Can You Feel This?
Can You Feel This?
Hands are coming toward her body, hands in tight blue plastic gloves, running gently up and down her arms.
“Can you feel this?” says a disembodied voice.
She’s lying in bed, she realizes. What’s goingon?
“Do you remember your name?”
She tries to focus and eventually finds herself looking at the face of a nurse in green scrubs.
“My name is Eve Monroe,” she says, slowly and cautiously. Her voice sounds blurry and indistinct to her own ears and her head aches. She reaches up to scratch her forehead and encounters a soft bandage, which seems to encase her whole head. Again: What’s goingon?
“Do you remember what day it is?” the nurse questions her again.
“Monday?” she hazards, having no idea.
“Wednesday. Do you remember what year it is? Do you remember the name of the prime minister?”
“It’s 2022,” she says, “and the prime minister is…” She digs around her mind fruitlessly. The prime minister. The prime minister. “Hugh Grant,” she says triumphantly at last, then corrects herself. “No, he was ages ago, wasn’t he? It’s a woman now. But I can’t quite remember her name.”
“It’s Rishi Sunak,” says the nurse, kindly.
Right. Of course. Rishi Sunak.
“Now, tell me. Can you feel my hands rub up and down your legs?”
“Yes,” she says.
“On both sides or just one?”
“Both,” she says.
“Good. Can you squeeze my hand?”
“Yes.”
“And with the other hand?”
Dutifully Eve squeezes.
“Can you lift your leg up and press against my hand?”
“I think so,” says Eve, lifting her leg up, wondering why it feels so heavy.
“And the other one…Oh good, you’re strong. You’ll be up before you know it. But not quite yet. You still have a catheter in, so don’t worry about that.”
“OK,” she says, not knowing what any of this means. There’s a massive gap in her memory. Why is she here? What’s happened? Was she in a car accident?
“OK, I’ll see you in a while,” says the nurse. “Are you eating OK?”
“She’s eating fine,” comes a masculine voice from above her head. Her husband, Nick, she realizes. “But she seems quite confused. It’s like she has amnesia.”
“Don’t worry,” replies the nurse. “That might be a short-term side effect. Tell your consultant if it carries on. But she should start remembering things naturally before too long.”
“Nick, I can’t move my head,” says Eve in a voice that sounds cracked and scorched. “Can you sit where I can see you?”
“Of course.” He appears and sits down on the hospital bed and she feels herself relax a smidge.
“Have I been unwell?”
“Yes,” he says. “You had surgery. But now you’re healing. You’re doing brilliantly.”
“I thought Hugh Grant was the prime minister,” she says ruefully. “How could I be so dumb? I know he’s the foreign secretary…. That’s a joke,” she adds, and Nick laughs.
“You’ve had a lot on your plate,” he says. “Don’t worry about it.”
“What kind of surgery did I have?”
“You had a growth removed from your brain.”
“A growth?”
“Yes, a growth, quite a big one. You saw it on a scan, do you remember? We all saw it together in the surgeon’s office.”
“No,” she says, searching her brain. “No, I don’t remember. When you say growth, do you mean…” She stops as her thoughts catch up with her. “Do you mean a tumor?”
“Yes, a tumor,” he says after a pause. “It took eight hours to remove. But they got it all out, so that’s great news.”
“What…” She swallows. “What kind of tumor?”
There’s a weighted pause, then Nick says, “Nobody knows for certain yet. It’s being analyzed.”
“Right,” she says. “To see if it’s…” and then she stops speaking.
Words start floating around her brain as though on a screensaver: medical words that she shrinks from even thinking. Benign. Malignant. Cancer .
But she doesn’t say any of them aloud. She is numb, she realizes. She can’t wonder, she can’t ask more questions, she can’t worry, she can’t contemplate, she can’t process. She can’t feel anything at all.
They removed a growth from her brain and it took eight hours. How could it take eight hours?
She prods her emotions again. Still nothing.
Shock, she thinks. I’m in shock. That must beit.
“Knock, knock!” comes a cheery voice and in walks another nurse, this time in blue scrubs. “Just a quick check-over,” she says. “Can you feel this?” Her hands run up and down Eve’s arms. “And this? And this? Well done, you’re in good shape!”
“Am I?” says Eve, ridiculously grateful for this affirmation.
“Oh yes, you’re doing very well!”
She can feel everything on the outside, thinks Eve. She can feel the nurses, tickling her arms and tapping her legs and stroking her hands. But on the inside, where it really counts, she can’t feel anything: not fear, not worry, not anxiety. There’s nothing there at all, except those impersonal medical words, still floating around, no matter how hard she tries to dodge them.
She lies back and stares up at the white hospital ceiling, while the words go round and round her head. Benign. Malignant. Cancer.
Maybe, if she thinks hard enough, she can make one of them come true. She can influence the outcome. Like a manifestation. Or a prayer.
Benign. Benign. Benign, she thinks, using every brain cell she has. Please. Please. Please.