Lit in Progress

Hi, everybody! You need to pray for a gal I work with whos name is Sarah. She’s got cancer and is mad at GOD and you just need to take care of her, amen? Her family’s all Christians but this is hard on them too and especially with her being mad. So just keep praying!

“Good morning, Herb,” James said. He was just wrapping up this week’s last 11 to 7 shift. “Hiya James.” “How are you today?” James said as he wrote something down. Herb was drifting in and out of sleep and didn’t hear him.

James looked at him for a moment, at the way his face wrinkled and creased, at the pattern of sun spots wrapping around his neck. “I’ll talk to you later,” he said. James put the clipboard back in its slot and walked to the next room.

“Good morning, Miss Sara,” he said.

Sara sat with her boyfriend in the waiting room. There were children playing behind her, running toy cars over the back of the bench she sat on. She picked up a magazine about childcare. She was not a mother; her boyfriend was not a father. They sat silently. “Sarah Peterson?” the woman called.

He sat still; she walked across the concrete, heels clicking like clock hands. “Thanks,” Sarah said. “Right in here,” the woman answered, and shut her in. There was a mirror on the inside of the door. Sarah undressed before it, taking her plastic bangles and storing them in her bag, hanging her white t-shirt and linen skirt on the hangers there. She folded her bra and panties and stashed them in her purse as well. She smiled, because how can you be modest in such a place?

She looked at the slivers of herself visible around her hanging clothes. She was young. She was pale like milk. She shivered, despite the cranberry walls and Anne Geddy calendar. Wrapping the apron-like cover around her body, she amused herself by making a halter dress, a tube top, a jumpsuit. She sat down on the tablebed.

She swung her feet. Her heels bumped the side; she swung the stirrups back and forth. She turned the light on and off. She lay back. Sat up. Got up.

She picked up an American Baby magazine and sat back down. There was a knock at the door. It opened, and the doctor said, “Ready?” Sara sat the magazine beside her. It fell down. They ignored it.

“I’m a little nervous,” Sara said, smiling and tucking a strand of tightly curling red hair behind her ear. She held her arms close to her body, wrapping them around the thin cloth. The doctor sat down in the chair at the foot of the table. “That’s alright,” she said, smiling. Her short blonde hair stayed back; her glasses were plastic. “Here’s what’s going to happen…”

“Herb?”

He turned his face, almost imperceptibly, toward James, the night shift nurse. James smiled through his light beard. “Mm?” Herb said.

“How you doing this morning?”

“Just fine, I reckon.”

“Well, that’s good to hear, now,” James said, doing something to the drip bag. His voice was higher than Herb’s, and less grainy, but their accent was almost uncannily the same. When Herb was transferred into this unit, they found out that they’d grown up in the same house in southwestern Oklahoma City.

They both liked to fish, both enjoyed reading, though Herb preferred Louis L’amour and James, Steven King.

“I’ve got some bad news, Herb,” James said, sitting down in the mauve chair beside the patient’s bed.

“Who’s died now?” Herb asked, and smiled.

“Cynthia.”

“Slide down,” the doctor said, sitting on the stool below the table. “More.”

“More.”

“Okay, that’s good. Just relax. First I’m just looking on the outside. A little touching … Little touching … Lots of touching,” she said, warning her before she did. It tickled.

“Now, you say you haven’t had sex before?”

“No, I haven’t,” Sara said. They should put something reassuring on the ceiling, she thought, like “Don’t Panic,” for people like her.

“Do you use tampons?” the doctor asked.

“Yes.”

“Okay, we’ll use the pediatric speculum.” She held up a shiny metal object that looked like a duck. “Otherwise we’d use this one,” she said, pulling a larger one from under the table. It looked to Sara about the size of, oh, a football.

“Thanks,” she said.

“OW!” The speculum was cold, then grew warmer as it pushed its way inside. It hurt worse than the first time she’d put a tampon in. She tried to relax, deepened her breath. She consciously let go of the arms of the table.

“Okay, now that horrible stretching sensation,” the doctor said. She felt like someone had raked a file over the walls of her vagina. Her breath sounded shakey and foreign. And then the metal speculum pulled wetly out, and she exhaled.

The doctor stood up and handed the tiny plastic spatula to her nurse, who put it into a what looked like a plastic film canister.

The doctor stood between Sara’s legs; she pushed her finger into Sara’s vagina, and pushed down on her lower abdomen with her other hand. Sara felt like whatever it was that people were always saying was between an anvil and a hammer.

“It’s just the tissue stretching,” the doctor said reassuringly.

“I don’t want my tissue to stretch if it feels like that!”

“It will, you know,” she said with a laugh in her voice. Sara had said that she was convinced to come because she was getting married and wanted to make sure there was nothing wrong with her.

“Not for another six months!” Sara smiled at herself; was it really that bad? Yes. Unequivically yes. But it was over, all except the breast exam, which sounded like a piece of cake.

She took her feet out of the stirrups, now warmed from her skin, and slid back up the table. The doctor’s hands were soft on her breasts, one then the other, moving her fingers in quick circles. “Feels like you’ve got a little lumpy there,” she said.

Good morning, church family,
Cynthia Marshall passed away late last night. Please keep her family and friends in your prayers. Services are set for Monday afternoon at 2 p.m. If you would like to volunteer to bring food, please contact the church office or reply to this. Also, Cynthia’s brother Herb is in St. Meredith Hospital right now if you want to send him a card. Love you all,
Julie