Surprises and Regrets

[Hyacinth]

The second file, the one about my own medical care, was not nearly as exciting as my mother's. There was a picture of me at birth along with all of my mother's prenatal records duplicated from her file. I had been born healthy, with no complications. From there I see I had annual checkups, and received all of my vaccinations on schedule. Other than the fact that it is an exceptionally well-organized file, there is nothing out of the ordinary.

Except for one thing. A small red dot in the notes section of my annual checkups for years 5 and 15, which I only noticed by chance because the file fell onto the ground, and I tried to put it back together in the beautiful order it had been left in by Dr. Stevens. It felt disrespectful to leave it in disarray.

I checked the original box that these files had been removed from, but there was no file marked with a red dot or any kind of folder or envelope with my name on it. The significance of the dot is lost to time.

There is also