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Issue 14
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It's not like I died. And it's not like I'm the one who messed up and almost killed someone. So why am I struggling to live with myself? Ever since my second surgery for appendicitis, I haven’t felt like myself. Surely, if I rewind the ribbon of the time tape, I can make everything go differently; I know exactly where everything went wrong, so I know the moment to go back. I’ve watched the time-travel movies: I know better than to touch anything. All I would have to do is give a different answer to the first question the hospital asked me than the one I actually gave…
“Would you like to participate in this research study?” Who are you is not coming out of my mouth. It’s like my mouth doesn’t believe my brain is really commanding it to ask that. It also doesn’t believe I want to ask what research study? “Would I get to leave the hospital sooner?” It doesn’t sound like my voice, but the young woman with the clipboard at the end of my very long bed nods and smiles like nothing’s wrong. “Today!” There’s something wrong. Yes, I have appendicitis. And no health insurance because I just moved back to Washington and started my new job five days ago. There’s something wrong with the study. I’m a good person. I want to help people. I need to contribute something to this life. There’s something wrong. I might get to avoid surgery altogether. Surgery is to be avoided at most costs, I would think. There’s something wrong. I would get to avoid surgery and the bill of an overnight stay in the hospital and help advance science all at once—I hear “yes, I’ll do it” come slooping out of my mouth. I’m not sure how much time passes after the research study person leaves and someone in scrubs who says she’s a surgeon comes in. “All right, Miss, uh…” she raises just her eyes. “Wildhood.” I keep the for now part in my face. I haven’t decide whether or not I’ll keep that name if divorce is what my husband decides, but it’s not his name anyway. Well, it is in that we both changed to a new one, but I was the one who got the name in a dream, and he was the one who took three months to decide to both change and then never actually did change it with the social security office, causing a big problem every year when it comes time to file taxes. “Right. So, uh…discharging, then?” “Like, bodily fluid discharge?” I feel the feeling I get when I’m laughing, so I guess that’s what happening. “Got your sense of humor back already,” the surgeon snorts. “That’s a good sign.” She sighs as she scribbles what seems like a whole lot of stuff onto her notepad. “Pharmacy’s on the first floor.” She rips off a piece of paper too large to be a prescription, hands it to me, and pats my shoulder. “Good luck! We’ll be interested to see how you fare.” Was that an evil glint in her eye? I realize I can’t really trust my own eyes when I look down at the sheet she had just handed me and all I see is snaky, swimmy, tadpoley things shimmying around on it. And off of it onto me—my hand jerks “away” from the paper except that it’s the hand holding the paper so the swimmy things come with. Maybe I do need this much medication. Somewhere along the line, I text the friend who had at one point before my marriage—the one that’s crumbling but never felt real in the first place anyway—been more than a friend because I’m standing in line at the pharmacy waiting to check out with my drugs when I get a be there soon reply text from him. I hadn’t bothered to tell my almost ex, probably because our third separation had started almost six months ago and he showed zero percent urgency in repairing anything about our relationship. It wasn’t vengeance, it was self-protection: I was tired of feeling like a gnat every time I asked for basic stuff from my husband. My friend comes and takes me home. He makes sure I had water and emotional support. I fell asleep. I wake up a fuzzy number of time units later to drink some water with my antibiotic pills, which I was to take a ten-day course of instead of surgery so that this research study I had apparently enrolled in soon after they had given me my first-ever dose of Dilaudid and fall back asleep. I wash, rinse, repeat this maybe three more times throughout the night/next day, dragging myself out of bed only to get water and use the bathroom, before the water started tasting like rancid rat carcass. I spit the mouthful out in the tub and crawled on the cool floor, which felt good on the bruises I had gotten from crawling on the floor so much, back to bed. Laying down that time provokes a sense of falling that is equal parts frightening and fun; I awake and fall asleep without disrupting this feeling so many times that, at some point, it starts to feel like falling is the only thing there’s ever been. I wake up and sleep, wake up and sleep, wake up and sleep, wake, sleep, wake, sleep I lose track of how many times before I jolt awake by being shot at point-blank range. From the inside. I can barely crawl to the bathroom in time to try to vomit. It hurts too much to complete the heave. I lie down on the cold tile, pressing my abdomen into the soothing chill as hard as I could stand it until the friend who I had made plans with for dinner was gently but rapidly tapping my shoulder blade. One of my eight housemates must have let her in despite none of them coming to check on me. Just as well – I didn’t know any of their names and the only time I’d ever spoken to one of them was to ask where my entire grocery order had gone after I’d put it in the fridge less than an hour before. The answer was as Seattle as that living situation: wordless shrug, no eye contact, accidental arm bump as she passed me back to her dank hovel of a bedroom. “I’m so sorry!” The words are slurred coming out but sincere. I always do what I say and I always keep my commitments, even when I make too many and most of them I make because I think it will make me worthy of friendship rather than out of any actual desire to do so. “We’re supposed to have di—” “I’m taking you to the ER,” she says in her signature firmkindconfidentcaring voice. I shake my head vigorously enough to hear bones sliding around on each other in my neck. “Why won’t you go when you feel this bad?” She kneels next to me. “Because they’ll admit me. Plus,” I pause to catch my breath after struggling and failing to sit up, “the nurse said this was just a symptom of peritonitis.” I struggle again to sit up, this time succeeding only with the help of the cabinet. “When did you call the nurse? Did you tell her what your pain level is?” She stands up and reaches out her hand. Before I can answer, she frowns. “I thought you had appendicitis.” Apparently, whatever I said next doesn’t make sense because her face drains of color and she calls for help getting me into her car. The next thing I remember is my almost-ex-husband finally coming to visit, but this may have happened the day they discharged me. We weren’t talking every day at that point, but I remember thinking he should know about this. Maybe I was hoping it would spur him to pursue relationship with me, just like every other emergency, which had inspired acute care and concern from him for a few months tops each time. What it inspired, whenever it happened, was indeed a visit—and a gift: a purplish, viney plant, which, I have to hand it to him, is very me in many ways. There isn’t much dialogue between us, I’m sure, and the second surgery I would need to finally remove my appendix would sort of hork my memory out of whack, so I wouldn’t remember it anyway by now. It still is the last time, as of this writing, that I’ve seen him, as I knew then that it would be, even as it would take another 11 months for the paperwork to finalize our divorce to go through. Just as I knew in my knower that I should have just done the surgery. I should not have consented to being in a research study, not least because there is no follow up at all when you report negative outcomes. But also because, had I not just asked them the day my coworker drove me to the hospital to perform the appendectomy, I might not have needed the second surgery, which they had to do because the first time they tried to evict my appendix, they couldn’t find it, everything was too swollen and infected; all they could do was drain the abscess that had formed (that was the being-shot-level pain) and a pound of necrotic tissue without risking hemorrhage. I might have been able to avoid two doses of general anesthesia too close together and save my brain. I might still be able to find words lightning fast, remember everything I hear, not take months instead of hours to write anything. But also, I might not ever have met my fiancé Sam, the absolute best thing that God has given to me and I would not have ever experienced being truly loved and cared for in the self-sacrificial way my first husband wasn’t mature enough to handle when he was compelled to propose to me after five years of rough on/off relationship, if I had answered the question the hospital asked me this way instead: “Would you like to participate in this research study?” A woman with mean-girl cheekbones and an expression to match holds an iPad or two or several in front of my face. Normally, I’m someone who likes a lot of information—learning that this is more FOMO than merely striving to stay informed—and it sure seems like I’ve missed a big chunk of it here. But is this really the time? One of my organ’s tried to kill me. Take it out. But….surgery. Surgery. I’m essentially alone. I’m only married on paper and none of my family is in state, which was the point, but that’s another story. Take it out. The last two times I have ignored this gut feeling/intuition/whisper from the Holy Spirit did not go well, though one of them could maybe still work out. I shouldn’t have married the guy I married, but we’ve hung on through two other separations. Maybe a medical crisis is just the jolt he needs to prioritize our healing. I can’t say no. This is science or something! It’s for the good of humanity. Or at least me, who gets to avoid the horrific welter of guilt that comes with having to say no in order to take care of myself, god forbid just because I don’t want to meet a request. There’s something wrong. Yes, I have appendicitis. And no health insurance because I just moved back to Washington after trying to escape my crumbling nothing of a marriage and started my new job five days ago so am having to take unpaid leave as well. There’s something wrong. Take it out. I’m a good person. I want to help people. I need to contribute something to this life. There’s something wrong. Take it out. I swallow. “I think I’d rather,” I take a breath in attempts to stabilize the room that has started to wobble, “Yeah, I think I’d rather just get my appendix removed.” I choke on the wave of nausea that arises from failing to people please, which I try to tell myself is because of the painkillers they shot me full of as soon as they started the CT to confirm appendicitis. “Oooookay,” is all iPad lady says before she stands and leaves. It is definitely at least a half hour before a horde of medical people come in, all moving as one and saying nothing that makes any sense until they ask me who my emergency contact is. It seems like they say it at least twice because they’re kind of impatient after a while. But I’m still deciding—I moved away from Washington because I no longer had community and didn’t want to go through a divorce alone, if that’s what was going to happen, and my family is 1,300 miles away. The only person who’s close to nearby who might respond—has responded to emergencies (and really only emergencies) in the past—is my maybe almost ex. I have to say my ex. He comes. It’s a long while later I think, but he has a plant! Potted because he remembers that cut flowers make me sad; you’re just watching them die slowly in the vase. We don’t say much, but do we really need to? Maybe my “need” for verbal engagement is more of a compulsion to avoid silence. Maybe I can be okay with quiet. They wheel me back for surgery and I imagine it’s just like the movies. What if it could be that dramatic? Doctors’ brows furrowed, nurse staff rushing, onlookers praying, minor chords clanging, as my gurney squeals through angel-white hallways until severe watertight doors slam behind me and the team that will save my life. But it’s a quiet event: I’m in the room I was admitted to with my maybe-not-almost-ex. Then, I’m in prep. Then, I’m in the OR, counting backwards from 100 while fog fingers in from my periphery, as thick as forever. The procedure is over in the blink of an eye and I return to myself extra quick—my body processes anesthesia surprisingly efficiently, apparently. My not-yet-ex has just arrived again after going back to work for the two hours that my surgery actually lasted; I don’t yet know the pain from the former will be chronic, but I don’t think I’ll be surprised when I learn that it is: the pain from the latter is almost something I can get used to, maybe with just a few more decades. Almost. Maybe it’s my fuzzy mind and pain-fatigued soul speaking here, but I think I really mean it when I say: thank God it went the former way and not the latter. |
Megan Wildhood is a writer who helps her readers feel seen in her monthly newsletter, poetry chapbook Long Division (Finishing Line Press, 2017), her full-length poetry collection Bowed As If Laden With Snow (Cornerstone Press, May 2023) as well as Mad in America, The Sun and elsewhere. You can learn more about her at meganwildhood.com.
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