Heart Model

Yesterday, I drove to the suburbs so my heart could audition for a modeling gig.

You heard me.

A couple of years ago, I learned from my friend Shad that the companies that manufacture ultrasound scanning machines periodically hold trade shows to sell their machines to the doctors, hospitals and Tom Cruises of the world. At the conferences, they employ tall, fit men for the simple expedient that there are fewer layers of flesh between paddle and the organs. The job of the models is to lay there and be scanned, and, by the way, not talk. It sounded too close to my ideal job of getting paid to eat to pass up, and, when Shad's agency called to offer me a position, I happily accepted. What I didn't know at the time, though, was that I didn't have the job yet. They were actually giving me a chance to audition for the part, in the middle of a conference. More challenging, I couldn't get into the conference until someone from inside it let me inside. Surprisingly, it gets worse. I was not the only person trying out. Being a nice guy, I let the other guy go first, taking the one badge that was available and heading inside. Outside, I waited. And waited.

Turned out, the guy went in there and said I never showed. The machine scanners pretty much just needed whoever turned up first, and, because I was a nice guy, I lost out. The agency took a little pity on me, and paid me a token amount just for showing up and getting dumped on, but it was still a major blow to my finances to miss out on that kind of opportunity.

When the same agency called again, I took it with a grain of salt. I drove out to the suburban office still carrying a little baggage in my heart, which I hoped they would detect.

It came as no surprise that the security girl at the front had no idea what to do with me. I came with a contact name and a phone number, and they still managed to bungle it. A gentleman named Dave came out, shook my hand, and guided me to a room just off the reception area where they had a machine set up. He apologized for the chilly room and the chillier ultrasound gel, had me peel up my shirt and started scanning my abdomen. At that point, I probably should have asked more questions about why he was scanning my belly instead of my heart but, hey, I'd never gotten one of these done before. It tickled. Like a fifties housewife, I lay back and counted ceiling tiles. He complimented me on my pancreas, which, I was told, had a nice tail. He was also impressed that I had come without eating breakfast, since it left my gallbladder full of gastric juice and prevented pockets of gas from bouncing back to the ultrasound paddle and ruining the image.

Flattered into silence about the heart scan I'd been promised, I said I rarely ate breakfast. Dave continued on, noting one healthy kidney and the other, both in the right place. (Apparently, unbeknown to the owners, kidneys may or may not rise to their proper positions; one man Dave had scanned, a prisoner at a facility in Joliet, found out inadvertently that he had what was called a pelvic kidney. Mine was fine.) At some point, he showed the image of my heart, and I relaxed a bit. What I knew about ultrasound was confined to friends' pictures of their unborn children--"Skeletor babies" they call them--and Dave seemed pretty knowledgeable.

Did I mention that while all of this was happening, caterers were setting up for a meal?

Finally, a woman came in and started comparing names to lists. When she couldn't find mine, she realized I was with the OTHER unit, for cardiology, and I was politely asked to wait once more in the lobby. Dave seemed vaguely sad that he had learned how to operate the machine on me and would have to soldier on without, but another model was there and more than willing to help calibrate. I went back to the lobby, to sit and ponder the irony.

Eventually, I noticed a minor hubbub at the check in desk. I walked over, remembering the penalty one pays for timidity, and was rewarded when I looked at the name badge of the woman there and saw my contact. This was it! There was another heart model there, also named Matt, and if I hadn't come by when I did, I might have been sitting on that couch still. Luckily, they took us both into a different, less chilly room, where they gently scanned our hearts and noted the results on a piece of paper. As a bonus, the woman who scanned me also did my carotid artery, so by mid-morning I'd had everything from neck to belly button scanned and logged. I joked with her that I'd hoped Dave did a good job cleaning off the ultrasound gel, lest the cardiology folks get jealous. I was met with weak laughter. What can I say? I'm a heart model, not a comedian.