Yesterday after lunch I was crossing the street and I had the impression that the person standing next to me was rearranging and disappearing and reappearing in my peripheral vision. I could see her hair and her nose and when I turned to look at her I could see she was all there, but in my periphery she was just free-floating parts. I said to her, “I have the sudden feeling you’re a hologram.” Then when I got back to the office and sat at my desk I was disoriented. It was hard to read my computer screen. I had a swirling blind spot in the scattered shape of a galaxy in my left periphery. It was bursting with color. I considered whether I was dying.

In our offices here we have a couple couches, and I went to lay down on one. Charles Mudede said I should take some aspirin in case I was having a stroke. I’m 25, I’m healthy, there’s no way I was having a stroke, but I took 3 aspirin. I turned on my iPod. Mudede said not to fall asleep, not to lose consciousness, but my eyes were going crazy so I closed them. The room was spinning. I tried keeping my eyes open. The room was still spinning. There was some vague pressure in my head. Nausea. My left foot tingled.

The swirling eye thing lasted about a half an hour but I was feeling weirder and weirder — my running theory was that someone at the restaurant where I’d had lunch had drugged me — so I called my doctor, who said I should go to the emergency room. It was pouring. The waiting room was crowded with huge, malodorous people watching one of those daytime court shows. I listened to Radiohead’s Amnesiac while I waited. I explained my symptoms to a nurse. Soon enough I got taken back to a clean, big room with a huge light apparatus bolted to the ceiling. I was given an eye test. I explained everything again to a doctor’s assistant. I listened to Belle & Sebastian’s If You’re Feeling Sinister while I waited for the doctor. The doctor came in and asked about any history with migraines (none) and family history of strokes (lots) and shined lights in my eyes and pressed on my legs and arms and asked me to tell her how many fingers she was holding up in my periphery, which I could see because the eye thing had gone away. This doctor was awesome. She said her plan might sound a bit drastic, but it would rule out any major problems: she wanted to do an MRI.

Did I have insurance? Was I claustrophobic? Did I have a pacemaker? Had I ever had surgery? Did I have anything implanted in my body — staples, metal joints, anything? If so, they would be ripped out of my body a la Indiana Jones in the nuclear magnetic resonance imaging process. I waited an hour or so until the machine was ready for me. In that time, they took my blood, they set me up for an IV in case I needed it later, I peed in a cup, I listened to my iPod since I wouldn’t be able to listen to it during the MRI, and I peed a second time.

Finally a technician came and got me and wheeled me on a bed down corridor after corridor and up several stories in an elevator. I told him I felt like I was in ER. He was the third guy of the day who asked me what I did for a living and who told me that all of them there at Swedish read and love The Stranger. Then another guy came by and said the same thing. Then two more guys came around with a narrow table. I got onto it. My feet hung off the edge. They confirmed that I had no staples nor metal implants nor a pacemaker in me, rolled the table into the next room, a much warmer room, pushed some ear plugs in my ears, put a pillow under my knees, folded up the plastic sides of the table next to my head to keep my head in place, said this was going to take about 20 minutes, and left the room. The table slid backwards into the machine. A plastic cage over my face. My sides cramped. No way out if I tried. My heart raced. Holy shit I’m claustrophobic I can’t breath my heart is racing what if there’s an earthquake I can’t sit up where am I why is it so hot will this give me cancer where are my legs I’m claustrophic I’m claustrophobic I’m claustrophobic.

Then, the music:

Ka-tunk, ka-tunk, ka-tunk.
Tap tap tap tap tap tap tap.

[At defeaning, body-rattling volume:] ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG-ENNGGG...

Then the technician, talking through a microphone from another room, a distance that sounds like years: "Ok, the next one will take about 3 minutes."

Ka-tunk, ka-tunk, ka-tunk.
Tap tap tap tap tap tap tap.

[Like a jackhammer:] RUUHH-RUURR-RUUHH-RUURR-RUUHH-RUURR-RUUHH-RUURR-RUUHH-RUURR-RUUHH-RUURR-RUUHH-RUURR-RUUHH-RUURR-RUUHH-RUURR-RUUHH-RUURR-RUUHH-RUURR-RUUHH-RUURR-RUUHH-RUURR-RUUHH-RUURR-RUUHH-RUURR-RUUHH-RUURR-RUUHH-RUURR-RUUHH-RUURR-RUUHH-RUURR-RUUHH-RUURR-RUUHH-RUURR-RUUHH-RUURR-RUUHH-RUURR-RUUHH-RUURR-RUUHH-RUURR-RUUHH-RUURR-RUUHH-RUURR-RUUHH-RUURR-RUUHH-RUURR-RUUHH-RUURR-RUUHH-RUURR-RUUHH-RUURR-RUUHH-RUURR-RUUHH-RUURR-RUUHH-RUURR-RUUHH-RUURR-RUUHH-RUURR-RUUHH-RUURR-RUUHH-RUURR-RUUHH-RUURR...

Technician: "OK, the next one will take about four minutes."

Ka-tunk, ka-tunk, ka-tunk.
Tap tap tap tap tap tap tap.

[Obscenely loud again, but oddly sort of beautiful:] CRACK!-mmm-blooop-mmm-CRACK!-mmm-blooop-mmm-CRACK!-mmm-blooop-mmm-CRACK!-mmm-blooop-mmm-CRACK!-mmm-blooop-mmm-CRACK!-mmm-blooop-mmm-CRACK!-mmm-blooop-mmm-CRACK!-mmm-blooop-mmm-CRACK!-mmm-blooop-mmm-CRACK!-mmm-blooop-mmm-CRACK!-mmm-blooop-mmm-CRACK!-mmm-blooop-mmm-CRACK!-mmm-blooop-mmm-CRACK!-mmm-blooop-mmm-CRACK!-mmm-blooop-mmm-CRACK!...

And on and on. Some enterprising electronic musician should sample all the different ear-to-the-jet-engine songs of discord the MRI machine makes. Although you'd have to strap someone into a magnetic chamber and send the sound waves rippling through their body in order to get the full effect. When I finally got out of the machine, I felt like I'd been stuffed inside a tin can and kicked around for half an hour.

Then another hour of waiting for results. I listened to Camera Obscura's Underachievers Please Try Harder, which was compared to Belle & Sebastian a lot when it came out but truly has nothing on Belle & Sebastian, and I listened to R.E.M., and I listened to Crash Test Dummies, and I listened to other stupid random stuff, and I sent text messages to people, and a nurse came around and told me the rumor was the MRI came back negative, there was nothing terrible happening in my brain, it was all OK, and then soon enough the doctor came around and said the same thing. Had my weird eye thing come back? Nope. Was I still nauseas? A little. Was I still dizzzy? Yes, but anyone would be dizzy after an MRI. Would it be all right if she checked my eyes for such-and-such pressure? Sure. She turned my eyes into rubber balls and pressed on them with a tool. Eye pressure was fine. I was fine. There was no problem. Although if I heard a whooshing sound in my neck, I should call them immediately.

"A whooshing sound? In my neck?" I said. "Yeah," the doctor said. "How would I hear that?" I was told that I would hear it. A great friend was waiting in the lobby when I was discharged, five hours after I was admitted, and along with another friend we went out for dinner. The best damn spaghetti and meatballs I've ever had. Nothing was wrong with me. I was fine. I could see. I was ordering a second drink. I felt like a character in an Ian McEwan novel.