I push the button and wait. An eternity. I panic. The pain is getting worse, stabbing at my sphincter like a knife. They must have stretched the sphincter wide open. Of course. How else would they get in there. Down my throat? Oh God. The hands of a full-grown man went into my rectum and went to town with scalpels and retractors and suture thread. The pain isn’t directly on the wound but all around it. A blown sphincter.

He’s finally arrived.

“Robin?”

“Yes?”

“Do they stretch your butthole open wide enough to fit multiple hands into it?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so. That will be the source of most of the pain when the anesthesia wears off in a few minutes.”

Hmm. In a few minutes? I need pain medication right now. The thought that it might take a while for painkillers to work scares me so much that I think I’m going throw up.

I’ve held out against the pain too long and now I’ll have to wait ages for this shit on my ass to stop hurting. I’ve got to learn to give in to pain and become a patient who’d rather ring too soon for medication than have to make it through the minutes it takes for the stuff to kick in. There’s no medal for holding out against pain, Helen. My asshole has been fatally distended.

It feels as if the hole is as big around as my entire ass. There’s no way it will ever close normally again. I think they purposefully inflicted additional pain during the operation.

I was in this same hospital a few years ago. It was the greatest acting job of my life.

An excused absence would mean I could make up the exam some other time. First thing in the morning I told my mom I had palpitations in my lower left abdomen. And that they were getting worse. Mom started to worry because she knew this was a sign of appendicitis. Even though the appendix is on the right side. I know that, too. I started to double over in pain. She drove me straight to the pediatrician. I still go to the same doctor I went to as a child. It’s closer to home. He laid me on a stretcher and began to press on my abdomen. He pressed on the left side and I shrieked in pain. He pressed on the right and I didn’t make a sound.

“It’s unmistakable. Acute appendicitis. You’ve got to take your daughter to the hospital right away. There’s no time to stop off at home for her pajamas. You can drop them off later. This kid’s got to get to the hospital. If it ruptures it’ll infect the entire body and she’ll need a blood transfusion.” I thought to myself, What kid?

Off to the hospital. This one. Upon arrival I put on the same show. Left, right, all the right reactions. Like a game. Emergency operation. They cut me open and find an appendix that’s not infected or swollen at all. They take it out anyway. You don’t need it. And if they left it in and sewed you up, you might just come back at some stage with real appendicitis. Which would be doubly annoying. But they didn’t tell me they took it out. My mother did.

When she caught me lying another time, she said: “I can’t believe anything you say. You lied to me and all the doctors just to get out of a French exam. They took an uninfected appendix out of you.”

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