Page 48 of Avenged

I’d been nervous sitting in the waiting room just as I’d been nervous the entire ride with Travis. I was twirling my thumb ring at a furious pace until he reached out and covered my hands with his own. I stopped, remembering the feel of him on me the night before. First on my palm, rubbing it as if he could smooth out the worries and the struggles with just the motion of his hands. Then, his hands on my bare skin as he’d tickled me in a way no one had since I was a little girl.

Before Mom had gotten sick, Dad had been a good father. He’d played games, and watched movies, and played tickle monster. But after, and especially after she died, he’d retreated into himself, leaving a shell on the outside. Leaving a man who had a temper and a hand that matched it.

I shook my head out of thoughts of Dad. I didn’t let my mind go to him very often. It was one of those things I couldn’t change. It was a paragraph of my life I’d written down and torn to shreds like my school psychologist had taught me to do. Out of my control. Things I had to leave behind me instead of take with me.

“It’s going to be okay,” Travis said, bringing me back to the waiting room.

I wanted his words to be true. “I don’t have a choice for it to be anything else.”

The door to the patient rooms opened, and a nurse called my name. She eyed Travis in the chair as if she expected him to come with me, but when he didn’t, she just shut the door and led me down the hall to an exam room.

She had me get undressed from the waist down. I sat on the table, feeling more vulnerable than I had in a very long time, and it had nothing to do with my bare body and everything to do with the fact I couldn’t afford for anything to be seriously wrong with me.

A blonde woman in her forties entered the room and introduced herself as Doctor Price.

She asked me a series of questions about my family history, my periods, the pain, sexual intercourse, and a host of others. I told her the truth: Mom had died of ovarian cancer, I hadn’t had sex in quite a while, and the pain from my periods had basically blended into my daily life. I told her it hurt to stand, or walk, or even lie down some days. It had been with me constantly since the visit to the ER room.

After, she did an exam, and I lay, looking at the ceiling while she invaded my body gently but with purpose. I tried to count the gazillion dots on the tiles, but when she pushed, I reacted to the pain as I always did, by tensing up. She asked me to rate the pain every time she pushed where it hurt. Then, she had her nurse bring in a portable transvaginal ultrasound.

I stared at the ceiling while she moved the ultrasound wand around inside me, the discomfort getting worse the farther she went. I gripped the sides of the table and tried to breathe and think of my happy spot, but it was difficult to think of the picnic on the boat.

Eventually, she backed away, washed her hands, and sat down in the chair across from me.

“It looks like the ER doctor’s suspicions were correct. I’m almost certain it’s adenomyosis instead of just endometriosis.”

“Okay. What does that mean?” I asked.

“It means the endometrial tissue, which normally lines your uterus, is growing into the walls of the uterus. The tissue continues to act like normal endometrial matter, increasing, breaking down, and bleeding, but it’s inside your muscle walls, so it’s much more painful. Over time, it can take over enough of your uterus’s tissue that it becomes an almost solid mass of contracted muscle.”

A part of me wanted to cheer—at least I wasn’t just a wuss. At least this was something that wasn’t normal, but I was confused as to what it actually meant. Unlike my research-loving sister, I had purposefully avoided searching any of the terms the ER doctor had thrown out at me. I hadn’t wanted to obsess over it until I knew for a fact what we were dealing with.

“Okay, so how do we fix it?” I asked.

She took a deep breath. “Honestly? The only way to truly fix it is to remove the uterus, but we’re a long way from there yet.”

I sat staring at her for a minute, trying to catch up. Removing the uterus meant I wouldn’t ever be able to have children. Children I hadn’t had any time to think about in my life. It felt scary and permanent. She must have noticed I was having trouble processing it, because she continued as if she could ease the bluntness with which she’d already spoken.

“How we manage it from here until some future date when you are ready to remove it depends a little on you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Are you and your husband thinking of having children?”

I shook my head, because I wasn’t married, but then I remembered Travis in the waiting room and the insurance that was in his name.

“You’re really young; you might both change your minds yet. I wouldn’t be prepared to do a hysterectomy without trying all the least obtrusive solutions first, anyway. We can start with a progesterone-based IUD. That should help with some of the pain and intensity of the periods. We can do a presacral neurectomy which severs the nerve endings to the uterus if you don’t get enough relief from the IUD.”

“What happens if we do nothing?”

“Other than the pain continuing to intensify?” she asked.

I swallowed. The pain was already with me constantly. I wasn’t sure I could imagine much worse than what I’d been through when Travis had taken me to the ER.

“There is a chance the masses could become malignant.”

“Cancer…” My throat clogged, and I couldn’t finish my sentence. I just shook my head. Cancer had altered my life once. It had changed almost all of Violet’s memories from the good ones she should have to ones of darkness. I couldn’t let that nasty bastard enter our lives again. I refused to leave Violet on her own to deal with this world, and our father, and the sins we’d all committed.

“Jersey?” Her hand on my shoulder brought me back. “Don’t cry. I promise, we’re going to take good care of you.”

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