The hospital smells of fluorescent lighting and disinfectant and illness. I know there are people who love the white sterility, the aura of duty and miraculous action, the uniformity of the scrubs and the beeping machines and power of practical answers. But this is one of the last places I want to be, just about ever, but especially today: The Day.  

When I change into the hospital gown the short round nurse gives me, there’s also a pair of red socks with white no-slip treads on the bottom. I am so grateful for these socks. They are comforting to me.

Someone else comes to take my blood. She has skin like dark chocolate and is stunningly beautiful. Her English is saturated in accent. I like her. But she thieves away three big vials. I feel greedy for it. I want to say, What the heck are you doing! I need that! You are putting my body through too much stress! Isn’t cutting me open enough for it to handle for one day? 

While my brain screams silently, I make small talk. Where are you from? Africa. Is it beautiful there? So beautiful. Do you miss it? Every day, but I love my opportunity here. I watch the vials turn black-red, one after another and think, what a world. Nothing feels safe about this, even though they are saving me, fixing me, the paradoxes swirl around me, as one barbaric ritual after another is lined up for me. I think I am a little bit in shock, watching my blood leave my body in plastic tubes and beautiful dark-skinned hands that miss Africa look strange to be handling so much blood as their opportunity.

Jesse is sitting in the chair nearby. I cannot imagine being here without the security of him, the safety of him. I wouldn’t make it. He has been my safety since the day he stepped into my life actually. An anchoring presence. It’s how I knew. It pulls on me and I am aware that he is the only safe thing in this entire place. Except the socks now. I really really like the socks. I already know I will keep them.

I’m so thirsty. So so thirsty. But no water is allowed. Please. Just one sip. I took a sip this morning because I just could not take it. A whiff of emergency kindles. An investigation ensues. Exactly how much? Exactly when? It may affect the anesthesia. This scares me. Just a sip, at five am.

We will ask the doctor. She may send you home and reschedule.

Oh my God. What have I done? I have waited two months for this appointment. I am not sure my body has two more months to hold this malevolent presence within it. It is in revolt against me. It is churning and rebelling.

But soon, the decision is ferried in. We will proceed as planned. It was only a sip and it was many hours ago.

The surgeon, that I have met exactly twice, is in her sixties. A scientific woman with silver grey hair, cut close to her head. She is kind but not warm. I feel safe in her hands to the degree that she is clearly well-skilled and capable. But I can easily see she loves to cut things out of people. She wants more of my stuff.She asks me if I ever want to have more children in the future. I am flummoxed by this question. If only you knew the complexity of this topic! But it is only appropriate to answer: I truly don’t know. She offers me an add-on: three-for-one surgery! While I am in there, she says, I can just take it all. It appears you have predisposition for terrible overgrown things to happen in there. They will likely happen again. Cancer, explosions, putrifying—it would be better to cut it all out now. One fell swoop.

For a brief moment I am tempted. Oh Lord, it would eliminate all the wondering and waiting and all the quesitons and pain and exhaustin hope. To just end it all here. To know for sure. To finally be in control and have the answers. 

But no. Of course I can’t. His promise flutters there, in the very back corner of my soul like a trapped butterfly. I am the only one who knows it like a sound, like a feeling… what is that sound? I don’t hear anythnig. That little… fluttering sound? You don’t hear that? At this point no one else hears a thing. They all stopped believing long ago.  

But I can’t unknow it. 

I refuse to throw away good parts out of fear, I tell her. I refuse to walk out of here in menopause. Final answer: take only the bad parts. Leave everything else. 

She says she at least wants my appendix. I feel like I am bartering to keep my body parts. I say no appendix, what is the point of taking that? My appendix is fine. She says, no, if there is tendency toward this kind of thing, if there is a certain kind of fluid inside the bad ovary, your appendix could be next.

I’m having trouble thinking. I do not know what is true and what is her trying to trick me into letting her have more stuff. I ask my husband to decide. He gives her permission to take it only if it appears to be in distress. I like this answer. She does too. She draws huge blue lines on my stomach and then leaves looking satisfied. I feel kind of like I’ve just haggled with a Middle Eastern meat vendor.

The scheduled time for my surgery, ten am, comes and goes. And hours pass. It has been delayed. I stare at my red socks. My doctor is a busy busy lady with many things to cut out of many people. Horrible grotesque overgrown things. I wonder if maybe she is delayed because her other patients took her up on her extra-organs-offer. After hours of sitting in the pre-surgery room in my red no-slip socks, they come. It is just after one pm. It is time.

My husband kisses me goodbye. I try not to cry. My chin wobbles. His eyes are red.

This is it.

I am being wheeled down the hall, flat on my back. The nurses say I smell good. They ask me what it is I smell like. I don’t know what to tell them. 

Two giant doors open and I am suddenly Inside. The room is large and pure white. Illuminated to an ethereal brilliance. This is where it is going to happen. This is the room where they will drug me to unconsciousness and cut me open only minutes from now. Part of me will not leave this room. I will leave this room incomplete. Forever changed. My identity will alter here. 

There is a business-like bustle Inside that feels like I have entered the engine room of a huge machine: the hospital is a massive machine I see, and this is what powers it. I am here now. Now is the time to allow the fear. They have put something in my IV though, before we left the other room. Something they said would make me unafraid. But I am afraid. I shudder to imagine the full dose of fear, without their drug.

They put my cart up against the surgical table and ask me to slide over. I sit up, though it is not easy, my abdomen as it is, and do as I am told. I lay myself out before them, a sacrifice, onto the butcher’s table.

Half a dozen people are here. My surgeon is here. This is just another day at work for them. They woke up this morning and drank their coffee and put on their uniforms and drove to work. For them today is just Wednesday.

For me, it is one of the most frightening days of my life. I am the specimin. 

They are kind and gentle, but they are serious. They have a job to do. And I can tell they take it as seriously as they should. I don’t have to plead for them to take care with me. I know they will. I trust them. It is a powerless and vulnerable moment of need and submission, so potent I lay still with obedience in a moment that the rational mind says no. My trust is laid out before them. And they take it in their latex hands.

Time to go nighty-night. The anesthesiologist says. These are the best words I have heard in so long.

A nurse places an oxygen mask over my mouth and nose and my next breath takes so much effort, a shot of panic slices through me, I feel like I am being suffocated. But she says, breath deeeeeep, nice deep breaths. I take only two or three breaths and then the brilliant light disappears.

I hear voices. Close but distant. And I am being wheeled again. I cannot open my eyes yet, but I smile because I know it is over. I made it to The Other Side. I made it to After. No more need to have fear, because it is finally After. All that time I had to spend in Before, fighting the dread and the fear away. And now I have made it to the peace and safety of After. The rest of my life can be spent now in the joy of After. I will never have to anticipate this event again. It will never again be ahead; it will forever remain behind.

She’s smiling, I hear Nurse One say. Look, she is smiling.

I can feel that time has passed. It does not feel like an instant since I went out, like I thought it might. I can feel the space between thatmoment and thisone. I can feel that it is later.

I still cannot wake up completely. I cannot open my eyes or move. But I can smile. I drift off again.

I drift back. I am still unable to move or open my eyes. I feel half asleep. I can sense I am in a busy area, like a hallway, but my trolley is parked. Many nurses and other staff move around, walk by. I can sense it is nighttime now. Early to mid evening, it feels like, but I’m not sure where I get this feeling from. I can sense other patients near me, other trolleys, other people in After. I think we are parked in a row. I can hear one of them, a man, moaning as if in distress. I wonder why he is in distress when I feel so amazingly peaceful. Another nurse asks him loudly why he is moaning. He says he is in pain. She says he is heavily dosed and shouldn’t be feeling any pain. He asks for more. She says she will ask the doctor.

I can tell my two nurses are mine. They are assigned to me. They stay near me. She is smiling again, they say and they laugh affectionately. I can tell they are happy they have me and not the moaning guy. I hear Nurse One make a call. She says my name and tells the other end they are waiting for a private recovery room for me. That I just had my left ovary and fallopian tube removed.

Left. The left one. I am so happy to know. It seemed like I should know. And I am stunned. I had believed this whole time it had been the right one. It had been so big, so intrusively dominating my abdomen in the scans that even my doctor had not been able to tell which one it was. And I got to keep my appendix. She didn’t say appendix on the list of my ectomied body parts. That means it wasn’t the worst case scenario my doctor worried about.

I drift in and out. I’m not sure how long passes, but it does not seem to be more than half an hour. And then we are moving again. To my private recovery room. I am so grateful to hear it is private. I keep smiling.

Have you ever seen this before? Nurse One says to Nurse Two. No, says Nurse Two. I’ve never seen someone come out of anesthesia so happy.

After. I made it to After. 

I drift away again.

The next time I wake up I am able to move and open my eyes. And there is my husband, sitting in a chair beside me. It looks like he has been waiting for me to wake up. He stands and leans over me and takes my hand. He is trying not to cry. I have never seen him like this. So raw and so… afraid.

How are you doing?

Good… I got to keep my appendix, I say.

His eyes tear up. No, baby. You didn’t.

Oh, I say. I just assumed…

They took it. Things were… worse than we thought.

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