Anxiety: Brain Scan - NYTimes.com The series is featuring occasional works of fiction. This is one. I was sitting alone in a booth in a local diner when a sense of profound, almost paralyzing lethargy came over me. I'd finished dinner and paid the check, but somehow I couldn't summon the strength to rise from the table. I ordered another cup of coffee and contemplated saying to the waiter, "Excuse me. I'm feeling ill. Could you please call for an ambulance? Then, finally, with considerable effort, I managed to lift myself from my chair and return to my apartment, where I felt so weak I was barely able to undress. The following day, I saw my doctor. My blood was drawn and an M.R.I. was scheduled. A week later, I returned to my doctor's office. He told me that blood tests had come up negative, but an M.R.I. revealed a small cluster of nodules at the base of my spine. Holding the picture to the light, the doctor said, "I'm going to schedule you for a brain scan and a spinal tap." Startled, I asked him why these tests were necessary. He said he wanted to check my spinal fluid for cancer cells, to determine if the nodules were malignancies that had traveled down through my spinal cord from a brain tumor. I left the office, stunned. When I returned home, my apartment seemed weirdly and imperceptibly altered. Was this my furniture? Was that my photo collage on the wall? Were those my clothes in the closet? I went into the bathroom, stared at my reflection in the mirror, and tried to make sense of the image before me. I felt like a character in a film, oddly removed, and at the same time terrified. That Friday evening, when I returned from the hospital after the spinal tap and the brain scan, my girlfriend and I attended a small dinner party. I didn't tell her what had happened. The host, a man in his 40s, was a celebrated television commentator. Genial and at ease with everyone, he emanated a sense of relaxed authority. At dinner, my girlfriend was seated next to him while I sat across from them both. He told an amusing story about his prep school days that charmed everyone at the table, but I was barely able to follow the intricacies of his narrative. Instead, I found myself focusing on a drop of perspiration on a man's forehead; the freckles on the back of a woman's hand; another man's eyes, weirdly magnified by the thick lenses of his glasses; a woman's red fingernail that was much shorter than her other nails; the sagging breasts of an older woman who was wearing a low-cut gown. I'd been introduced to everyone at the table, but couldn't remember anyone's name, and found it impossible to follow the conversation. And I noticed that the host - although he had at the beginning of the evening attempted to distribute his attention equally to all the people at the table - was now becoming more attentive to my girlfriend. I watched, as if from a great distance, as she burst out laughing at something he told her and then became more thoughtful as their conversation turned serious. I noticed that their chairs had moved closer, their bodies almost touching, as he reached over and poured wine for her and they exchanged a meaningful look. Then I noticed him staring at me, as if he was sizing me up, studying me, assessing me, trying to figure out what I was made of, and wondering what she was doing with a man like me. I thought I saw an expression of sympathy come over his face, one that seemed to say he understood me, that we were brothers, but that nevertheless, he would still be compelled to seduce my girlfriend. When we returned home that night, my girlfriend wanted to make love. I suspected her encounter with our host had fueled her ardor, which she was now redirecting at me. I declined, turned off the bedroom light, and in the long silence that followed, I could feel her frustration and rage. Finally she said, "What's been going on with you lately? You haven't been yourself. You hardly said a word at dinner. I didn't answer. A few minutes later, she got up, packed her overnight bag, and left. When I heard her car pull away from the curb and drive off, I felt relieved. I fell asleep and dreamed I was walking in a city at night when I noticed a street lamp flicker and go out as I passed beneath it. Then I was urinating on the floor of a vast shower room, experiencing a profound sense of relief and pleasure, until I woke up with a feeling of warm wetness spreading around my thighs. I jumped out of bed, shocked by what had happened. Was I losing control of my bodily functions? Was this the first step toward incontinence, toward my own infantilization? I removed my soaked pajamas, stripped the bed and threw everything into the washing machine. Then I scrubbed the mattress with soapy water, made a fresh bed over a thick towel to absorb the moisture from the wet spot, took a shower and changed into clean pajamas. A week later, I returned to my doctor's office to learn the results of the tests. As I sat in the waiting room, I looked at a book of photographs of weightlifters taken on Muscle Beach in the 1930s and '40s. The men were in a variety of poses to accent their powerful physiques. I imagined how, in the decades that followed, their bodies had deteriorated with age, until now, more than 50 years later, they were either repulsively old or dead. So this accomplishment of theirs seemed an enormous waste of effort. Why not work at something that might last? But then I wondered if, in the overall scheme of things, anything endured. And that's when I heard the nurse call my name. "The doctor will see you now," she said. Unfortunately, we can only notify writers whose articles have been accepted for publication.) Joe Frank has written, produced and performed more than 200 radio programs for KCRW and National Public Radio. Recent radio performances of his work can be found on the KCRW Web site. His previous story for Anxiety, "A Thief in the House," was published in February. .