I sit in a cubicle office, surrounded on either side by fake walls that extend just beyond my hand's reach, if I were to extend my arm. The fake walls are light gray, like the chair, like the computer across the desk where a young dark haired woman with a slight Puerto Rican accent sits. On the desk are pictures of her children, who look to be elementary school age: a boy, a girl, smiling. There are pale yellow post-it notes affixed to her side of the artificial wall. She is on the phone as I sit with my envelope stuffed with tax forms, pay stubs, and electric bills after waiting nearly an hour in the waiting room, where I can hear a woman and child giggling and playing. I think, if this were a TV show, the child would be crying: the noise of a baby crying so often accompanies images of poverty. I notice a small tear in my trousers, and think of the many people that sit on this side of the desk: all our backs to the open corridor, the row of ten or so cubicles dotted with people just like me, all holding our little envelopes of evidence: where we live, bills, money in the bank.

I think of how alike and not alike I am to the people on this side of the desk; this is the "wrong side" of the desk. The woman on the phone knows this: she knows my name, my social security number, and the numbers on my W-2 form. Last year I was a few thousand dollars above the poverty limit, that magic number full of stigma and surprise that dictates my eligibility for "assistance." She knows I am single, my first mistake; had I married that curly haired young man instead of pursuing my desire to kiss women my life would be different-very different.

She totals up the money I earned last semester: "It's too much to qualify for any aid," she says. I explain that I knew I wouldn't be teaching over the summer, that I had to plan ahead for the economic drought that settles on the heads of adjunct faculty members in the heat of summer. I am excluded because I planned ahead, something poor folk apparently ought not do, I guess. She says, "You may want to wait and apply for medical assistance after you've been unemployed longer." She offers, "If you just need your annual exam or something, you can wait until you qualify."

By the end of her sentence tears have welled up around my reddening eyes. I am at the only non-profit hospital in Cleveland, and have just been told I do not qualify for assistance. But my body qualifies: at 30 years old, malfunctioning. I am apologizing as she reaches for the box of tissues graciously, expectantly. I understand, I say. I have not had health insurance in ten years, but I've been employed or in school every one of those years. My effort is irrelevant here. I can't help but think I'd be better off getting a "real" job, some nice office work like this woman has.

She is very nice, this woman in the red sweater and tan skirt, and I wonder how many people she must reduce to tears on an average day. In my classes I never make anyone cry, I don't think. To be fair, her kindness prompted the tears, anyway. If she were some rude official like someone at the driver's license bureau, I wouldn't be staring at the gray carpet in her cubicle, drying my eyes, feeling unbalanced. Here I am predictable, soft, like any number of people that sit in this chair at the hospital waiting to be judged, accepted, denied: as routinely as the numbers are called out on the loudspeaker in the waiting room. It's enough to get me to start smoking again. What's the loss? A few years I'll lose anyway by going undiagnosed, untreated. I am not waiting for an "annual." I decide whether or not I can pay for a bone marrow biopsy; it's a question of pragmatics.

Days later I see a TV