Part 5:
Hope’s therapist kept encouraging her to open her heart. She met someone in an odd series of events. Hope was intrigued by her and her talent as a chef. They saw each other frequently but Hope was always tired and felt run down. It may have been an excuse not to be in the present but she blamed it on Mitch’s negativity and constant complaining. There was a small truth to that. There was something else she was putting off and that was the fact she had not had a menstrual cycle in almost 10 months and she needed to go see the stirrup doctor. It was such a pain in the ass, well not ass exactly but in the general region.
Finally she made the appointment. When D day arrived she sat in the waiting room waiting contemplating running out. There were many reasons Hope feared the forceps’ physician but she had to do what needed to be done to maintain the thing.
A short woman came in and introduced herself along with a student doctor. Oh great Hope thought, two cave lookers at once, crap. “So, any symptoms you need to tell us about?” the small woman asked.
“Yeah I suppose. My period had been non-existent making me seriously contemplate crawling in a cave and hibernating. Since I do not care for bats in dark holes and being awake provides all manners of unexpected fun, I chose the doctor route. And um, well I did have some bleeding but it was after, um, I had been intimate and I have a dull ache in my pelvis region. There are times when it seems sharp.”
“What kind of intimacy?”
“Are there more than one?”
“Oh yes, many. How many sexual partners do you have?”
“Whoa lady, only one. I can barely handle one woman, much less two.”
“So you are lesbian?” She says with no hesitation.
“Yes, I am A lesbian.”
“Good, and only one partner. Okay,” she says “say ah, now take a deep breath and now another. Follow my pen with your eyes. No, Hope, just your eyes don’t move your head. Stick your tongue out, Hmm, okay, lift your left arm and twist slightly to the left. Now move your left arm.”
Alrighty, let me know if this hurts?” as she pushes on Hope's abdomen.
“Ouch, Jesus, let’s just play twister and get it over with” she said with a groan.
“Go ahead and get undressed, put this gown on and I will be right back” she says completely ignoring Hope's complaining and smart ass.
Given Hope’s modesty and fear of having all of her business up in the air she moans as she puts the so called gown on. But hell, a girl has to do these necessary maintenance checks. It was obvious there was a check engine light on, perhaps even flashing.
The doctor comes back and starts the exam. “Hmm okay, relax.”
Hope stares at the ceiling and thinks, Yeah easy for her to say, she isn’t in stirrups with her vagina all out in the open. She pokes, prods and uses tools Hope never wants to see again. The doctor, student and the nurse are making small talk about her cervix and other symptoms. She wants to wave her hands in the air to remind them she is not just some box.
As the doctor is finishing up she says “hmm, I am stumped. I just have nothing to hang my hat on.”
Hope’s eyes open wide and she says “well, I sure in the hell hope not.”
The doctor ignores her and says to the nurse “let’s get some urine.”
They all left the room and the nurse came back and handed Hope an empty fruit cup looking thing and she went off to the restroom. Now, not many people know this, but unfortunately Hope has peed in many cups for a variety of reasons. Just for the record, none of them were court ordered. For someone who “don’t know nothin’ ‘bout birthin’ babies,” she has peed in more cups than Lindsey Lohan.
She has perfected the art of aiming without having to look. Not having the luxury of sticking a stick in a cup and peeing with no mess she has mastered the knack of tilt, point and shoot. It’s a totally different ball game when you’re dealing with the vertical smile.
She knows she has to strategically position the cup so that the wayward stream hits the side and runs down or she could be looking at a messy spasm chasm. From past experience she is well aware if she hits the middle of that cup it becomes a pissy splatter. Now fuse this with the hovering technique because sitting down is not an option; it is a tricky procedure.
Remember, she has just been in stirrups with ground zero all up in the air and now on a public toilet. If her hand hits that water or seat, call in the prosthesis team because she will be cutting the fucker off.
As she shuffles in the bathroom holding her gown carefully to not moon the nurse. She is not sure why it matters; she has already seen Hope’s business.
She carefully assumes the squatting position and puts the plastic contraption in the line of fire at a tilt and thinks of water. She begins to let it flow gradually and she says out loud “what in the hell, my hand is warm? Holy crap.” She clenches to prohibit the stream and shivered that urine was on her hand and repositioned the plastic container.
No need to think of a waterfall again, the pee is ready to go. She proceeds with caution.
“Shit, shit, shit” there is more warmth on her hand. It is not stopping despite every Kegel repetition she attempts. Hope looks down and wonders can my urethra be kinked or did it change its downward and forward direction? Is this even possible, ugh?
Now there is piss everywhere and she can’t sit down to inspect what is going on since she contaminated the entire bathroom. Hope is now in a yoga position never seen before in an attempt to avoid peeing on her legs and little hospital slippers. Finally, she pulls the cup away from her best twister/yoga position. Surely some of the urine made it in there and it will be enough for the vagina inspectors.
Well, sure there may have been some piss in the cup if she would have taken the damned lid off.
To make matters even worse the label on top with her patient number is disgustingly sodden and smeared. In disgust she throws it all in the trash and starts the hot water. Hope goes back and forth between soap, hand sanitizer and probably killed a tree with the amount of paper towels she used to clean her, the toilet and the bathroom.
She opened the door and almost forgot about the damned gown until she saw her nurse walking with another patient. Hope stared at her with her back to the door. The nurse looked down at her hand and noticed it was empty. Hope shrugged and said “I need another fruit cup.”
“What happened?”
“Is a story really necessary?”
“No, I suppose not, I’ll be right back, you can wait in your patient room.”
As she sat there waiting, she looked over at her clothes folded neatly with underwear and bra hidden underneath. A knock happens and the nurse hands her a new cup. Hope says "thank you, I don’t know why I hide my under garments from you, it’s not like you didn’t just see all my holiest of holes.”
Behind her wide rimmed glasses, the nurses eyes widened and she said “now that is a new one and I wish more people would hide their garments especially the under ones.”
They both smiled and Hope took the lid off immediately and went to think of waterfalls on a beach in Kuai as she peed.
This time Hope had her laptop with her and immediately went to a coffee shop and wrote down the story. She posted it a couple days later and a friend on the social media site referred to the Pap-smear process as "getting your tires rotated." Hope laughed hard at Jennifer's reference and planned on using the term from now on.
Dorothy stayed on her about the results so she had no choice to fill her in on the phone call she received about abnormal results. Dorothy is a nurturing soul and insisted on going with her to the ultrasound, colposcopy and biopsy. Hope was having difficulties with all of these procedures and finally lost it one day. "Fuck it Dorothy, I am not doing this shit anymore. I don't care. The Chef was bitching about a headache last night and I wanted to punch her in the head. I am not even a violent person but I feel defeated and now I have to have another procedure involving my baby maker apparatus. They won't take everything out because they think I might want a child. You have a child, I don't need one. Make all of this go away and make Chef Boyardee go away too, she is mean."
"Slow down Hope, when is the surgery and what is it?"
"Thursday, but I am not going. People are putting me in their prayer circles. You don't actually think they are sitting in a circle do you? This is the stupidest crap I have ever dealt with. I can't deal with my thing up in the air for those medical science gawkers one more time. I am tired of it, my legs shake and they talk like I am not there."
"I will be there. You should let me or the chef in the room to comfort you."
"Not a chance in hell, it will be fine because I am not having it done." Hope began to leak some water out of her eyes.
Dorothy assured her she was going and she would be there but Hope was disgruntled and didn't appreciate her friend at the time. Dorothy knew she would thank her later but right now she needed to be angry.
Something other than the cervical cancer was bothering Dorothy. She wanted to know what she meant by "tell her to go away, she is mean." Dorothy knew the chef was jealous and didn't know what Hope was doing with her. She tried to be supportive and knew Hope was run down but her best friend deserved to be treated with kindness and compassion. She had been through hell the past 3 years and only Dorothy, Hope's therapist and essential others knew exactly how much hell and it wasn't one she wanted to imagine. Hope's heart wasn't one to toy with or treat badly, she was fragile despite her tough exterior.
After the surgery Hope was ill for a while. Dorothy took care of her by bringing her stuff she craved when she would eat. She lost a ton of weight and looked pale. It took a while before Hope got a clean bill of health and she had stopped wasting the Chef's time as well as her own. Unfortunately, Hope had broken another innocent heart.In her defense she did tell her not to fall in love with her because she wasn't capable of love. Hope believed a person knew when they loved a person within days if not immediately and she was not ever going to fall in love with this woman. When the Chef initially asked her if she could walk away from what they had she replied "yes without a doubt, I am sorry." The Chef chose to stay regardless. That doesn't make it okay, Hope knew she should have walked away sooner regardless of the Chef's decision to stay.
One should never, ever waste another individuals time. It haunted Hope because she believed in karma. It was essentially her religion for lack of better words. She figured she would be hurt in return until she learned a beautiful thing called forgiveness. It was never a word she associated with herself. She thought it was for other people only. She learned to forgive herself for making mistakes.Those mistakes had made her into who she was.
Forgiveness is a beautiful thing and was setting Hope free from a lot of pain she had been bottling for a long, long time. Through all of the hell, sadness, pain and heart break she had experienced there was a little sparkle emerging. Don't start to think that thing was shining but it was evolving.
To be continued again…
No comments:
Post a Comment