The Stories That Lie Just Beneath

Sometimes I stand staring at my naked body in the mirror running my fingers along the scars that scatter my stomach as if they were braille and I was trying to read the stories that live buried deep beneath them.

I try and remember the intimate details of memories from a long time ago. All that comes to mind are vague and scattered ones. Only bits and pieces, sounds, and smells.

The beeping of the machine that connected the pic line into my inner bicep that pumped the three different liquids into me fighting to keep the infection at bay and keep me alive. I remember the day the technician came into my room to insert the pic line and how while she was inserting the line up my arm she told me that if the line went the wrong direction she could blow out my eardrum and how I started crying and demanded that she stop and asked if there was another way and how they wheeled me down somewhere else to finish what she started.

I remember another procedure in a cold room in the basement of the hospital a week after my first surgery when they asked me to lie on my stomach and how I looked at them as if they were crazy and around the room realizing I was all alone and had nobody to defend for me. I sobbed because I was so scared of the pain. My stomach had been cut open and they were asking me to lie flat on it and I still could barely even walk by myself. They gave me valium to calm me down as they inserted the plastic tube into my left butt cheek and deep into my pelvis to help drain the infection that was trying to kill me.

Then the muffled voices of doctors and nurses shuffling around the hallway. I remember Chris the Charge Nurse and how I loved her and everyone that worked on the Swedish seven southwest surgical floor.

I remember watching my mom sob uncontrollably at the end of the hall as they wheeled me back for emergency surgery right after my surgeon told us he was going to have to give me a temporary ileostomy bag. She sobbed for me because she knew my biggest fear was coming true but I was too sick to care. She cared enough for both of us and that image of her crying as she watched me roll away is burned into my mind.

And the mixed smells of sterilization and illness that wafted throughout the halls and the taste that filled my mouth as they injected certain drugs into my line.

I remember waking up in my room from the first surgery, eyes fluttering open, head still foggy from anesthesia and pain meds. The pain I’ll never forget. The excruciating pain and staring up at my older brother looking down at me with his big hopeful smile as I whispered, “Am I going die?”

I trace the smooth six-inch reminder of this time knowing these memories will never go away. These memories will always be there teasing me with the complicated emotions that come from a trauma like this. That one time when someone else’s mistake cost me something great and how what I didn’t know then was that I’d never be able to have children because of it.

There are other memories too. Ones that make me smile. Like how if it wasn’t for that time in my life my older brother would have never met his wife and I wouldn’t have my niece and nephews. She was the nurse that happened to be in the hall when my mom rushed to find help as I stood sobbing naked in the bathroom after the seal broke on my temporary ileostomy bag and everything starting leaking down my leg to the ground below. I remember the door opened and she was backlit by the sunlight and I couldn’t see her face, I could only hear her sweet, comforting voice and somehow I just knew she’d be in my life forever.

Or how every night my dad would come into my hospital room and curl up on the reclining chair next to my bed and we’d watch a documentary about the Green River Killer or the latest on the aftermath of the Tsunami in Thailand until we both fell asleep and how the nurses never asked him to leave. In the middle of the night, I’d have to pee and he’d jump up and we’d fall into habit, helping me put on my socks with the sticky grips on the bottom and unplugging and untangling the cords from the wall from my machine as he slowly pulled me up from the bed.

I remember this one time I needed to feel the January sun on my face so he and I snuck out a back door of the hospital and into a concrete garden and stood there, hand wrapped tightly around the machine pumping different liquids into me as I closed my eyes and felt the sun for the first time in days.

And how after work my older brother would come to sit beside my bed and read the writings of C.S. Lewis to me as I drifting in and out of sleep. I don’t remember a single word but I do remember thinking how his love for God would be enough for both of us.

Then this one time I was sitting on the edge of my hospital bed crying about something I can’t remember what. My mom stood in front of me trying to help me get up. She was growing impatient and I was feeling sorry for myself. I don’t remember why but suddenly we looked at each other and both started laughing and it hurt my stomach so bad but I didn’t care because it felt so good to feel joy for that brief moment. That’s my mom and I for you with our secret language and understanding and perfect timing.

And then there was the day I went from bad to good. From sick to healing. From walking a thin line to turning the corner. I remember it as if it were yesterday. It was day seven. I woke up and felt better. I felt the life come back to my cheeks and I ate real food for the first time in a week and saw hope for the first time too. My surgeon came into my room and said he could take out the drain in my butt cheek that had become almost unbearable at that point because of where it was and he said, “okay, count to three.” I was so scared it was going to hurt but by three he had already taken it out and I felt nothing but a relief I had been desperate to feel for a week.

I went home two days later but that is a story for another time because those are the stories from only two of the nine scars on my stomach.

Most days I just see the scars that scatter my belly but sometimes, these are the memories that come rushing back when I look at my stomach as I think about how scars are these crazy visual reminders of stories from our lives and nobody ever knows until you open your mouth to tell them.