An Untamed State (37 page)

I
wanted to remember what it felt like to move without being chased. There were things inside me still not set right. My feet were still tender like the rest of me, but the pain was bearable, unlike too many other things. I put on my running clothes and found the iPod Michael brought me and I started a slow loop on the gravel road circling the farm. It was hard going at first. I had been smoking too much so my chest tightened uncomfortably as I tried to manage breathing and moving at the same time. I turned the volume high, so high I wouldn’t have to think. My body settled into a comfortable rhythm. After an hour, I finally stopped and finished my last lap walking, my hands on my waist.

I called Michael from the kitchen, leaning against the counter as I drank water from a canning jar. When he answered, I was quiet but he knew it was me. I focused on one word at a time. I said, “I ran today.” I hung up before I heard his voice. We had nothing, really, to say to each other but I wanted him to know.

After I showered, Lorraine asked me to drive with her to Lincoln. She had a doctor’s appointment and shopping to do. I agreed. As we walked into the medical complex, Lorraine said, “You know, you could stand to see a doctor, too. I took the liberty of making you an appointment right after mine.”

I stiffened, felt out of breath. I stopped, gripping the railing next to me. “I don’t need to see a doctor,” I stuttered.

“Why don’t we let the doctor decide that?”

“Sometimes I really don’t like you.”

Lorraine pulled her purse tightly against her chest and smiled. “I don’t care.”

I followed her inside like a sullen child. When she handed me a wooden clipboard with various forms I needed to fill out, the words seemed to rearrange themselves. I was suddenly one of those people who have suffered brain injuries, who have to relearn everything in order to start living again.

“You’re a lawyer. You should be able to handle pointless paperwork.”

“Very funny.”

She pointed at the top of the form. “Put your name there.”

I tried to remember my name. Sometimes it was with me and sometimes it was just beyond my reach. My hands sweated. I heard the voices from inside my cage, loud and laughing and drunk.

“I don’t know what to do,” I said.

Lorraine pointed to the top of the form again. “Write Mireille.”

I did as I was told, gripping the pen tightly.

Line by line she helped me complete the form, then took it to the reception desk. When she returned, she said, “That wasn’t so hard.”

“Where’s your form?”

Lorraine looked at me. “I don’t have an appointment, dummy.”

I leaned forward, resting my forehead against my knees. Lorraine began rubbing my back exactly the way her son did as we sat in the backseat of my father’s car, speeding away from an empty church. This time I didn’t pull away.

When the nurse called my name I tried to remember how to stand. Lorraine held my elbow and we stood together. She steered me toward the waiting nurse. When she turned to walk away, I grabbed her arm.

“My Lord, child,” she said. “You’re shaking like a leaf.”

“You’re welcome to come back,” the nurse said to Lorraine and I nodded eagerly.

In the small examination room, I sat on a round, rolling stool, shifting from side to side. Lorraine sat in a chair and began flipping through a magazine. As the doctor walked in, she smiled widely and extended her arm, shook Lorraine’s hand, said her name was Dr. Darcy, but to please call her Evelyn. She offered me her handshake too but I took a half step back. She smiled softly. “I hear you’ve been through an ordeal. Can we talk about that a little?”

I said nothing but there was something about her I liked. There was kindness in the doctor, in the cadence of her voice. I hoped I could entrust my body to her. I needed to entrust my body to her. I was hurting so much and didn’t know how much longer I could hold out. She said she was going to take really good care of me. She asked Lorraine to leave the room. I changed into a gown and then the doctor and I were alone. I prayed I wouldn’t vomit all over the doctor’s pretty face. Before I could stop myself I said, “I might throw up on your pretty face.”

She laughed again. She struck me as the kind of person who was easy with laughter but always genuine. “I’m a doctor. I can handle it. Can you talk about what happened?”

I shook my head.

Dr. Darcy nodded and patted the examination table. “No problem,” she said.

I wanted no part of any exam but I also knew Lorraine wouldn’t back down. I knew I needed help. I concentrated on making it to the table and climbing up. As I lay back, I squeezed my legs together. My knees shook, all that tension working its way through my body. The doctor lightly tapped my knee. She said, “I know this is hard but I need you to relax, just a little.”

I tried to relax, tried to pretend this was a normal annual visit but I couldn’t spread my legs apart. Something hot and wet trickled into my ears, down my neck. I sat up on my elbows. “If I freak out, please just do what you need to do because I can’t handle doing this a second time.” I still didn’t open my legs.

“I’m sorry I have to do this,” Evelyn said softly, “but I will be as careful as I can.”

I was so sick of sorry. Slowly, I began to inch my legs apart, my body opening. Evelyn gently placed each of my heels into the stirrups. She began to explain what she was doing but I couldn’t hear. I couldn’t care. It hurt more than I expected but I didn’t know how to say anything. I did not know how to say
stop, please, stop.

There is nothing I cannot take.

The doctor swallowed a sharp intake of breath, muttering, “Oh my God,” and then there was the sound of metal against metal. I stopped hearing or feeling anything. I went limp. My arms fell to the side. My eyes rolled back. I suddenly felt like I was a very small person in a very big room far away from anyone or anything that could hurt me. I was almost happy. Finally, I figured out how to leave my body.

There were hands on my shoulders and they shook me. Someone called my name. I could hardly make it out. I was still very small in the very big room and I didn’t want to leave because I felt nothing.

There were hands on my shoulders and they were shaking me. Someone called my name again. The voice was clearer now. I opened my eyes and several unfamiliar faces peered down at me. I tried to remember where I was, tried to make sense of yet another geography. I looked down at my body. I wore a hospital gown. My face and neck were slick salty wet. I was very tired.

An unfamiliar face loomed closest. Slowly her features became less and less fuzzy. “Glad to have you back,” she said.

“I didn’t go anywhere.” I was groggy.

“Can you sit up for me?”

I frowned. “Of course I can sit up.” As I pulled myself upright, I was overcome by a wave of dizziness. I reached back to steady myself. “Where am I?”

She held a small penlight in her right hand and looked into my eyes. She said, “I’m Dr. Darcy, Evelyn. You’re at the clinic.”

Instinctively, I wrapped my arms around myself. “Why is everyone staring at me?”

The doctor nodded, then shooed the others out of the room. After she closed the door behind them, she turned back to me. “You gave us quite a scare.”

I stepped off the exam table and reached for my jeans, trying to stand and dress at the same time. I steadied myself by grabbing the table. “I’m fine.”

“Why don’t you sit down?”

I finished pulling on my jeans and sat in the closest chair, crossing my legs.

She sat on the rolling stool and pulled herself closer. “I’m glad you came in,” she said. “You’ve definitely been through a lot. There’s a reason why you’re in so much pain.”

“I never said I was in pain.”

“Mireille, I am a doctor.” In a matter-of-fact manner, the doctor carefully explained what she had found. I was back in the very big room. I felt everything.

“You also really need to talk to someone,” she said. “You are exhibiting all the signs of post-traumatic stress disorder.”

“Really,” I said, drily. “That’s a crack diagnosis.”

Evelyn smiled. “I have a list of great people who can help.”

I nodded tightly. “I can’t. I don’t. It’s too much. I will be fine. I don’t want anyone inside me in any way.”

The doctor patted my knee. “We’ll revisit this. Meanwhile, I’m going to run some tests, have you come back tomorrow.”

I nodded and finished getting dressed and tried to forget everything the doctor told me.

T
he next day, the doctor seemed smaller behind her desk, younger, still kind. I fidgeted in my seat. Lorraine reached for my arm, steadied me. “Calm down,” she said. I tried but I couldn’t stop shaking my leg. The doctor opened a manila folder bearing my name.

She smiled. “I got the sense you didn’t hear much of what I said to you yesterday so I thought it might be easier to talk in a less clinical setting. Your blood work came back clean. You’ll want to be tested again in six weeks, three months, and six months just to be sure.”

I clasped my forehead. It was a small miracle. I held that small miracle in my hand as I listened to the rest. I needed a reconstructive procedure, she said, to repair my vaginal canal. The damage was extensive. I thought about the ugliness of her words. They would keep me in the hospital for a night or two, could fit me in this week.

“You’re saying I have to be in a hospital, on an operating table?”

The doctor nodded.

“I cannot do that. I just cannot.”

“This is not optional. If you want to have a normal life, or something like a normal life, it is not optional.”

“Goddamnit. I cannot deal with this. When will this be over?”

Dr. Darcy leaned forward. “I understand how you’re feeling. I do, but this surgery is one step toward getting better, hurting less, being whole.”

I imagined being in a hospital, being paralyzed, being cut open again and shook my head so violently, I gave myself a headache.

“You look here,” Lorraine said. “When I was sick as a dog and refusing that chemotherapy, you were the one who said my family needed me to get better, who was so stubborn and sat with me day after day in that hospital, with all those tubes running in and out of me. Now it’s your turn to do what has to be done because your family needs you. We need you.”

The doctor continued talking, telling me about the procedure, how the best doctors would be helping me. I sat still and pretended to listen. I hoped for something to go terribly wrong. If they put me under, and I was lucky, I might never wake up.

On the way back to the farm, Lorraine said, “Should you call Michael or should I?”

“I’ll do it,” I said, dully.

When we pulled up to the farmhouse, I jumped out of the truck and walked toward the barn, walked until I couldn’t see the house rising above the cornfields anymore.

He answered the phone after only one ring. “It’s never going to be over, Michael.”

“What’s wrong?” He was tired, impatient.

My terror overwhelmed me. All I could think of was everything that could happen to my body in a hospital. “I don’t know if you want to know but I need to have surgery.”

His voice changed. Suddenly, he sounded terribly serious, his words clipped and precise. “What kind of surgery? Why? When?” He fumbled for a piece of paper.

I tried to remember the doctor’s words, tried to explain them to Michael carefully. He took notes, his pen moving furiously. I knew later he would call every doctor he had ever known.

“I don’t want to do this,” I said. “Please don’t make me.”

“I’ll be there tomorrow. I should have never left.”

“You don’t have to fly back out here,” I said. “You just left and I’m not an infant. Stop saying what you think you’re supposed to say. I can’t take it anymore.”

“I’m not going to fight with you. I have fucked this all up but I am going to get better at taking care of you, I swear.”

I was silent. I looked up into the sky, clear and blue, the sun high and bright. A flock of birds passed overhead. I raised my arm high above my head. I wanted to grab hold of their dark feathers so they might lift me from the ground, take me away.