Free The Blue Cotton Gown by Patricia Harman

good-humored, all women like him. My eyelids are drooping and . . . and then the medication wears off. The pain is back.
    The doctor in a rumpled white lab coat, who is probably the same age as Orion, my middle son, comes by to discharge me. I remember her now. I helped her deliver her first baby, my hands over hers, at the university hospital when she was in med school.
    “Your heart’s fine and all your labs are normal,” she tells us, looking at Tom. “The X-ray shows a hiatal hernia, a weakness in the diaphragm that allows the stomach to expand into the chest.” She turns to me. “Did you know that?” Her breath smells of coffee and exhaustion.
    “No, not really. I’ve never had any trouble before. I had bad acid indigestion when I was pregnant years ago.” She nods, as if reflux when I was expecting confirms her diagnosis.
    It all sounds too simple, but I’m relieved. If I go home and don’t eat for a few days, the pain will go away.
    I’m not dying after all.

    *
    The pain does get better, but after three days it hasn’t gone away. I still feel the fist in my chest, my temp is 103, and I’m sent back to the hospital for more tests. Everything blurs after that. I’m starting to chill, but getting the CT isn’t as bad as I expected. The tech, a man with greased-back hair and braces, says they’re going to get a “wet reading” in the next half hour. Tom is in the office seeing patients,

    and I just want to go home and lie down, so I dress and find my car in the ER parking lot. Twenty minutes later, as I’m crossing the bridge over Hope Lake, my cell phone goes off. I consider ignoring it—I’m sick, for God’s sake!—but dutifully pull onto the berm. The phone has stopped ringing but I check the caller ID and return the call.
    “Monroe, radiology,” a clipped bass voice answers. I picture a dark-eyed, opinionated man I met once at a hospital holiday party.
    “Patsy Harman, nurse-midwife, you called?” I respond just as formally.
    “Where are you?”
    “What . . . ? I’m in my car, almost home.”
    “Well, you better come back,” Monroe growls. “I could be wrong, but I think you have a gangrenous gallbladder.”
    Gangrene in my gallbladder? I blink, not knowing how to respond. “Okay, where should I go?”
    “OR admissions, third floor. You know where that is? I’ll call Jamison, the general surgeon. They’ll fit you in as an emergency case. He’ll meet you there, and I mean now!” This man must have been in the military.
    Speed-dialing the office while I’m driving, I take the entrance back onto the freeway too fast, and the rear of the Civic swings out in the gravel. “Is Tom with a patient?”
    “Yeah. What’s up?” Linda answers. “You doin’ okay? You want me to get him?”
    “Tell him they think I have gangrene in my gallbladder. Just tell him,” I shout. “Can you hear me?” The phone reception is breaking up as I come over the bridge. “Tell him I have gangrene in my gallbladder and I’m being admitted to the hospital right now.” Some women would cry. That’s not my way. I’ll cry later.
    In an hour, I’m lying in a pre-op bed. It’s hard to argue with gangrene.
    I didn’t even try.

    *
    “They’re going to try to do it through the scope,” the nurse with bleached, spiked hair tells me briskly. I’m being brave and overly calm, asking all the right questions about the procedure. Though I’ve worked in hospitals for the last twenty years, I haven’t been a patient in one since Mica was born. Zen and Orion, the two younger boys, were both delivered at home.
    “Mrs. Harman?” asks an orderly with five-o’clock shadow who reminds me of someone in a gangster movie.
    I nod.
    “Ready for a little ride?” He smiles slyly, thinking he’s cute.
    I better get it together. I don’t want to go into the OR for removal of a gallbladder and come out minus a kidney. I glance at my IV and shake my head to clear it. They may have already given me a sedative.