Slice

Carissa Stevens

Your first surgery is an act of desperation.

The cocktail of medications didn’t work. The injections that insurance wouldn’t cover didn’t work. Your doctor skims over your medical history, though at this point she should know it by heart: two years, two miscarriages, no living children.

She doesn’t say it with her mouth, but she says it with her eyes—there’s something wrong with you, something deformed or rotten within the innards of your body. You don’t disagree. Each loss is a failure. Each month is a failure. You are a failure.

She tells you it’s called a hysteroscopy and that you should schedule it right away. You nod, but, truthfully, you’re reeling. You’ve had your wisdom teeth removed, but this is different. This is exploratory. Who knows what they will find? Maybe you really are broken inside, your organs shattered like glass.

You do your research, read the firsthand accounts on message boards, cringe over what you find in Google Images. You learn that certain items are essential in the world of fertility procedures: comfortable clothes, antacids, good magazines, pillows for the ride home. Recovery should be short and easy, with only mild discomfort once you’re discharged from the hospital.

But you read other things, too.

You read stories of patients undergoing heart surgeries or having their gallbladder removed or their tonsils out. Halfway through the procedure, they wake up. They can’t move or scream or open their eyes. They’re trapped, feeling every cut of the scalpel, every invasion of their body. The night before your surgery, you dream that you lie paralyzed as your doctor prods your useless womb, the pain curling up your back and into your chest.

You arrive at the hospital with your husband in tow, hungry from fasting and jittery from nerves. At check-in, a kind lady wraps a plastic bracelet around your wrist and estimates the total cost of your procedure. Your husband asks to pay upfront, and you both hope the sum can be spread among three credit cards.

They instruct you to dress in an ugly mint gown, socks with rubber soles, and a filmy shower cap. A nurse asks if there’s any possibility that you’re pregnant.

Always a possibility, you reply.

The test is negative.

Once you’re underneath a weighted blanket, they allow your husband to come back and say his goodbyes. There are tears in your eyes as you confess your fears, the words spouting out of you. You are worried that you’ll be able to feel everything—motionless, trapped. You are worried that you’ll never wake up. This—holding hands behind a hospital curtain—could be your final moment together. The injustice hits you all at once. Your friends got pregnant as soon as they shirked their birth control, you tell him. Some were the recipients of happy accidents. None of them had to do this.

He says you’ll be okay, but there are tears in his eyes, too.

By the time they roll you back to the operating room, you are seething. When the anesthesiologist places an oxygen mask on your face, you are determined to fight your slow descent into unconsciousness. Your breathing is amplified, labored.

The anesthesiologist tells you to relax.

The next instant, you are sitting up in a hospital bed, your eyes unbearably heavy, a dull ache in your bandaged abdomen.

A nurse at your bedside tells you to have a sip of water. She says the doctor righted your twisted fallopian tubes, burned away cysts and fibroids. You’ll be able to carry your next pregnancy, she says.

You smile around your Styrofoam cup, a foreign feeling of hope waking up in your sleepy body.

* * *

Your second surgery is born of frustration.

Your cheeks burn with anger as you sit on the examination table, your heels placed on metal stirrups. Nothing is working, you say. I’m not getting any younger, you say.

The doctor reads back over your medical history: four years, two miscarriages, one hysteroscopy, no living children. You inhale through your nose, remind yourself that she has a lot of patients, but how the hell does she not have this memorized by now?

She says it’s time for a second hysteroscopy followed by a round of strong fertility medication. She schedules the surgery then leaves the room. You cry as you get dressed.

You buy a bottle of antacids, a People magazine, and an entire bag of Dove chocolate. You dress in sweatpants and an oversized shirt and arrive at the hospital early.

Another plastic bracelet. The woman behind the desk pulls out her calculator. Your husband pulls out his credit cards. He chuckles, but it’s a sad sound.

The gown and shower cap look the same, though the socks are a different color. The nurse asks if you could be pregnant.

Maybe, you say.

You’re not.

They give you a shot to calm your nerves, and by the time your husband is allowed back, you’re alternating between fits of hiccups and fits of giggles. Your time together is a blur, but later you’ll see a video on his cell phone of you watching the heart monitor, screeching with laughter at every beep.

You’re smiling when they wheel you back, but in the sterile quiet of the operating room, reality comes into sharp focus.

They clamp the oxygen mask around your nose and mouth. No, you’ll say. But it’s too late. Every panicked breath makes you foggier, more lethargic.

A nurse is at your bedside when you wake up. She asks if you are trying to get pregnant.

Yes, you say, though you lost two babies. You never refer to your pregnancies as babies. You feel like a liar.

The nurse calls you a poor thing and puts an ice chip in your mouth.

Two babies, you repeat.

She says you gave the doctor quite a surprise. There was a tumor on your uterus, benign but large.

Before you leave, they’ll give you a picture of it in a glossy hospital folder. You don’t look at it, but you imagine all your sadness and longing and anger solidified and wreaking havoc inside your body.

* * *

Your third surgery comes after months of pain, an extreme pressure in your stomach that sometimes takes your breath away.

You decide to rattle off your medical history before the doctor can read it to you. Six years. Two miscarriages. Two hysteroscopies. No living children.

She asks if you are ready to try for a baby again, fingers poised on a laptop computer.

I’m hurting, you say.

There’s something shadowy on your ultrasound. A fibroid or tumor or cyst—you’re not really listening anymore.

Hysteroscopy? You ask.

Hysteroscopy, she confirms.

You arrive at the hospital in jeans and a t-shirt, a face full of makeup. No one scolds you or asks you to change anything.

The plastic bracelet is tighter this time.

“Just bill us later,” your husband says.

Gown, socks, shower cap. The nurse asks if you could be pregnant.

No, you say.

We can always do a test to make sure, she says.

Save yourself some time, you say.

Your husband comes back to your bedside for five minutes, then gets a phone call. Work emergency, he says. He must take it, he says. He leaves and doesn’t return.

You think death must be like anesthesia. You can fight and rage, but, in the end, the tendrils of sleep that pull you in always overcome, always win. Your bouts of unconsciousness have always been peaceful, free of sadness and pain.

When the anesthesiologist puts the oxygen mask on your face, you breathe deep.