I keep thinking of bolting during the walk to the surgery building. I don’t want to be neutered. My cell phone makes several warning sounds and officially goes dead.
My Dad gives me his cell phone so that I can leave another voicemail for my girlfriend who needs to pick up her damn phone. That is a bad idea.
We’ve left the parking structure and are crossing the sky bridge to the surgery center. The walls are covered in cheerful murals depicting a rolling meadow scene. My voicemail to my girlfriend starts off scratchy but fine, and I focus on a white and yellow butterfly. I know that Monarch Butterflies migrate insane distances – how do they find the energy to mate? I’d like to have a woman while I’m still whole.
My throat catches and I lose my voice.
“Fuck,” I moan. I quickly recite the number for my girlfriend to call back and hang up.
“This must be a lot to process,” my Dad says.
There are more white corridors and various people in scrubs and white coats. Somehow, we’ve made it to the check-in desk. It’s surrounded by larger, more luxurious chairs, and most of the people sitting in them are old.
My Mom is waiting for us at the desk. We have nearly identical complexions, but I’m about a foot taller than she is. She smiles habitually and has too much energy for her petite frame. She’s smiling now and she hugs my chest. She doesn’t cry when we pull away.
I don’t remember checking in, but now, we’re sitting in the luxurious chairs while my Dad is further off doing Segway maneuvers.
“Well, I guess they’re going to take a look and see what they find,” she says.
“They’re going to REMOVE it,” I snap. I glare at her, and she nods and smiles nervously. She may be doing me a favor by making me angry. I’ll probably need that after the surgery.
I go to the bathroom to say goodbye in a handicapped stall. I stare down at my right testicle and wonder what to do. Should I say a few words, maybe assure it that it’s going to a better place? I end up giving it a few, awkward pats before washing my hands and heading back out.
My Dad has parked his Segway and joins us when they call my name. We meet with a Nurse in an office room off to the side of the check-in desk. She asks me the same questions that everyone has been asking me today. My Mom proffers an insurance card, and the Nurse prints off a white hospital bracelet with my name on it.
She’s misspelled my middle name as Oconner. First Testical and now this. I sigh.
“Hey, you misspelled his middle name. There should be an ‘o’ instead of an ‘e’, and don’t forget the apostrophe,” my Dad says.
The nurse retypes my name and prints off another bracelet. When I pull off the bracelet, I realize that I had put it on my left wrist. They’re removing my right testicle. Jeezus. I put the correct bracelet on the correct wrist.
There’s a flight of stairs, more paperwork, and another check-in desk before we make it to the waiting room. A plastic wrapped hospital gown and green socks await me on a surprisingly comfortable gurney. There’s a TV in the corner of the room, and it’s operated by a remote wired to the gurney that also has a call attendant button.
I strip down to my boxers and slip into the gown and socks as my Dad fiddles with the TV and my Mom stares out the window.
“Do you want to take a picture?” my Mom asks.
“Sure, but we don’t have a camera,” I say.
My Dad takes out his cell phone and takes a picture of me trying to smile. My face looks like it has a nervous tic.
“No, I thought you were going to take a picture of your testicle,” my Mom says.
“I’ll just remember it,” I reply. We laugh, but I regret not taking that picture. That could have been an instance where a guy shoving a camera down his boxers actually held some kind of significance.
I lay back on the gurney and start channel surfing while my parents bustle around. Their mission is to find another contact number for my girlfriend. Despite a few wrinkles, they look healthy. I feel ancient.
My Dad is also sort of a movie buff, and he keeps asking me if I want to know the plot to the movie on TV that’s near the ending. I tell him no. He forgets several minutes later and starts giving the back story. I don’t listen, but I do remember that if I can get my phone charged, then I may be able to find the number to my girlfriend’s work phone.
I don’t have any contacts listed in my phone, since I just remember numbers that I call often. That’s stupid, I know, especially since I can’t remember the number to her work phone, which I don’t call often. I know that number has to be in the call history somewhere.
My cell phone charger is at home. My little brother and best friend from high school are also there, since he decided to crash at our house after last night’s drinking bout. We make the call, and they promise to drive over with the charger. It’s 1:30. My surgery is in an hour.
When they arrive, I plug my phone in and start scouring my call history for the number. I know the area code starts with a 2. I find it! Now all she needs to do it pick up.
Perhaps I was meant to wait because I’m more emotionally stable at this point. The presence of my brother and my friend helps me keep my voice even when she answers the phones. She’s working at one of the Ohio offices for her corporation so she doesn’t have to take a vacation day while she visits her mother.
When I tell her, she gasps. In a sick way, I’m glad. We’ve been having more problems lately, so perhaps this will make her forget all my shortcomings. Yeah, I’m considering playing the cancer card to brush off relationship troubles.
We don’t talk for very long. She says she wants to come down over the weekend. I tell her that we’ll figure something out. My “I love you” sounds casual, hollow. At least it doesn’t sound desperate.
The room is getting cramped with five people, but my Dad leaves to get back to work. He still has patients and basically dropped everything when he got the news. My Mom cancels the rest of her patients for the day.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she says. She smiles. I don’t think she’s super eager to go back to a job that requires her to interact with a troubled family and fill their prescriptions in fifteen minutes or less.
A Nurse comes in at 2:00 to wheel me away.
“You need to have on nothing but the gown,” she says.
I’m still in my boxers. How’d she know that? I look out the room’s generous, thick window that overlooks the parking lot. Could I kick it open with both my heels without eviscerating myself? No, I’d have to ram it with the gurney. I sigh and slip out of my boxers under the sheet. My Mom takes them.
On the way out, my brother and friend stand at attention and hold salutes. I try to smile, but I don’t manage to salute back.
The nurse wheels me to a preparation room with gurneys separated by curtains. One of the ceiling tiles has a children’s drawing on it. The picture is of some underwater scene; I can tell from the bubbles. The picture is mostly coral pink and toothy yellow, a globular image that I can’t quite wrap my head around. I wonder if it was drawn by an actual child or a struggling artist who has found a niche.
I keep looking up when another nurse comes to my station.
“And what are we having done today?” she asks.
“I’m having my right testicle removed,” I reply.
She nods and puts an orange bracelet on my right hand. For the next 30 minutes, anywhere between one and four people are gathered around my gurney asking me questions. I have to tell someone else that I’m losing my right nut when they ask. One Nurse writes notes on her latex-blue hand while I talk to an Anesthesiologist. They ask me if I have any questions. I tell them to make sure that they get the right side. I smile but can’t help repeating myself. A Nurse takes pity on me and writes something on my right hand. Someone else gives me a cup and some pills, a pre-dosage to take away some of the edge.
I yawn and tell myself that I’m not feeling the effects. After my next yawn, I notice that the ceiling tile with the kid art is no longer above me. I’m in the operation room. I must’ve been talking with the Nurses there because they’re still talking to me about one of them being from Missouri.
The Urologist comes in and stands over me. I try to nod at him, but there is no eye contact. A Nurse warns me that I’ll feel a slight prick as they start the injection. At the same time another one places a clear mask over my face, telling me to breathe deeply.
Deep breaths – is there some lasting image or thought that will stay with me? I inhale the chemical smell while trying to look at the mask and going cross-eyed as a result. What if this is my last thought? That is my last thought.
A young woman is sitting next to me. She’s slender with light brown hair and blue eyes, beautiful in a professional sort of way. I’m flattered that this lovely nymph would sit by my side and wait for me to awake. Perhaps she was strolling down the hospital highways and felt drawn by a presence. Love at first sight.
As she comes into sharper focus, I realize that she’s reading a book. She’s just doing her job and making sure I come back to life. I cough in resentment, and then embarrassedly look away when she meets my eyes. I think I fall back asleep.
An older woman is sitting to my left. She has leathery skin and close-cropped curly white hair. There are also a few, delicate hairs on her upper lip. She smiles, pats my hand, and takes my pulse. Something moves to my right, and it’s my Mom.
“How are you feeling, dear?” my Mom asks.
I’m feeling high, elated, and buoyant. I giggle in response.
“Now, we’re going to have to get you to the bathroom. Once you can go to the bathroom and keep food and water down, you’ll be cleared to go,” the Nurse says.
She and my Mom grab an elbow as I totter off the bed to the adjoining bathroom. Someone pulls up my gown, but I’m able to pull out my penis myself. My penis looks awesome! I like the way it hangs, so I chuckle again as I pee. I stop laughing when I notice that half of my pubic hair has been shaved off and that there’s a large bandage on my stomach.
When I lie back on the gurney, the buzz comes back. I start telling my Mom and the Nurse a riddle about two guardians and two doors but I forget the answer. The Nurse is a giant teddy bear and she tells me that I should see the movie “Salt.” We also find that someone left the shaver used to prep me for surgery under the sheets.
A beautiful blonde Nurse with a heart-shaped face wheels me into a CT scan area. This is one of the ways that they check to see if the cancer has spread. It’s also a way to for me to realize that there may be more to this than just losing a nut. I trade this thought for self-consciousness about the fact that I’m still naked under my gown.
When she wheels me back into the room with Nurse Teddy Bear and my Mom there’s some type of food waiting for me. I can’t recall what the food was, but I do remember scarfing it down. It’s evening, and I haven’t eaten all day – delicious.
“I saw you looking at her.” Nurse Teddy Bear chides me before leaving me alone with my Mom.
“They’re going to wheel you out, and I’ll have the car waiting. OK, honey?” she says.
I nod. Five minutes later I forget about the wheelchair and start wandering down the hospital corridor.
“Get back in there, you crazy.” Nurse Teddy Bear is sitting behind a desk and chuckling.
The wheelchair finally comes, but the Nurse pushing it isn’t as pretty as the one who took me to the CT scan. We make it to the car, and my Mom drives us away. I imagine my detached testicle on a stainless steel table in the hospital basement. Men in lab coats are gathered around it and take turns prodding it with scalpels. I feel a phantom twinge of sympathy in the empty half of my sac before I fall back asleep.
