Thursday, January 14, 2010

ER

[<--This is not my CAT scan.]

"And this is your vagina," says the man in the blue scrubs, pointing to the image on the screen. We're in the hospital room, in the emergency room, me in the bed in a smock. The meds have kicked in through the IV, so I reach out and smack him.

Then we go back to running through the images they got when they fed me into the CAT scan machine, the doughnut into which they stick you, and then, Hold your breath, the machine informs you, You can breathe now, the robot taking pictures of what's inside you reminds you, in case you forget.

On the screen, my black lungs appear and disappear, the white glowing pieces of my spine shine through and then vanish again, the little ivory stones in my kidneys present themselves as the problem.

I tell him, "If you like looking at women's vaginas on CAT scans, you'll love 'The Operation.'" Later, they take the needle out of my arm, I climb out of the bed, they hand me some drugs, and I drive myself home.