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I sit in the tiny waiting room at The Breast Center waiting for my mammogram and decide to do my daily delete on my phone while I wait.
I type in the date—September 29— and wait to see what photos will pop up from the last ten years.
Yes, that is baby Emily in the bottom right corner but that’s not what catches my eye. Instead, I’m drawn to the photo on the top left, the mirror reflecting the drawing of a girl.
That photo was taken on September 29, 2014.
As I sit in this hospital shirt in the small single-person waiting room, holding my phone in my hands, I slowly look up at the wall in front of me in real time and see this:
Again, I look down at my phone with the photo from September 29, 2014.
Then back up at the wall in front of me, on the same day now in 2023.
Down, up.
Down, up.
Here I am, nine years later on the exact same calendar date, in the exact same office (though a different waiting cubicle), waiting for a mammogram.