The Black Yoke

A treatment room of a university hospital in Saskatoon on a November evening, thick walls of bare concrete painted cream, a small deep window of greenish lead glass glowing with the lit control room beyond, on a tall black column a black lacquered box-shaped yoke holding a heavy cylindrical treatment head half a metre across, tilted steeply downward, a polished chrome ring around its face and a squared collimator block below, at its side a short black operating lever, beneath it a narrow couch with a smooth white sheet, empty, a slender hand in a white laboratory coat sleeve resting on the lever, every panel plain and smooth.