Post Operative

My appendix burst at my friend Judy’s house on my eleventh birthday. At five o’clock in the morning I woke up vomiting in the bed I shared with her.

“Judy, I’m sick,” I whispered.

“Don’t wake up my parents,” she said, and went back to sleep.

Her father heard me in the bathroom and drove me home, leaving me in front of my house. I was not allowed to wake my parents on Sundays so I huddled on the doorstep for about three hours, vomiting into the rhododendrons that flanked the front stoop.

“I’m not sure it’s her appendix because the pain is in the middle, not on the right,” said the doctor, “but I think we should operate just to be safe.”

I wondered if he remembered making a house call when I was three to help my parents get some vile black medicine into me. He was on his way to a wedding, dressed in a white linen suit, his pretty blond wife Beryl waiting in the car for him.

“She won’t take it, Karl,” they said.

“Nonsense,” he replied. “Anyone can get medicine into a little girl.”

My mother held my legs, my father held my arms, and Dr. Karl inserted a teaspoon into my mouth. “There, you see,” he said. “Nothing to it.”

They removed their hands and I let go. The black liquid splattered on his blond hair and oozed into his neat mustache, down his collar and onto his suit.

Now I was eleven with a broken appendix, and I was scared he wanted to get even.

The nurses prepped me, a humiliating procedure. One slathered antiseptic shaving soap on my two or three wispy pubic hairs while the other said, giggling, “I bet she doesn’t have any yet.” Since I did, I felt that I had committed an indiscretion. I turned my head away and left my lower body to them.

When they had merrily defoliated me, they wheeled me to a room with the brightest light I had ever seen and slung me onto the operating table. The doctor was wearing a sort of space suit and mask which covered his face. I barely had time for one quick ragged concern that they’d start to cut before I was out when the ether swirled orange circles around me and I wasn't there anymore.

When I woke up, my belly hurt unbelievably. No one had mentioned this outcome. The doctor sauntered into my room and said, “You have to walk now.” He had the nerve to wink at me.

“No,” I told him.

He tried to pull me out of bed but I clung to the metal rails. “I can’t,” I whimpered. “It hurts.”

“If you don’t get up I’m going to light a fire under you,” he said.

“I thought this was a hospital,” I yelled. “You’re trying to kill me.” I couldn't believe anyone would treat a little girl like that.

The shaving nurses scurried into my room and stood there like twin bouncers, giggling in stereo. My parents weren’t there and I stepped down and slouched to a chair, holding my belly with both hands. The doctor didn’t even offer to give me back my appendix in a jar.

A few weeks later, I was allowed to attend my first slumber party. My friends promised my parents that they’d be gentle with me because I still had stitches in my stomach. The girls entertained themselves by having farting contests. I refused to participate, so they threw me in a cold shower for being a poor sport.

The next day, my mother asked about the party, and I described the farting game. As I’d never heard of any word for that particular bodily function before, I assumed it was a proper word.

Apparently it wasn’t. She smacked my face and invited my father to spank me for my dirty mouth, which he managed to do without opening up my stitches.