Pre-op, the anesthesiologist, Dr. Phelz, had asked questions to determine her overall hardiness. “You seem to have a strong constitution. You might heal without this procedure,” he said, as if questioning her decision to have the surgery.
The car accident had turned her easy life topsy-turvy. She could skip the surgery, and maybe continue a downward spiral that she was convinced would lead her straight down the pit into death. Or she could take the risk.
She hated having to make the choice. She wanted to revenge herself on the cause of all this agony. She had made no threat, she had spoken no words in anger, but a plan grew with her pain, and with the impending operation. She must not only punish, but punish with impunity. That was not easy, considering the state of her health after the accident. She counted on more strength and her unshakable resolve to see her through the aftermath.
“I do not like thee, Dr. Fell,” she had thought, gazing up at the anesthesiologist's handsome face. It was a nursery rhyme she used to read to her children. “The reasons why, I cannot tell,” her mind ran on as he spoke, reassuring her, attempting a bedside manner. “But this I know and know full well. I do not like thee, Dr. Fell.” The rhyme rose and fell behind his words like a tank rolling over hills.
It was obvious to her he did not like her, either. Possibly, he, too, did not know why. He visited her the first day or so after surgery and she thanked him very genuinely because, like her or no, he gave her a moment of heaven in the midst of sheer hell, and he managed to keep her alive. Later, the surgeon said that he was quite an “interesting guy.” Since she respected the surgeon, she reconsidered. Dr. Phelz was whole and fit. She was lying on the table, a disorderly blob, about to be gutted. No doubt the contrast had affected her judgment.
She did not fear death by anesthesia or heart failure. She did not even fear pain. She had given birth to four children without medication. She imagined she knew all that pain had to offer. She was ignorant, but her ignorance made her calm and strong and helped her survive the battles ahead. This same mysterious thing inside people sent young people to war with a secret in their hearts, a yearning for adventure and glory.
She was just being human, denying the facts that stared her in the face. She did not climb mountains too high to ascend or march off to meet enemies who wanted to kill her. She walked into a hospital where sharp knives waited, sterilized upon a table.
The day before the operation, she spent hours completing a battery of tests. Questions, many questions, but never the right ones. Why had she walked in front of the car? They did not ask. Why had the young man who hit her been without insurance?
Why that split-second mistake? Why all that pain? During the months of her recovery she thought of little else, except holding him accountable for ruining her life. She was a teacher. He needed a lesson he could never forget.
A few forms, to hold everyone else harmless. Then they needed her blood. “It's very hard to find a good spot on me,” she warned them. They patted, then slapped the inside crook of her elbow. They put a heating pad around it. They called in an expert. The phlebotomist, a young woman with scraggly black hair, took six tubes of her blood out of one thin vein, chattering, trying to keep her placid as the red fluid oozed slowly up the plastic piping.
The third day after the operation turned out to be a terrible day. Where the IV entered her hand a bruise had formed, and her hand was bloated. They had once again called the meager-haired woman, who had moved the needle into her arm. Now her arm had bloated, too, and a foot-long red trail under her skin ran from her wrist to her elbow. She had cellulitus, and required more medicine.
She passed much of that day watching the red establish itself under the wan white of her skin. After lunch, which she didn't eat, she eyed her stack of books, wondering if they held enough power to distract her from the heat of the needle and the lead rock in her stomach. When her mind cleared enough, she could think of nothing but the purity of vengeance. She pictured his death. She thought of the story, the one where the one bent on revenge walled another one up alive.
She would like to do that. She would listen for the scream that never came, the jingling of the bells, and mortar the last brick into place anyway.
For months before the operation, while making up her mind to go for it, she had read stories about mountain climbers, trying to read between the lines to find what drove them to take such insane risks. Was it courage? A vain hope for life without pain, without the terrible outcome of a very bad moment?
For her hospital stay, knowing she might have trouble concentrating, she had instead stocked up on best sellers. She picked up one from the bedstand, read a page, and put it down. The downfall and redemption of this character unfolded in her thoughts like a Hollywood movie, so tight. So unreal.
The third evening, still groggy from the abundant course of treatment she had self-prescribed, a man with pocked skin was on duty: the attendant.
Most of the hospital personnel were women. The nurses were typical American types, with the exception of the nurse on graveyard, a large East Indian woman named Mercy, who embodied the night perfectly, muttering incantations as she checked the IV, replacing the bag of fluids and the vial of medication. The orderlies and aides were female immigrants from South America and Thailand, sweet people willing to wipe dirty bottoms and powder flesh that had seen better days.
The exception was Mike.
He came in to check her blood pressure. His reading was different than any other she had had-which she mentioned. He didn't laugh when she joked about it. He slowly pulled out the cuff, fumbling with her arm, and tried again. And again. And then he entered figures she knew to be wrong into his log. That evening, she needed help in the bathroom. He helped her and she didn't care that he scared her a little with his moodiness and the unusual seriousness of his temperament. She didn't care that he was male and black and she was female and white. She needed him and he helped her.
The next evening, she made her husband come earlier so that she would not feel so helpless, and so that she would not have to depend on Mike. Mike came in very quickly, took her blood pressure, and left. She remembered the car coming and the look on the boy's face as his car came forward as if powered by the stars, a machine bent on devastation.
“What did the doctor say when he came out to tell you about the surgery?” she asked her husband. “When you were out there in the lobby, waiting for me?”
“He said you were in recovery.”
“Did he say I was okay?”
He looked confused. “I guess he must have.”
“What else?”
“I asked if there were any surprises.”
“And?”
“He said, and this was strange. Just last week, he had been reading about people with an unusual anatomical feature, an anomaly. He was wondering why, after doing this operation on thousands of patients, he had never come across it. And then you came along, boom.”
“What was it?”
“I don't know. A long name.”
“I want to know.”
“You can ask him later. I was thinking about other things…”
“Should I be scared?”
“No. It's gone now. He took it out. Something vestigial. A leftover from when we were apes that's useless to humans.” He laughed at the thought. “Like too much hair.”
After he left, she drifted into a haze, locked on the idea of a piece of herself, now missing. She had something in her body that had performed an ancient function but was no longer considered useful. There were other body parts like that, she knew. The appendix, of course. The coccyx.