The Outlook
In his dream the other week Dr. Lintel stood hand-in-hand with his five-year-old son David at the edge of a nauseatingly-high cliff, and from the top of that precipice it was somehow apparent—in the way dreams often are—that they were the last two people on earth. He whispered to his son as they both stared into the abyss: “We don’t know why we’re here David, but we’re going to find out once and for all.”
Again, it was apparent that they were the last two humans on earth, and that it would be Dr. Lintel’s job—no, his duty—to teach David everything he knew about the world, starting from square one. But the most important part about this dream, Dr. Lintel reflected later, was that he knew he would purposely and scrupulously omit any mention of god or religion to his son for as long as he lived.
That dream, as well as the days of obsessive wondering and distraction that had followed, was how Dr. Lintel ended up getting pulled into his supervisors office and reprimanded for writing the words “dread poisoning” instead of “lead poisoning” on a patient chart.
He could have chosen to tell the truth to his boss that he was burned out and needed time to think about things, but he was too embarrassed for that to get back to his wife and so instead he told him the very first lie that came into his mind: he was hungover.
So his boss said something very professional and corporate, something like, “I’m sure everything will come up negative, but we’re going to need you to take a drug test just in case. It’s just system-wide policy, you know.” And that was how Dr. Lintel ended up at a LabCorp on Metropolitan Boulevard, the area smelling of burning rubber and pigeons.
It would have been a fine excuse too had he not just recently started smoking marijuana again to distract himself from this recent bout of depression. So now it was going to appear in his urine and he hadn’t really worked out what would happen next, but that’s exactly what made him nervous. He didn’t think he’d get fired, but he’d have to have to talk to his boss again and try to justify some made-up feeling in order to get by. And then there was always the possibility that his wife would find out, and then that would really be the end of him.
Either way though Dr. Lintel sat calmly and patiently in the waiting room as if he had nothing to worry about. Crinkling his nose, he looked about the cramped, narrow room and thought about just how many patients he’d sent for blood work and drug testing at labs that were probably indistinguishable from this one. Fluorescent waiting rooms like these were where all good dreams went to die.
Dr. Lintel lapsed back into his own dream: he knew that at the top of that cliff, with his son burdened with the weight of all of history and mankind, that there could only occur two possibilities: the first was that he raise his son in the way that he was raised, thereby replicating exactly in the new world, the old. The second though was to risk breaking from his past—what Dr. Lintel himself had repeatedly failed to do—in order to bring about a life much wider and truer than his own. In the dream he had resolved to choose the latter of course, but since then, the tendrils of the old world had poked through all of his insecurities and had ensnared him once again in an illusion of safety.
“Mr. Lintel?” A young woman called him from behind the glass of the front counter. “We’re ready for you.”
Strangely no one accompanied him into the bathroom, and just at the moment he closed the door behind him he realized he could have just faked the test.
His urine was entirely clear (thanks to the liter of seltzer he had downed not an hour ago) and yet when he peered into the cup from above Dr. Lintel swore that he could see each individual molecule of THC floating around mocking him. All of his life’s failures were right there in that cup, if one dared to look close enough.
The following week Dr. Lintel was called in to the office and asked about the result. He told his supervisor that he accidentally ate a weed-brownie that his cousin had left in his fridge and his supervisor said to him in response, “Alright. That must’ve been rough. Take it easy and we’ll repeat the test in a month to be safe. It’s just system-wide policy.”
Dr. Lintel figured that tobacco would be a safe substitute until then, so after leaving his office he bought a tobacco vape from the corner store and began to puff on it at the intersection. There, as the sun began to settle behind a row of squat office buildings, he recognized his coworker Francis smoking a cigarette.
Francis turned to him, feigning surprise. “Allen! Hey man.”
“Hey Francis.” Dr. Lintel puffed on his device again and exhaled a large cloud of minty vapor.
“You get that system-wide email about the new Outlook version?”
“What email?”
“The email, you know. About how we need to update our Outlook version?”
“I can’t talk to you about this right now.” The light turned and Dr. Lintel hurried away across the pavement.