“A piercing pain”

An excerpt from the memoir in progress, Stroke! My Ego.

At first, there is nothing.

Then, a thin glow cracks the darkness.

 I blink slowly and come back into my body.

Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

A digital chirp pings near my left ear, and I open my eyes. Behind me and to my left, a monitor tracks vitals and time. Down by my knees, on either side of me, two women who look like nurses talk to each other about their work.

“Yeah, here’s the line. Got it?”
“Yes, I’m good. Give me just a second here aaannd—”

I feel hazy, as if I’ve been hit over the head or drugged. A slow scan of the room confirms that I’m in a hospital, hooked to an IV tower. I vaguely remember an earlier pain, intense and blinding, but not what caused it. Unable to speak, I watch and listen.

“You said you have it. And what? What are you doing?”

The nurses stop moving. The silence stretches between words.

“I was going to run the catheter, but, um, she’s—”

At the word catheter, the gauze of disorientation falls away. My mind sharpens. I look down the length of the hospital bed toward my stomach. And although I don’t want to, I remember.

I remember I’m no longer working in Washington, D.C. I’m home in northwest Nebraska for Christmas.
I remember my parents rushing me to the local hospital after a relentless headache stole my depth perception earlier in the day.

And I remember that six months earlier I’d gotten a vaginal piercing—a silver twist of metal tucked between my legs. I’d done it on a whim, drunk in my fuckbuddy’s basement, when he suggested we get matching piercings from his friend and tattoo artist, Wade. At the time, it seemed novel, and maybe even cute, like matching sweaters.

After getting the piercing, I came to think of the new accessory as a symbol of how I lived my life: boldly, spontaneously, in pursuit of good times and good stories. As a young adult I had chased risk the way some people chase stability, and all my life I had trusted that whatever I leapt toward would break my fall. In addition to being an example of acting without thinking, the piercing had become another loop in an unending cycle of believing that I could be and do anything and be OK.

And now the ring is what gets the nurses talking again.

“She’s, uh… she’s got this… piercing that I didn’t want to get hooked on.”
“Piercing?”

As the nurse holding the catheter explains the situation to her partner, I picture them telling my parents about this small, shiny detail. It will be the last thing Mom and Dad learn about me before I die.

Suddenly, I know regret in a way I’d never known it before.

I realize that because I am dying, I won’t get to turn my curiosity into a journalism career. I won’t get to fill in the middle chapters of my life. I’d always thought risk was something I could control or manage, because I could always balance consequence and reward. But as the nurses discussed what to do, I recognized that risk isn’t always balanceable, and its measurements change. No matter how many times you might reap reward rather than consequence; no matter how many times you land on your feet, sometimes consequences catch up to you.

Until now, I’d never known this reality.

A nurse peers into my face, interrupting my spiral.

“Honey? Stay with us, okay? Please?”

I’ve never known many serious consequences in part because I’d lived a pretty charmed life, but also because I’d been pretty good at getting out of them.

And that ignorance and denial and even the lack of accountability fed my curiosity, my sense of invincibility and my craving for adventure.

As with any other mildly serious thing that had ever happened to me, like getting in trouble at school or getting picked up by the police, as the nurses moved to insert the catheter, I recognized I didn’t want to be present for whatever came next. 

So instead of answering the request to “stay” with my care team, I let go. I slipped back into the darkness of unconsciousness, where risk and consequence couldn’t reach me.