I Feel a Draft​

Issue 19

​I feel a draft.
It must have been at least 20 minutes since the medical assistant had checked up on me. She had left to get a “smaller” speculum, as I was “overly sensitive.”
I didn’t even know I was getting a Pap smear today. I thought it was a medication check for my birth control.
Much to my disappointment, I was instructed to change into the revealing gowns that open up like a parachute in gym class.
I thought, maybe they are doing a breast exam?
Then this stranger walked in.
She seemed nice enough.
My breathing quickened.
A stranger.
I wasn’t clothed enough for a stranger.
“Excuse me, where’s my doctor?” I asked politely.
Without looking up from her clipboard, the medical assistant who didn’t introduce herself responded, “She’s out. I will be doing your Pap smear today.”
“Oh, I wasn’t aware I needed one.”
“With your health history, it’s needed more frequently than the rest of women your age.”
“So I’m abnormal?”
“Yes.”
It was like talking to a robot.
A robot with pimples and long red hair.
I tried to remember if adults had pimples. I didn’t think so.
My heart started racing.
Maybe this was a fresh-out-of-med-school assistant?
“Um, I’m sorry to ask, but my doctor usually does these exams.”
“She’s not in today.”
“Is this absolutely necessary?”
“Yes, it is. With your health history.”
“Please lay back and relax.”
She set the stirrups up and put on a headlight that looked like the one I used for spelunking, which is cave diving.
She was about to cave dive, I suppose.
I tried to focus on the light above me.
But it was blinding.
So were the walls. A puke green color.
Shouldn’t they make medical offices calmer?
She started poking.
“Ow!” I said, louder than I meant to.
My new, not introduced, spelunking medical assistant resembling a minion with acne looked up.
“You need to relax,” she said briskly.
“Um, I’m sorry to interrupt, but I usually get a blanket that’s weighted for these exams, and lower lights, and even fuzzy socks. These are a bit hard for me, emotionally and sensory-wise.”
“We don’t have those here.”
“Yes, but I get those here.”
“Well, that’s not an option.”
“OW!”
Tears were escaping my eyes.
“I am going to have to find a smaller speculum. You aren’t relaxing.”
And she left.
With my legs open.
Petroleum-like lubricant dripping down my thighs.
The air conditioning came on.
It felt like it was directly pointed at my--
Yeah.
I feel a draft.
My hips started to hurt.
Maybe it had been longer. I tried to glance over my head and see the clock upside down.
Unsuccessful.
I didn’t want to move in case the nameless assistant came back and was mad.
I didn’t want to make her mad. Plus I was already there. Embarrassed. Open.
Wow. I was really crying.
Like tears streaming, not flying off my face like a cartoon.
What was wrong with me?
I tried to think of warm tea and a blanket.
And being fully clothed.
I tried to breathe.
Counting to four.
Exhaling.
But the stirrups were too cold.
She came back in after another ten minutes or so and sighed.
As if I was the most inconvenient thing in her life.
She handed me a tissue.
The first human gesture I had gotten from her.
Nowhere in this did she offer to continue at a different time or wait for my doctor.
“I found the smallest size we own.”
She said it like it was something about me.
“I need you to relax,” she said again.
And then she shoved it inside me.
I screamed.
“OWW!”
Fully crying now.
“If you can just wait a minute, this can be over.”
She put her other hand on my lower belly, which only made the presence of the speculum inside me more obvious.
More painful.
More excruciating.
Then she took it out.
More like flung it out.
I was sure I was bleeding. I felt so much liquid.
I felt gross.
The tears kept coming.
She never looked at me.
Then she said she was going to do a digital exam.
I thought that meant a camera.
How bad could that be? I had already survived the speculum.
Nope.
Wrong again.
All of a sudden, I was getting fingered by the medical assistant.
I’m sure it wasn’t long, but it felt like forever.
I guess that’s a digital exam.
After she “inspected” what she needed to digitally, she suggested I get an ultrasound.
She didn’t explain why.
I reached for the tissues.
My legs were asleep.
My hips hurt.
And there?
There ached.
She was looking at her clipboard.
“Do you have migraines?”
“Sometimes,” I said, sniffling.
“Well then you can’t be on birth control.”
“It’s the only hormones that have worked for me,” I pleaded.
“Well, if you have migraines with aura, you can’t be on it. So you’ll have to figure something out.”
She lifted her hands like, whatever.
I hurriedly put my clothes back on.
She hadn’t left.
Finally she said, “Please see the front desk for another appointment and follow up about the ultrasound.”
Why did I need an ultrasound?
I didn’t respond.
She left.
I was alone.
I turned off the blaring lights and shut the door.
Just sitting in silence.
Crying.
What had just happened?
And what was “aura”?
I went to the front desk and attempted to speak.
No words came out.
Embarrassed, I left, still sobbing, unable to form a sentence.
I needed out.
I needed to leave.
I needed--
for it not to have happened.
I sat in the car, hands shaking, trying to understand it.
Aura.
I typed it in, still shaking.
Migraines with aura. Stroke risk. No estrogen.
So that’s what she meant.
But that wasn’t what I was trying to understand.
I searched Pap smear.
How often. When required. What to expect.
I clicked through a few pages, not really reading at first.
Then I slowed down.
You can reschedule.
You can request your provider.
You can stop the exam at any time.
I read that part twice.
No one had said any of that.
I thought about the room. The lights. The stirrups.
The way I kept apologizing.
The way she kept saying relax.
I wasn’t relaxed. I wasn’t okay.
I knew that.
I just didn’t know what to do with it.
I knew I didn’t want it.
I thought that was the least important part.
I didn’t know that mattered.
I only knew I felt a draft.

---

KARI BURROUGHS KRAAKEVIK is a Colorado-based writer, musician, and educator. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism, ColoradoBiz, Chicago Story Press, Wilderness House Literary Review, ONE ART, and Bright Flash Literary Review. She writes creative nonfiction exploring identity, neurodivergence, relationships, and the body.

---