Summary

The narrator takes an increasingly crowded bus to the part of the city where the second clinic is located. On the way, he finds his attention drawn to a common housefly, dazed in the winter cold but moving sluggishly along a window – and then, after one too many brushes with a passenger that keeps being bumped up against the window, simply gone. At the end of his ride, the narrator finds the clinic easily, making his way past a couple of attendants (one angry - “I wouldn’t accept the shame she seemed to want me to feel” (141) - and one friendly) to where he is to take his test. After his blood is drawn, he is told he can have his results in a few hours and leaves the clinic, carefully negotiating the winter ice and snow.

As the narrator...