching. Don’t move. Don’t move. Breathe, don’t forget to breathe, but shallowly. A bit more than that.

Knock, knock!

Who’s there?

Rattatat!

“A naughty little elf with a saucy little face, Stole one of Grandpa’s slippers from beside the fireplace…” “Tippie Tim. I had a little dog, His name was Tippie Tim, I put him in the bath tub, To see if he could swim. He drank up all the water, He ate up all the soap. I took him to the doctor, But the doctor said, ‘No hope!'”

At last the noises stop and I feel the presence of the blonde – her head blocks out some of the light and I open my eyes.

“Well done!” she beams.

“Is that the fifteen minutes?” I ask.

“Yep. How did you cope?” she enquires.

“I just kept trying to remember poems,” I say.

“Oh, that’s a good idea,” she pauses, “I remember one… ‘Little Mr Tinkie…”

We are coming out of the MRI scanning room into the waiting room and there is an old lady in a nightdress waiting in a chair by the door. She is smiling and I give her some advice before she goes through the same ordeal:

“I thought of poems. That might help you take your mind off it.”

Blank. She doesn’t speak or even acknowledge me. Maybe she has had a stroke. I guess I’m lucky to have just a bad knee and a lovely husband waiting to hold my hand and help me to the car, which he has moved to a closer car park while I was thinking of poems.