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Transitions
By Stephanie Kemp
Transitions
By Stephanie Kemp
I want to live forever.
This is a new development because as recently as 60 minutes ago, I wanted, genuinely and whole heartedly, to die.
I am on the 3rd floor of the same hospital I was born in, only this time I am 19 and it is the last week of summer before I am supposed to go back to start my sophomore year in college. I am fresh off last night’s plane from the east coast and here because my sister found me in a ball in my closet speaking in what she told my mom sounded like tongues. I don’t know what that sounds like, but I also don’t remember being found in the closet.
The meds have kicked in and my insides are no longer tearing through my body trying to find their way out my vagina. My fever has dropped from 105 to 101. I have never felt this euphoric because I have never felt so terrified.
Plus.
I can tell that my doctor will become my husband. He looks like Rick Springfield and is clearly smitten. My broken fever has left me feverishly confident. I look sun kissed and feel unstoppable, despite, or because of, my predicament. In the story of my life, this mystery illness is just what needed to happen so that I could step into the (right) future.
It. Is. On.
My mom steps out to call my dad (they are getting along!) and my roommate, Joan, is asleep. She is 65 and seems very nice when she is awake. Her “heart is making some decisions,” she explained to me when I was first rolled in. Her husband passed away last year and her kids are driving her crazy. She told me all of this before asking if I like to play cards or eat pizza and after offering me her robe. (I still had the chills.)
I am glad she is still sleeping now, both because my future husband and I are getting to know each other and because her story made me wonder if my parents’ kids also drive them crazy.
Dr. Springfield has asked his final question about my trip (obviously trying to convince me not to move to Greenwich) and says he just needs to ask me a few more things:
“Have you ever been out of the country?”
(Where does he want to take me?)
“Could you be pregnant?”
(Does he want me to have his babies?)
“Are you ready for your rectal exam?”
(Pulling on his gloves... )
It. Is. Off.
This is the day when I will come to realize how brutal and beautiful (and then brutal again) life can be:
This morning I almost died from a kidney infection.
Tonight my friend Joan will die from a broken heart in her hospital bed crying for her children. I will hear all of this and see part of it from behind a little curtain that wasn’t pulled all the way shut. I will eventually fall asleep and wake up to a new roommate, the lovely Theresa, suffering complications from a broken hip.
I will never forget my first rectal exam or (want to) see my examiner ever again.
Ever.
My parents will always put us first.
I will not live forever.
But I am a grown up.
This is a new development because as recently as 60 minutes ago, I wanted, genuinely and whole heartedly, to die.
I am on the 3rd floor of the same hospital I was born in, only this time I am 19 and it is the last week of summer before I am supposed to go back to start my sophomore year in college. I am fresh off last night’s plane from the east coast and here because my sister found me in a ball in my closet speaking in what she told my mom sounded like tongues. I don’t know what that sounds like, but I also don’t remember being found in the closet.
The meds have kicked in and my insides are no longer tearing through my body trying to find their way out my vagina. My fever has dropped from 105 to 101. I have never felt this euphoric because I have never felt so terrified.
Plus.
I can tell that my doctor will become my husband. He looks like Rick Springfield and is clearly smitten. My broken fever has left me feverishly confident. I look sun kissed and feel unstoppable, despite, or because of, my predicament. In the story of my life, this mystery illness is just what needed to happen so that I could step into the (right) future.
It. Is. On.
My mom steps out to call my dad (they are getting along!) and my roommate, Joan, is asleep. She is 65 and seems very nice when she is awake. Her “heart is making some decisions,” she explained to me when I was first rolled in. Her husband passed away last year and her kids are driving her crazy. She told me all of this before asking if I like to play cards or eat pizza and after offering me her robe. (I still had the chills.)
I am glad she is still sleeping now, both because my future husband and I are getting to know each other and because her story made me wonder if my parents’ kids also drive them crazy.
Dr. Springfield has asked his final question about my trip (obviously trying to convince me not to move to Greenwich) and says he just needs to ask me a few more things:
“Have you ever been out of the country?”
(Where does he want to take me?)
“Could you be pregnant?”
(Does he want me to have his babies?)
“Are you ready for your rectal exam?”
(Pulling on his gloves... )
It. Is. Off.
This is the day when I will come to realize how brutal and beautiful (and then brutal again) life can be:
This morning I almost died from a kidney infection.
Tonight my friend Joan will die from a broken heart in her hospital bed crying for her children. I will hear all of this and see part of it from behind a little curtain that wasn’t pulled all the way shut. I will eventually fall asleep and wake up to a new roommate, the lovely Theresa, suffering complications from a broken hip.
I will never forget my first rectal exam or (want to) see my examiner ever again.
Ever.
My parents will always put us first.
I will not live forever.
But I am a grown up.