I turn the keys in the ignition and sit in the car in silence, trying my best at breathing exercises to stay calm. I was fine with visiting the doctor my whole life, up until a year ago. Today I had to come; the sting in my abdomen was just too much to handle, just like last time. All I have to do is get in and out.
I grabbed my hoodie and draped it over my arm. I held my keys tight in my hand, unsure still how long I could handle in the building.
I got out of the car and hobbled over to the front door. I barely had any energy over the past few weeks, and even now, I feel as if the slightest breeze could knock me over and incapacitate me. I used what little energy I had left to try to get my stiffened body moving quickly.
I never had an issue with any public spaces, until I had to walk into the E.R. from the parking lot. All the prying eyes and judgmental looks were so disheartening, especially as I was groaning in pain that day.
Whatever stomach ache I was experiencing, it made my belly bloat to the size of a beachball, imitating life in the womb. I tried not to think about it so much, I might have broken down.
I fidgeted with my keys and took one last deep breath before opening the door and walking inside, heading straight to the front desk.
The lady sitting just behind the counter was wearing floral-patterned scrubs and had her hair back in a ponytail. She looked up to greet me, a smile beginning to form before it abruptly stopped, being blocked by both of her hands, which fired up over her mouth, almost knocking her glasses off her face.
She quickly shook the shock from her face and adjusted herself to seem more adept.
I lowered my head to the ground and took up a staring contest with my feet, turning crimson from embarrassment.
“Ma’am? Ma’am, are you alright?” The nurse asked, starting as a whisper that barely let her voice escape. I waited for the torment in my lower body to subside before speaking.
“Y-yes. I’ve just been feeling stomach pain.” I said defeatedly, not bothering to look up to her.
“That’s it, Ma’am?” She asked, confused, beginning to tear her hands apart from a clutched shape and redirecting them to the keyboard. She looked me up and down as if the problem was on the outside of my body. I nodded, and she began typing away. I could hear more gasps and whispers from behind the woman, probably coming from her coworkers.
I gave her my name, and she sent me to the waiting room to fill out my patient form on my phone. As I walked to the waiting room, a soft hum of whispers emanated from behind the desk, and even a flash from a phone camera danced across my back before quickly being smothered by its owner's hand.
All I could think was, why? Even when I sat bleeding in the waiting room that day, everyone gave me the same look. It wasn’t my fault, just the random cruelty of the universe. I tried to follow the best dietary plan I could, drink lots of water, and get plenty of sun, exercise, and sleep. That’s what the psychiatrist told me to do, to take my mind off of it.
None of it seemed to pay off, however. I felt my heart grow heavier than it already was, growing denser by the day.
As I entered the dull, painted waiting room, adorned with dozens of magazines and posters about health insurance, I was reminded of a much more colorful room. One where I would have read children’s books and sat happily in pastel decorations. I imagine the light would have been a soft yellow glow, unlike the baking, uncaring operating light.
A few other individuals sat inside, waiting to be seen by the doctors. A boy with a red cast and his mom sat observing the small fish in the tank next to a bookshelf, an older woman was flipping through a Time magazine, and a bearded man was sitting next to a small table, constantly reaching over to the tissue box to stop his flowing nose.
I entered as silently as I could, trying not to draw too much attention to my form. I walked in front of the older woman, who I thought was deeply engrossed in her reading, accidentally bumping her shoe with the toes of mine.
She looked up at me with a scowl. When she got past my legs and to the upper half of my body, she let out a bloodcurdling scream, drawing the attention of the other patients. The mother’s mouth wrinkled in revulsion, quickly placing her hands over her son’s eyes to block a view she deemed unfit for the youth. The man began to gag, trying to play it off cool as if he had excess phlegm dripping down his throat.
The older woman quickly regained social awareness and tried to apologize, but the damage done to the little confidence I had left was already done. I made my way to the corner of the room, furthest from the others as I could, sitting down, and burying my face in my phone to complete the patient form.
I felt my skin yelling at me to cover it, that it shouldn’t be shown to the world. I detached my eyes from my screen, hesitantly looking down. My arms were bright like coral, as if a deadly rash had broken out. The veins underneath seemed to run brown instead of a typical purple or blue.
I looked emaciated and bloated at the same time, my body having a tug of war of which horrid, puny shape my body should fill. Beads of sweat pooled and made me look slimy. I couldn’t stomach it anymore.
I slide my hoodie over my body, acting as a censor for all of those around me. I tightened my hood to hide my face; I didn’t want to imagine how it looked.
Tears welled in my eyes. Why was everyone being so harsh? Weren’t we all sick here and just trying to get better? It wasn’t my fault, I was just trying to get better. As I worked on the form, hair fell from the clamped hoodie, trying to get away from the rest of its janus-faced home. I quickly brushed it off, choosing to ignore it; I would have broken down right then and there.
I bruteforced my way through the paper, hair, and the tears, finishing in a handful of minutes.
I finished answering questions about my medical history, ones that I would have passed over in a heartbeat a year ago, now taking the majority of my time.
I peeked over the top of my phone to see if anyone was still looking at me. Turns out, none of the others were still in the room. They must have all been called. I blew a sigh of relief and continued to wait with my knees up against my chest, trying to block my face.
Other patients came in, paying little attention to me as they sat and scrolled on their phones or observed the brightly colored fish dart back and forth.
“Norma?” A nurse walked out with a clipboard and called out my name. I stood up enfeebled and pulled on the strings of my hoodie to hide my face as best as possible before scooting my way over to him and into the back hall. I did a better job of not drawing attention to myself compared to the first time.
This nurse did a better job at hiding his contempt for me, probably already getting a glimpse from the photos taken by his co-workers. He smiled sheepishly as he noted some of my information down.
The smile was the same as the one the doctor at the E.R. gave me. The smile that said, “It's normal to experience this level of hurt”, the smile that said, " You are just overthinking it”, the smile that didn’t believe me.
“5’9…” His eyes glanced up from his tablet, observing me for a second before returning as if they hadn’t moved.
“134…” I stepped off the scale. I could tell he wanted to comment, but he caught his tongue as his mouth opened, returning his lips to a relaxed position.
“147/94? Whew, Glad you came in, think we might have caught something.” The tight loop on my arm loosened its grip, and I quickly removed the velocrow. My arm was ruby like my blushing face, and despite the weight the nurse told me, my arm looked massive and lumpy. I quickly slid my sleeve back down over it, not wanting to show its absurdity to human anatomy to the nurse anymore.
The nurse walked me down to the end of the hall and led me into the last room on the left. My body creaked as I followed him like a branch in a breeze.
“The doctor will be in shortly.” The nurse told me before leaving me isolated in the room, decorated with anatomy posters. The nurse had shut the door quickly, all but confirming my thoughts that he feared or hated me like all the others today.
I sat in mental and physical torture, trying to focus on one to dull the other. My stomach felt as if someone was clawing out from inside, using a dull spade to slice at my stomach lining. My brain screamed at me this was a mistake, that you were just making everything worse. My whole body felt like an agonizing game of tug of war.
I felt like I had sat for hours, but the clock had told me that only 7 minutes had passed.
A knock sounded at the door sometime later, jolting me out of the dazed state I was in due to the suffering of my belly as it stretched to its limits. A squirrelly-looking woman peeked her head inside, the bright, emotionless light of the room bouncing off her large eyes.
“So Norma, how are we doing today?” She asked, slinking into the room and softly shutting the door behind her. I told her my symptoms: bloating, inflamed skin, fatigue, and stomach pain. Excruciating, merciless stomach pain. She took out a digital pen and started writing on her tiny screen.
“I see here you haven’t been to the psychiatrist in some time. Are you still taking the medicine they prescribed you?” I shook my head no, and the doctor wrote something down on her tablet. The medicine they wanted me to take, they made me feel dull. They made me forget him.
“Do you think this could be related to what happened downtown in the hospital?” She asked slowly, like defusing a bomb.
“No, this is stomach pain. The other was pelvic.” I pushed the words past the knot stuck in my throat. Her face was softer than the man's from a year ago. Her rounded chin and plump cheeks made it easier to believe she wanted to help me. Especially compared to the man’s sunken features and sharp, demanding chin.
She asked the usual questions about how much sleep I get, how much I exercise, and any irregularities with my periods. She seemed like she was going to blame my issues on period irregularities until she asked another routine question.
“What's your diet like?” I hesitated to answer; her eyes lifted off the screen and hovered over my face.
“Balanced…” I whispered. I had a good diet, I know I did. Something about the answer, however, seemed like it would have made the doctor worried.
“It's alright to tell me the truth. I know plenty of people who lie to seem like they are healthier than they are, but just come back worse. We can figure out what’s going on quicker and get treatment for the pain.” She said, seemingly genuinely concerned with my well-being. She wasn’t like everyone else I met today. She knew I didn’t lie a year ago. She wasn’t going to make fun of me or scream in terror or throw my issues away; she would help. I took a deep breath.
“I’ve been eating apples, water, and I guess some cheat drinks when I have a craving like…” I was cut off before telling her my love for Cherry Fanta.
“Whoa, hold on. You said you have been eating apples? Have you been having other food too? Right?” She chuckled nervously. I chuckled involuntarily, knowing that I had said the wrong thing.
“Well, you know what they say, an apple a day keeps the doctor away!” I chuckled again, trying to hide the answer like a child that just learned about deflection. The doctor’s jaw hung loose, and her already large eyes somehow grew wider. My nervous laugh ended like a screeching car.
“Ma’am… that’s just a saying, not actual nutritional advice. How long have you been doing this?” I felt the world spin around me, and the apple I had for lunch rode the wave of bile rising in the back of my throat.
“Three weeks…” I said, staring at the ground, trying to stop the spinning.
“Ma’am, too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. You need to stop this immediately. You need to have different types of food for your body to function, dairy, grain, protein…” As she rambled on about the food pyramid, my attention shifted towards another flurry of sharp, painful stabs into my abdomen. I wrapped my arms around my tummy and curled into a ball on the chair, rocking back and forth, desperately trying to ease the stabbing
The pain was comparable to the pain I had experienced last time, just with fewer lives on the line.
The doctor stood quickly, leaving her chair to go spinning astray. She dropped down to my side and quickly asked if I was alright.
“No… It feels like… Somethings… trying to poke out…” I said, nearly out of breath from bracing myself against the sharp blade inside of me. The doctor asked if she could lift up my shirt to have a look at my belly and to give it a listen with her stethoscope. I nodded and uncurled a little.
She didn’t even hold up my hoodie for more than a second before being startled by something and dropping the loose hoodie.
“What… What is it? What… Did you see?” I groaned out. She was speechless, trying to rationalize what she must have seen.
“Ma’am, will you walk with me to the X-ray room?” She asked, her eyes still locked on my lower body instead of my wilting face. I nodded weakly. She slipped her arm under mine and used her light weight to prop me up better. We slowly hobbled our way through the long hallway to a nearly empty room, except for a table and a large machine hanging from the ceiling.
She helped me onto the table, then lined up the massive camera like a chandelier to my belly button. My spine cracked like lightning hitting a tree, for it was the first time in a while I wasn’t in any form of the fetal position.
She quickly scurried towards the back of the room, behind a small window, and logged on to the computer that operated the beast above me.
It was a surprise to me that X-rays are as quick as taking a picture with your phone now, at least I didn’t have to sit in blinding strain for minutes. The doctor came out of the tiny room to check on me, frantically glancing back to see if the photos had loaded onto the screen yet.
“Ma’am, you will need to go to a hospital after this, I… I can call an ambulance for you if need be or…” I cut her off, horrified by her suggestion.
“Please, no! I… I hate it there! Anywhere else!” I begged, groaning out through the pain. Tears rippled down my face like a cascade of falling snow from a roof. She didn’t respond. She had turned back to the screen, a white and grey glow coating her face.
Her confused eyes were glued to the screen. She placed her hands over her mouth and started to tremble. She took a few steps back, not breaking eye contact with the screen. She tried to compose herself, tried to act professional, but her body trembled ever so slightly.
She froze, as if Medusa had looked back at her.
A starting pistol could have been fired in the room, the way she took off sprinting.
“I’m calling an ambulance!” She shouted as she ran out of the room. I groaned in mental agony.
“Please! No!” I tried grabbing her shirt as she ran by, but I was too slow.
I would do anything to avoid the hospital. I slid my feet off the table and unevenly placed them on the ground. I stood holding my gut, making me look like a hunchback. I started for the door in an attempt to escape, but the moonlight glow of the X-ray on the screen behind me called to me like an angler fish’s light of knowledge.
I waddled over to the small room, my abdomen protruding, making a sick joke of my figure, like a frog that could not shrink the size of their vocal sac.
Maybe the doctor was right. Maybe I should go to the hospital. I would despise it, but maybe it was for the best.
I dragged myself to the little room and analyzed the X-ray. I had no idea what I was looking at. I saw my ribs at the top of the picture, but something was growing around them. They looked like tendrils coming from lower down, like an octopus pulling itself out of the depths of my insides. They coiled around bones unevenly, and smaller strings grew out of them, providing an even stronger grip.
I did not know anatomy, but I could tell whatever was happening was wrong, just like last time. I looked down at my hoodie, and a ripple of disgust shot across my skin. This is what the doctor must have seen on my skin to bring me in here.
I had refused to acknowledge that something was wrong with me, but everything today finally broke the stubbornly built dam I had created in my head.
I pulled up my hoodie to take a look for myself. My chest rose as I took in a deep breath, and so did whatever was in my chest. I saw small bumps and knots on the sides of my ribs on my sunken chest. They rose and fell like waves. I could see turns and twists being barely covered by my loose, gray, and maroon skin. I could see what looked like fingers under my skin, like a tiny hungry hand reaching for my breast.
I felt bile trying to rush up my stomach lining, but being blocked by what I saw next. My eyes stayed locked on my midriff, confused at what I was seeing. I had the same ripples as my chest, just owning sharper ends that looked like stakes being driven out.
I looked up at the X-ray and went back down to my belly. I kept doing it like clockwork until it finally clicked in my head what I was seeing.
It was highlighted like the bones in the background of the X-ray, cloudy and milky, strong and unmoving. Tendrils moved up and down the picture, as if they were trying to stretch after waking from a long nap. The tendrils curled and coiled in helical patterns, digging into the invisible flesh in the photo, drinking what little water I had in my organs.
They all sprouted from the same spot, a small bushy circle seated softly in the middle of a photo, the middle of my belly.
My head turned in confusion. The object had a pattern of short and scruffy hair, like someone had placed an overgrown hedgehog in my peritoneal cavity. A smaller circle was attached to it; it was smooth, almost perfectly spherical except for a small indent at the top.
I thought it might have been what I had for lunch that day, but it couldn’t be, right? It was an apple, a perfectly round, healthy apple, albeit a small one. The one I had should have been dissolving.
Its roots had taken hold within my stomach, using my bones and flesh as soil, and somehow, impossibly bore fruit within me.
I placed my hand on my growing stomach and slowly traced the roots that looked like ill veins. I felt the leaves and fruit rubbing against the walls of my stomach, begging for sunlight, for real soil. I couldn’t lose another life, not again.
I started towards the door, each step feeling lighter compared to the last. God or the universe or whatever was out there had given me another chance to be a mother.
“Ma’am?! Where are you going?!” The doctor had come back, blocking the doorway.
“The ambulance is on its way, they are going to take you to the hospital and get that sapling removed…” She insisted with a shaky voice, trying to force herself to remain calm. She was like the other doctor after all, she didn’t know what was best for my child.
I bolted towards her with a renewed sense of energy, not bothering to slow down as I slammed into her with mother bear-like force and pushed her to the ground. Her head violently thumped against the tile floor, leaving her still and silent. Her eyelids fluttered as if her body was running on a failing autopilot. I couldn’t let her take this child.
I ran down the hallway and out into the waiting room, past all of the staring eyes and breathless mouths. Some voices screamed at me, some screamed for me to come back, and one screamed for the doctor on the ground. I ran outside and into my car, starting the engine and peeling out of the parking lot.
I passed a wailing ambulance on the road, a cop car followed close behind. I let out a sigh of relief when I saw them fly by me.
I was crying as I pulled into another parking lot some time later, tears of joy running down my nose and into my mouth. I never got to call my son the baby name I had picked out for him, but now I would have the ability to call my child the apple of my eye.
I sat in the car for a while, just rubbing my belly, feeling where the stretch marks became roots and where the soft yet firm fruit rubbed against my solar plexus. I couldn’t feel a heartbeat, but I knew it was alive. I knew I had to keep it growing somehow.
I looked up everything a young sapling could need: water, sunlight, soil, and fertilizer. Some things on the list would have to come later when it was bigger, but that’s how it worked with children as well.
I read somewhere that apple seeds contain cyanide, even in small amounts. I found each day after losing my son to be unbearable, no matter what I ate, what exercise I got, or what drugs I swallowed. One day, I couldn’t handle it anymore. I could have never imagined that this act might bestow a new child upon me.
At the time, all I wanted to do was to take the life of the doctor who thought the pregnancy pain I was experiencing was normal, not that my child was rotting.
I couldn’t bring myself to harm that man once I found out he had a child of his own, so the grief, anger, and helplessness grew like mold in my veins. Maybe that mold gave this sapling ample substrate to grow.
I turn the keys in the ignition and sit in the car in silence, trying my best at breathing exercises to stay calm. I was overjoyed that I would be having a kid again; my smile was impossible to wrangle into a relaxed position.
I fidgeted with my keys and took one last deep breath before opening the car door and walking across the parking lot into the garden store. I had to find the perfect fertilizer and soil to feed the growing life inside me. It was my duty to be the nurturer, like all good mothers.
I was wondering if the gardeners of the internet had any brand recommendations for fertilizer? I know Reddit has many different communities that may be able to help me out. I want to make sure I get only the best for my kid. Preferably any that tastes the best.