Feeling myself blush, I fastened my seatbelt as the car jerked forward.
“How did you ... uhm ...”
“Know you were lying through your teeth? Darling, the only thing you despise more than cleaning is hospitals.”
Looking away from the wipers dashing across the windshield, he raised his eyebrows at me with a look that was somehow both stern and kind at the same time.
“Are you very angry at me?” I held my hands in front of the vents spewing out plastic-smelling hot air, the ruby stone glinting on my ring finger. “I expect you’ll want an explanation?”
Leaving the pink train station behind, we drove through the forest, and the snowfall seemed lighter there, the wide treebranches like large umbrellas sheltering our vehicle from the worst.
“Not at all and no.” Einar surprised me with his reply as well as with the benevolent look in his eyes. “You’ve never once given me a reason not to trust you, Ren. So, whatever your motivations for lying to me were today, I see no reason to think that wilful deceit was one of them. Wanting to talk to your best friend privately is hardly a crime against me.”
He patted my knee, and I relaxed, exhaling a deep breath. His hand slid a little further up my thigh.
“That’s not to say I won’t have the pleasure of coming up with a light punishment for you later.” The hand squeezed, and I almost winced, which he didn’t fail to notice, and he loosened his grasp immediately. “If only as a gentle reminder,” he elaborated with nothing but reassurance in his tone, noting my hesitation. “Can’t have you thinking that I’m growing neglectful in our marriage.”
“I could never accuse you of that.” I lay my hand on his. “But how would you feel about letting me off the hook entirely this time?”
A troubled line creased his forehead, but he smiled at me warmly, if inquisitively, as he replied, “Aye, that works too, sweetheart. Don’t worry about it.”
“Thank you for driving me,” I said a little sheepishly.
It turned out to be very fortunate that Einar played the role of my chauffeur for the day. Not because I wasn’t confident enough of a driver to manage the icy roads. But because had I not wasted an hour and a half of his time getting me there, I may have turned around and driven back as soon as I set foot onto the hideous beige linoleum inside the perfunctorily rectangular white hospital building, whose windows had glowered at me asI had approached. Like a multitude of emotionless eyes of a monstrous spider.
I didn’t even make it past the reception without dread crawling up my extremities like a myriad of flesh-eating ants. Walking down the corridors at random, bile rose up my throat at the sight of the first waiting room, my stomach churning at the phantom smell of disinfectant that surely no longer hung in the air but that flooded my memory if not my olfactory canals nonetheless.
Most doors I came upon were locked, but upon opening the unfastened door to the first operating theatre I would see that day, I doubled over as a giant, iron fist closed around my ribs, crushing my lungs, forcing all air out of me, and not letting any in. Heat building up inside my body like pressure, I jettisoned my coat and sweater, wrapping arms around myself, only to discover that I was drenched in cold sweat.
Of course, it had to be a theatre for minor gynaecology surgeries, the operating table equipped with lithotomy stirrups. I had endured six such surgeries, all as grotesque as dismally repetitive.
Walking into a windowless room full of people with surgical caps and masks. Climbing onto the high table awkwardly. Lying on my back, my breasts untethered underneath the oversized gown, each lolling uncomfortably to the side. Those strange, masked people touching me, smoothing my hair underneath my cap, fixing a doughnut-shaped pillow under my head. Hoisting my legs onto the stirrups, voices urging me to scoot over until my bare backside hung over the edge of the table, the moisture of the crevice between my legs cooling down uncomfortably, the position both obscenely indecent and alarmingly vulnerable.
My head swam similarly to what it did back then when the cannula stuck in my elbow fizzled coldly with the first drops of anaesthesia entering my system.
I walked on.
Had I had the voice to do so, I could have called out for Dave. But I didn’t, and so I just wandered aimlessly for what simultaneously felt like endless hours and swift minutes. Until at last I found an open door from which light spilled out into the shadowy, chair-lined corridor, much like those that regularly served as the backdrop of my recurring nightmares.
As luck would have it, Dave was in an operating theatre as opposed to some relatively trigger-free staff breakout room. At that, it was one for major surgeries. Its operating table was flat and lacked stirrups but instead boasted arm rests that gave it a biblical, cross-like appearance. I had only seen such a room once before, and even that was one time too many.
“Renny!” Dave looked up from scrubbing the stainless-steel sink in the corner. “What a nice surprise! What brings you here?”
Then, noting my appearance, he asked as the Cheshire grin evaporated from his round face, “Are you not feeling well? You look terrible.”
“Thanks,” I deadpanned.
Dropping the bundle of my coat and sweater onto a plastic chair, I walked over to the table, the macabre centrepiece of the room, illuminated sharply by surgical lights. I ran my fingers along its surface, which was made of thick black rubber, firm and unpliable, the kind that would hurt like hell if used to swat someone with.
“Dave, did I ever tell you about my ... health issues?”
His eyebrows shot up in surprise, and his mouth went slack. He walked closer to me, stopping just at the foot of the table, in almost the same spot my surgeon stood back then, talking to me in a gentle, surprisingly compassionate voice before having me put to sleep. I didn’t remember a single word he had said then.
“You told me about your struggles to conceive,” Dave replied carefully, “but not the cause for it if that is what you’re asking.”
I laid my hand flat onto the nearer armrest, the ruby stone shining angrily. I remembered how they fastened my own arms back then with straps, adjusting the positions to make me as comfortable as possible. As if it were possible at all. They may as well have laid me onto a sheet of burning coals for all the difference it would have made.
“I had six hysteroscopies for Asherman’s syndrome,” I said in a flat voice, “to clear out adhesions from my uterus. All caused by a prior surgery. An open myomectomy through a horizontal incision with a significant uterine cavity breach.”
