Page 34 of Midnight Mass (Priest 1.50)
“I’m going to get your insurance card and ID and then we’ll go, okay, lamb?”
She nodded, as if she wasn’t really hearing me, but I knew that she understood because she braced both hands on the bed and slowly got to her feet. I ran out to the kitchen and found her purse, rummaging through her wallet to find what we’d need, and then going back into the room for her. And what I saw ripped a hole right through me.
She stood with her legs slightly spread and her pants tugged down past her crotch. I could see the blood smeared across her thighs, glistening almost black on the fabric of her panties, but more horrifying was the expression on her face as she held her bloody fingers up to the light.
A blank expression.
An empty expression.
An achingly confused expression.
Blood. Blood is bad.
That terror came again, that panic, because something unspeakably awful was happening or about to happen and I was so helpless in the face of it. I started chanting the same mental prayer over and over again.
Please, Lord. Please no.
Please no.
Please no.
I knew my face must have looked the same as hers as I went to her, but I schooled my features with as much bravery as I could muster. I cleaned up the blood, found her new underwear and a pad, helped her pull on a fresh pair of pants. And then I picked her up and carried her to the truck, where she sat completely still and numb-looking while I raced us to the emergency room. Sometimes the pain would come and she would whimper, but that was the most she reacted to anything. Even when we made it to the triage room and the nurse started asking her questions, she answered in a dull, flat voice and mostly with one-word answers.
And I kept praying:
Please no.
Not this.
Please.
And then we were in the real ER room, Poppy clad in the hospital gown and hooked up to an IV, sipping a cup of water the nurses gave her to fill her bladder for the inevitable ultrasound. She said nothing, but every once and a while she would squirm and bury her face into the bed, her body stiff and arched with pain. Sometimes she curled into a ball, sometimes she doubled over, and towards the end, she got off the bed and started pacing, back and forth, back and forth.
Which was how the doctor found her when she entered. The doctor was a pretty woman in her thirties wearing a vivid blue dress and a gauzy patterned hijab, and the moment she walked in, she went right to Poppy and placed a soothing hand on her shoulder. Poppy stilled under her touch.
“I’m Dr. Khader,” the doctor said. “I’m here to help you today.”
She looked at Dr. Khader. “Okay,” she said.
“I understand the nurses gave you a small dose of Tylenol to help with the pain. Do you feel like it’s helped?”
Poppy’s red lips pressed together and she swallowed, trying to muster her composure. “The pain still feels significant,” she said. She managed this in steady, firm voice, the kind of voice she used discussing financial forecasts at work, and I realized how strong she was trying to appear, how in control. That was how Poppy liked to present herself to the world—collected and gathered and bulletproof.
Even when her entire world was bleeding out between her legs.
Dr. Khader nodded. “I thought so. Here’s what we are going to do, Ms. Bell. We are going to do a quick examination and ultrasound to see exactly what’s happening. Once we figure that out, we can more properly manage your pain. Do you have any questions or concerns before we get started?”
Poppy shook her head, still trying to be polite and put together, even though another pain was gripping her.
“Okay,” Dr. Khader said. “I’m going to do a quick pelvic exam, followed by an ultrasound. May I help you onto the bed?”
Poppy nodded, white-faced, and Dr. Khader helped her settle on the bed, directed her how to position her legs. Dr. Khader spread a disposable sheet over Poppy’s lap and pulled on a blue glove. “This will be uncomfortable,” the doctor warned. “I will try to be as fast as I can.”
The gloved hand went under the sheet while Dr. Khader’s other hand pressed down on Poppy’s abdomen from the outside.
I could tell the moment the examining began because Poppy sucked in a tight breath, closing her eyes. She was trying not to moan, I could tell, trying not to complain. Poppy had grown up in a world where emotions were pressed back, hidden behind a composed facade, and I could see how humiliating this was for her, this pain that kept breaking through the surface of her control.
