ally

November 1, 2019

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.
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.
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.
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
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?
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.
But then I was in. I was in that room with surprisingly green walls.
The nurses dropped me off, and from down those hidden halls
came surgeon, anaesthesiologist, what seemed like dozens of people.
"Here, hold this over your face," someone said as a needle
wandered into my IV's injection port. "It's just oxygen."
My hand began to slip. Oxygen? Some sort of intoxicant?
They laughed, repeated, "No no, you have to hold it up."
Perhaps it was O2, but whatever was injected began to interrupt
any train of thought. The jazz music they'd put on, at my request,
was overwhelmed by static. My vision followed. Silence: blessed.
Speed: surprising. Is this death? A rush of nothing. Is this death?
Nothing.
Nothing. Nothing. Is this death?
Nothing. Is this death?
Silence, static.
Was this death?
Nothing. Nothing, death? nothing
Nothing,

Nothing.

Was this death?
Death? Nothing.

Death? Nothing.
There was nothing.

Silence.

Static.

Nothing.

Death.

Silence.

Death.
Silence.

Static.

Static. Static.

Death, static.

Death.

And then you woke up.