i was feeling disquieted.

all i cared about was whether or not he wore a wedding ring.

in january, i moved by myself to a new town. i put everything in my car and drove alone and carried everything upstairs to my new apartment with no help. really, there was no one. it was january 9th.

it only took one week, maybe it was the stress of public transportation. i had to learn it like i was a child, because i had never used it. had never been on a bus. after i started to figure out how to use the trains and the quickest way to get to the grocery store, i started to hurt.

a trip to the emergency room yielded this: one doctor in disbelief that a girl like me could be sexually inactive. he held my breast in his large, furry hand and said 'but how can you be sure?' i wondered if it was the infection itself, or just the way i looked. it also got me a syringe in the hip, an hour sleeping on a gurney, and a prescription for vicodin. two refills.

come back, they said, if it gets any worse.

after my drawing class the next night, i went back. it was after midnight. this time, a roommate i barely knew dropped me off outside the glass doors. it hurt too much too drive, and anyway, what would i do if i had to drive home in the rain on pills? inside, i remember that the nurse wore green and he was asian, good looking. i told him i was afraid of needles and he believed me, so he numbed my hand before he went looking for a vein. very kind, that handsome asian nurse was. he shooed everyone out when i started to cry and he held my hand when i told him that i was totally alone and he screamed at the switchboard operator until she gave up and called my mother long distance and he gave me an extra gown when they told me i had to wear mine backwards for easy access and he told me that he recognized pain in my eyes, made me point at a series of happy/sad faces on a chart before he determined my dosage.

morphine feels like a flashbulb, one of the old fashioned ones that breaks after one use, explodes inside your head and the heat is a reaction to the light. it was fine now that i was warm and they took me upstairs in my backwards gown so everyone between emergency and medsurg saw everything i had, but it was so warm that it didnt matter. my mother called and i dont remember talking to her, i only remember that the doctors were busy and nurses were so gentle and my roommate was old and dying and there was a channel on the television that showed an empty altar covered in flowers beside a window.

i kept that station on all day to see how the shadows changed as the sun rose and set in a world outside that i couldnt remember. morphine in my iv and no food for 24 hours.

the morning nurse sang to me and danced in tennis shoes, stopping only when the doctor came in. she, like everyone else was busy, but since she was the only surgeon in the hospital (apparently) who dealt in breasts, she was stuck with me.

she gave me 2 to 2:15 pm, noted it in her black book and left the room, and the nurse was sympathetic. when she was gone, i realized that she was a beautiful woman. i realized that i wasnt afraid to be exposed in front of her eyes, that i didnt care if her busy eyes thought i was ugly. she was going to fix me.

on tv, the shadows got longer across the altar. little flower heads were creeping across the floor, ready to leave the screen and come to me. no one even knew i was here; surely i had to get flowers from somewhere.

when she came at ten after two, i took off my shirt and lay on my back waiting. i closed my eyes and the singing nurse held my hand, because he also knew that i was afraid of needles. and mostly, i couldnt feel the front of me. they were poking around at my sternum and the crease there, where the breast folds against the body and i felt nothing. this, the most sensitive spot on my body. but i felt the scalpel, i felt every movement of this doctors delicate white hand, saw it mirrored in the swinging of her hair.

it wasnt supposed to hurt, but it did. it wasnt supposed to make me cry but i felt the sides of my pillow and the hair around my ears grow wet, wet, cold. she was squeezing now, this dark eyed woman with the lovely skin had set down her scalpel and was bearing down, searching for infection.

he was surprised, that handsome singing nurse told me later as he rested me back on a new dry pillow, at how well i held up. surprised i hadnt screamed. he had gone home last night and told his girlfriend about me, how i was lost in this hospital with this scary sickness when i had just moved by myself to this big city. how i had been here for six days and this was all i knew.

i wondered if i should tell him that if i called my boyfriend, if i even could get ahold of him from this bed, that he would not come. that we were not really together, even though i had seen him a few days ago and slept in his bed. that he probably wouldnt care, like he hadnt cared to show up at the airport on time, like he hadnt cared to make good on anything he had said in the last few weeks.

that nurse had looked away, his handsome face had turned and his eyes closed and i tried to feel for a wedding ring on that hand that held mine so i could squeeze.

i could feel his sympathy, as he saw my stomach white and bare and my nipples standing up in the cold and all the blood running between my breasts. i wanted to know if he was afraid for me because he loved a woman, if he was seeing those tears and that blood and the glint of the blade on the pale flesh of the woman he went home to every night.

i bet she had dark eyes. kind, like his.

i would drive, later, two days later when i got to go home, to someone with pale eyes, blue ones. i think he mouthed his sympathies maybe gave me a hug. it was fine; they sent me home with another vicodin prescription, four refills. when he climbed into bed with me that night, there was no pain. every noise he made, i vibrated with it from head to toe.

it was a kind of magic, anyway.