Part 1:

I have my own room. My own roommate. My own suite. But every night I stay in yours. You are now the RD of your dorm. You call it our apartment. But you don’t let me keep my things in there. You say in case they come to check up on you. The RD is not allowed to have anyone living in an RD room except themselves. I keep a spare toothbrush in my backpack, and a few clothes hidden under yours in the dresser.

One night, I crawl out of your lofted bed to the bathroom. It hurts to pee. When I look in the bowl, I see blood.

When you wake up and notice the lack of my body in the bed, you call out for me. I hear you but I cannot respond. You find me dipping in and out of consciousness on your bathroom floor. My shorts are bunched around my ankles. The tile around me is stained with pale blood and piss.

You wrap my small body in a blanket and take me to the ER. You aren’t allowed in the room while they talk to me. They tell me I have kidney stones. That is why I passed out. It was from the pain. They will give me drugs for that. They tell me they need to run more tests. Some were inconclusive.

A woman doctor comes back and asks you to leave the room. The woman doctor tells me that my tests came back with strange results. She asks if she can take a vaginal swab. An ache is growing out of the pit of me. I say, yeah, that is okay. She asks me for the name of my gynecologist. I say, I don’t have one and give them the number for the school’s health center.

An hour later she comes back and asks you to leave again. She apologizes and looks at the floor. She tells me that I have low-grade cervical cancer and refers me to a gynecologist who specializes in this type of thing. When she says where the doctor is located, I stare at my hands. It is over an hour drive from school.

On the drive home, you ask what all the extra tests were about. I have no words. I don’t know what to say to you. You push, so I say they were just concerned because I lost a lot of blood.

You say, yeah, I have never seen so much blood in my life.

You don’t sound scared for me. You sound disgusted.

I don’t know how to tell you the truth, so I don’t.

Part 2:

I tell you I need to go to a doctor for a follow up with the kidney stones. You don’t ask if I want you to come along. You say you have soccer practice. You say, see you later.

I drive the hour and a half to the gynecologist recommended by the doctor at the hospital. The doctor’s office is in a medical building on top of a large hill. The suite is painted robin’s egg blue with made-for-you-to-forget paintings of landscapes. A nurse shows me into a small room and gives me a cloth gown to change into. The gown is soft and warm. I wonder if they keep them in some kind of heater.

The gynecologist’s eyes water for me. She is short but kind. I lie back on the table with the stirrups. I keep my socks on so I don’t have to feel the cold hard plastic against my heels. The gynecologist takes several samples. As she does this, she talks to me about what the doctor at the hospital found on those tests. Finally, I am allowed to sit back up and close my legs. She explains that while the words ‘cervical cancer’ sound scary, it can be easily managed. She gives me some pamphlets on coping and next steps.

I throw the pamphlets in a trash can on my way to the parking lot.

Two weeks later, the gynecologist’s office calls me. I wait five minutes walking in circles, while they get her on the phone to explain the results.

She speaks in a tone that sounds like she is trying to keep anyone from hearing her. The news doesn’t feel easy and I stop moving, the phone pressed hard into my ear. It’s more aggressive than a watch-and-see situation permits. She will need to do surgery to remove the cancerous cells found in my uterus and around my cervix. She says it will be an outpatient procedure. She says, you will need to make arrangements to be driven home and be taken care of afterward because of the pain medication. We set a date for surgery in a few weeks.

After the call, I go into a bathroom stall and punch myself in the abdomen until I start to cry and collapse against the toilet. I blame my body for this.

I don’t know how to tell you the truth, so I call my mom instead.

Part 3:

I tell you I need to have surgery due to complications from the kidney stones. You say, okay, but I won’t have time with school and soccer to take care of you. I say, yes, of course I understand, school and soccer come first. I tell you my mom will be here for me.

Together, she and I drive the hour and a half to the hospital that is in the building adjacent to the gynecologist. We leave extra early, and my mom tells me to take my time, drive slow. I do and we get pulled over. The officer says, you can’t go under 50mph on the highway, one of the semis might hit you. I apologize, and my mom says, we are on our way to the hospital, she is having surgery, we are so sorry officer, we just were taking our time. He let’s us leave without a ticket. I blink away tears and they roll down my hot cheeks while we drive on in silence.

When we get to the hospital, the nurses start prepping me for surgery right away. My mom stays with me for as long as she is allowed to. She says, you are stronger than this, you will be okay. But I can see the fear eating at her eyes.

On a metal gurney, they take me back to the room where the surgery will be performed. A male doctor asks me how I am doing. I reply that I am cold. They take a heavy blanket and lay it over my body, scantily clad in a thin, scratchy gown. My gynecologist comes in dressed in all blue plastics. I can barely see her face. Her voice feels warm as she describes what the anesthesiologist will do. He tells me to count backwards out loud.

ten, nine, eight, seven…

When I regain consciousness, I tell my mom I dreamt of Jesus and that he was telling me everything would be okay. My mom’s face flushes with happiness. She is a believer. She praises him that everything went well. I tell her that now I feel strange. She pivots from her faith and says, well, that’s cause of the meds.

I drift in and out of consciousness. A nurse comes in and begins to wean down the dosage of pain medication. I half-asleep ask her for more. She says, no. She says, you need to come off the meds now. She says, you need to go home.

My mom takes me to IHOP for breakfast. I don’t feel very good, but I try to eat some home-fried potatoes. I tell my mom, I need to go to the bathroom. I can walk myself. My abdomen feels like it is falling out of the pit of me. In the bathroom, I pee then I turn around and throw up the potatoes. In the bowl they look like brown clouds mixing with a pale bloody sky. The doctor said I would bleed for a while when I pee. The pain starts to flow, a fountain inside my cervix.

I don’t know how to tell anyone the truth, so I crumple onto the tile and cry.

Part 4:

My mom stays for a week to help me. I stay in her hotel room with her. She lets me watch TV and brings me food. The medication makes me hazy. I lose focus on where I am and what I need to do. You come to visit and tell me, you should start weaning off the meds. People get addicted to those things, you don’t want to be an addict. I don’t want you to think I am weak. When you leave, I tell my mom that I want to start weaning off the meds. She says, give it one more day.

Four days after the surgery, I decide to try to go back to my classes. I go early to my poetry course and tell my professor everything. I want her to know that I am invested but that my brain isn’t working well right now. She hugs me and says, it’s okay, today will be a light day. In class we sit out on the lawn in front of the building. I lay back in the grass. We are talking about syntax and color in poetry. I can’t open my eyes because the sun is too bright but I can hear the light. I can hear it burning through my eyelids. I can hear it radiating through my skull. I can hear the world drifting away…

The professor wakes me up. I fell asleep in the grass and she thought I needed the rest so she let me sleep through class. I am embarrassed and call my mom. I ask her to pick me up as soon as possible. She tells me to get lunch at school, but she is on her way.

You show up in the lunch line and ask how much longer I need my mom to be around. You lean into my ear and say, when can we fuck again. I think back to a conversation with the gynecologist from before the surgery. She said no sex for a couple weeks after.

My face grows hot with anger at you for even asking. For wanting only my body and not the rest of me. For being so scared to be alone that I succumb to you and your sharpness. I don’t want to have sex with you. I am trying to find a way to put this into words but now too much time is passing and those words might sound like a breakup and I remember that I am too scared to be alone and now you are asking again but more aggressively and holding my arm tight and I think maybe I am wrong to not want to have sex with you anymore and maybe this is my fault and maybe you are right to always push me away and maybe I should give you what you want. I try to breathe.

I don’t know how to want to tell you the truth, so I say, not for another two months.

Part 5:

After a week, I drive my mom to the airport. The drive is long, and I let the radio play in under tones as we cruise down the highway. We talk about anything but the surgery and you. She reaches out in random moments and places her hand on my thigh or my arm. I park the car and go in with her to help her check her bags. It is the least I can do. At security, she tells me that I will be okay and to call her if I need anything. I need to tell her about you. I need to tell her that I thought you were going to help me escape the loneliness of being in my body. I need to tell her that you don’t, you only make it worse. I need to explain to her that I made a mistake. I need her to help me find an escape. But I don’t know how to say any of this, so I just thank her and tell her I will miss her.

The drive back to campus feels like hours and I have to pull off the highway at random exits to cry. Gas stations are the loneliest places in the world. I don’t want to park there, but there is nowhere else to go. My tears stain the steering wheel. Then I keep going. At the borderline of campus, I stop the car and get out in the night air. The wind punctures my clothes and ice seems to cover my limbs. Sleet. I walk up to the white farm fence used to keep cattle in and stare at the tan, tilled land spanning acres before me. Fog covers the buildings and moves into the valley. Lights from approaching cars cut at the murkiness.

I go back to my dorm room instead of to you. The antibiotics make my body feel like it is moving without me and I have to pee all the time, so I feel that I should want to be alone. I feel that I should make some distance between us. I want to prepare myself for an inevitable end. I don’t tell anyone else about the surgery. I say that I have the flu. In my room with the door shut, I lay in darkness, in my bed above the covers, and cry into my pillow for hours. No one comes in or says anything. My loneliness is deafening.

Before I fall asleep there is a knock on the door. You call my name into the shadows of the room. I roll over and sit up. You sit on the bed and hold my hands. It feels like a breakup and I start to apologize, I am sorry that I got kidney stones. I am sorry I had to have surgery and didn’t delay it till summer break. I am sorry that-

You stop me and say that you are the one who is sorry for pushing me. You say that you understand healing is important, and plus there are lots of other things to do than just have sex. I feel awkward and unsure of your words while you smile at me like a wolf.

I don’t know what the truth even is anymore, so I give you a fake smile and say, okay.

-E.A. Midnight

E.A. Midnight is a neurodivergent artist specializing in multi-modal, cross-genre hybridities. She is a strong advocate for challenging the boxes creative bodies are put in. In 2017, she was the recipient of the PEN North American/Goddard Scholarship Award and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College. Her work can be found or is forthcoming in Heavy Feather Review, Inverted Syntax, Miracle Monocle, and Poetry Northwest. A full list of her published pieces can be found on her website, www.eamidnight.com. E.A. Midnight resides in the Colorado wilds.