64 lines
3.3 KiB
HTML
64 lines
3.3 KiB
HTML
---
|
|
date: 2019-11-01
|
|
weight: 4
|
|
---
|
|
|
|
<pre class="verse">There are so many words that could be said
|
|
about the preparation for surgery, all those steps that led
|
|
to that six-thirty AM call. The days of purging.
|
|
The anxiety. The drive. My husband's gentle urging.
|
|
That night in the Airbnb. That last shower with the Hibiclens.
|
|
All that has faded. It's distored at the edge of the lens
|
|
of my memory.
|
|
       No, what remains is the two hours before:
|
|
the being so scared that I was reduced to the barest core.
|
|
There was nothing left of me but fear, not even a name.
|
|
I could still drive — the fear was quiet and tame —
|
|
I could get us to the ambulatory surgery waiting room.
|
|
But beyond that, I was a non-person. Or convict: my doom
|
|
was in their hands.
|
|
<blockquote>Non-person? Doom? Give yourself at least some credit.
|
|
You still had agency. You still had a choice, could have not let it
|
|
happen. You say of travel that getting you there is their job:
|
|
you felt the same here. You crossed the doorway and let this mob
|
|
of nurses do theirs.</blockquote>
|
|
And that's exactly what happened. I crossed that threshold,
|
|
and then there I was: a patient before a team ready to handhold.
|
|
At that point, I was no longer bearing all that weight.
|
|
I was able to relax and let them guide me, a piece of freight
|
|
working through a system. I even had a barcode to scan.
|
|
Some gabapentin. My belongings in a bag. A rundown of the plan.
|
|
An IV, and a second after the first missed. Meet the surgeon,
|
|
then the anaesthesiologist.
|
|
            I felt myself then a virgin.
|
|
I was at this point being prepared for some strange sacrifice,
|
|
a process of pain and cutting, of rebirth. A cut, a slice,
|
|
and I would become something more...what? Mature? More complete?
|
|
Where I'd never put stock in virginity before — so obsolete —
|
|
it fits well, now.
|
|
<blockquote>It's the penetration. It's the being opened up. The breach in tegument.
|
|
There is change implied in the loss of virginity. Something elegant,
|
|
something beyond just the physical. Maybe it's maturity,
|
|
maybe it's a coming of age, or even some strange aspect of purity.
|
|
It's a one-way change</blockquote>
|
|
That no-going-back-ness grew stronger and stronger,
|
|
and the minutes just seemed to go longer and longer,
|
|
as I got closer and closer to the fateful moment of change.
|
|
I was laid on my back. I wwas wheeled to the OR. "How strange,"
|
|
I thought. "That I'll never know where this room actually is.
|
|
I'm wheeled here on my back, the surgeon does his biz,
|
|
and I'll wake up in post-op." To this day, I have no idea.
|
|
Did all of my friends go through this? Did Katt? Did Lutea?
|
|
Were we all whisked away to some dreamside room
|
|
where we would be changed? Some strange, perhaps-tomb?
|
|
After all, this surgery, this procedue, none of this was riskless.
|
|
Would this be where we died? Would we pass here, resistless,
|
|
in the depths of anaesthesia?
|
|
<blockquote>Was that really such a worry?
|
|
               I mean, I suppose it had to have been.
|
|
You spent all that time polishing your will. How could you begin
|
|
to deny the death-thoughts inherent in a nine-hour surgery?
|
|
That you didn't still leaves you feeling like you're living a forgery
|
|
of a life.</blockquote>
|
|
</pre>
|