The drive takes longer than the treatment. Twenty minutes there, twenty minutes home, for a session that lasts three songs from ad-supported Pandora, piped in from the hallway control station near the wall-mounted Geiger counter. Light grooves from prior generations: “My Girl,” “Heart of Glass,” a piano instrumental of “I Ran (So Far Away).” The staff never asks what I want to hear, like before the MRI, when I requested Beck through the headphones, and the tech said, “Who?” I open the tiny sunroof of my Hyundai, not unlike the convertible from that Amy Hempel story, although I’m heading toward the hospital, not away. Only I can pump myself up to lie still while a machine whirrs around my body without touching, guided by science I don’t understand. The doctors say I’ll feel the effects later, after these sixteen weekdays; I’ve lost track of how many it’s been. From over the levee, warm air gusts into my windows, through leafless trees, a different season from those on the medical ceiling tiles that bloom eternal pink. My hype songs include pop rock I taped off “Casey’s Top 40,” LimeWire jams from the early aughts with hand claps and cowbell, newer indie from SiriusXMU. I sing along to a song about a wet dream, not having one, but starring in someone else’s, while driving. As a teenager, I would have loved this track’s breezy confidence, flowing with a freedom I never felt then. When I bought a copy of OK Computer at CD Warehouse, my dad scrutinized the liner notes before deciding to let me keep it. I wait for the protected left, not lowering the volume. The band sings about climbing on the hood and licking the windshield, although they’re British, so they say bonnet and windscreen. On the levee path, a man watches his dog take a shit, fashioning a mitten from an inside-out bag. Beam me up. I hand my keys to the baby-faced valet, then watch my Hyundai disappear into the dark garage, still tethered to my phone. The turn-by-turn directions don’t know why my car is leaving its destination. Rerouting. I’m the youngest person in the waiting room by decades. The next song plays through speakers I can no longer hear. Rerouting. When the tech calls my name, the valet hasn’t pressed pause. Maybe it’s his first time hearing “In Bloom.”