(unexpected uplift)

These are familiar noises—the soft clinking of glass or ceramic against metal, the slurping howl of the air as it rushes away from the mouth of the vacuum tube. These are not sounds you expect to hear so close to your head, much less virtually in your head—in your ear canal. You squirm at first, you twitch at the occasional feeling of needles flying against your tender skin. But soon it is over, and you can hear again. And as you exhale the pent up breath of your own air and roll your head to the side to face the apologizing doctor, you cannot help but think that all these months of ear aches and infections may have been worth it. Because here before you, doing his best to make you laugh as he injects a cream deep into your ear, all the way to the ear drum, blocking your hearing for a week; here before you, smiling as you sigh with relief at the procedure's completion; here, promising that you will not have to look like a zombie for your barbecue this weekend, as the cotton ball he is now gently stuffing into your outer ear can be removed tomorrow, and the cream should not ooze down your neck; commenting bashfully that he wished he had 40 friends at all, much less all coming over; grinning as he hands you your bag and then his business card and says he'll see you in a week—it may be fleeting, but for this moment, after all this ridiculous pain and trouble, here it seems you may have laid back in a doctor's chair in a dreary room in a quiet building lacking in any life and looked up to find, waiting to take care of you, a man you think you could quite easily fall for if you met him in another setting—in any other setting but this. For an instant you consider inviting him to that barbecue, but you know better; even when he wakes up his computer to type something up for you—even then, when you see the screen saver of his dog wearing bat ears and a batman t-shirt and he tells you that the pup really likes Halloween—even then, when you think he has just that lightness of heart that you sometimes find hard to dig up in a man—even then, you know better than to think you can just lie down in a doctor's chair and find love.

But you are tired, and the prospect of serendipity lifts your spirit.