Page 90 of Confessions of a Virgin on a Dating App
There was a soft lurch in my hospital bed as one of the nurses stepped behind it, and then it began to move forward.
“We’re going to give you some medication to help you relax before the anesthesia.” The female nurse explained to me as she fiddled with my IV. The bed was now out of my curtained-off waiting area, and we were headed down a long hallway.
“I just need you to count to five.” The nurse continued as she hooked a large syringe up to my IV. “Can you do that for me?”
I struggled to swallow. I couldn’t tell if it was my anxiety or the medication, but the hallway was starting to spin.
“Okay.” I forced my words out. “One… two… three…”
Four… five…
Okay, I’m ready.
Wait…
Where am I?
Devin was right about the anesthesia. One second, I was being wheeled down the hallway toward the surgery suite, and the next, I was lying bleary-eyed in the recovery room.
My head was spinning like a top, and I could barely open my eyes, but I felt no pain. I assumed it was because they’d heavily drugged me. As my clumsy hand brushed across my abdomen, I could feel the ragged bumps of the stitches.
It was over.
The surgery was done.
“Devin?” My voice was barely a whisper. There was no reply other than the various hums and beeps of hospital machinery.
“Devin?” I croaked, struggling to raise my voice loud enough to be heard. “Dev?”
Through my hazy vision, I noticed a light-skinned male hand next to my bed and instinctively grabbed it.
“Devin…” I whimpered. I missed him. I needed him.
I tried to rub my fingers over his knuckles like I always did, but the hand slipped away almost as soon as I grabbed it.
With my frustration growing and my rationality severely muddled by the anesthesia, I grabbed the hand again.
It pulled away, this time slower, and gave my own hand a gentle pat before returning to the keyboard it was typing on.
Keyboard?
I blinked a few times, and my vision began to stabilize. I was an idiot. Devin wasn’t there. The hand belonged to a male nurse sitting next to my hospital bed. He was typing away at a computer with a stack of paperwork in his other hand. He chuckled when he noticed me gawking at him.
As embarrassed as I was, I assumed he was used to drugged-up patients being irrational. I’d seen videos of people coming out of surgery say and do worse things than hold a stranger’s hand.
But being as drug-addled as I was, that didn’t stop me from shouting Devin’s name loudly across the recovery room. My cries were sharp and hoarse, and the nurse hid another chuckle behind his hand and told me my family would be allowed in soon.
A few minutes later, another nurse came in to check up on me. She had a cheery, motherly demeanor and was completely unfazed by my erratic speech and wobbling body. She said I needed to use the bathroom so she was sure that I could pee properly, and I clung to her shoulder as she helped me out of bed and led me down the hall.
Once I was alone in the restroom, I realized how much my vagina ached. The pain traveled further up my abdomen into what I assumed was my uterus. That was when I remembered that in addition to the laparoscopy, the surgeon had inserted a camera into my vagina to take a look around and collect a pap smear.
The pain wasn’t unbearable, but I was incredibly sore. It felt like someone had taken a rough-edged spoon and scraped my entire uterus out.
It also burned when I peed. But the important part was that Iwasable to pee, and I assumed the discomfort would go away with time.
I took a moment to study myself in the mirror as I washed my hands. I was a pale, greasy-haired, puffy-eyed wreck. But the fear, the anticipation…it was all over. I’d made it through the worst part, and now I could spend the next week resting and recovering at home.
The more I thought about it, the more relief and joy it brought me, and I did a silly little dance in the hallway as the nurse escorted me back to my hospital bed.
