Permanence by Vincent Zandri

Author:Vincent Zandri [Zandri, Vincent]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Bear Media
Published: 2012-05-03T15:00:00+00:00

Book Three

Fire

In the last analysis, what would become of us without abortion?

—Max Frisch

November

Inception

The ceramic walls of this box-shaped room are antiseptic white, the floors a glossy, battleship gray. The light that emanates from the stainless-steel umbrella fixture stings my eyes when I stare into it without blinking. The light leaves a black hole in my mind that even pierces the darkness.

The injection is local.

I wait on my back for the moment when all feeling will abandon my stomach. When it does, I have not gone without feeling my stomach in two months. Being in the first trimester, I am able to undergo a suction process which involves a tube and a stainless-steel attachment. I can see this doctor applying the device from behind the large square of green curtain they have installed around my midsection. The doctor (I am not even sure he is a doctor, although I address him this way) says few words to me, going about his work with a mechanical indifference, leaving me alone with my thoughts. But he asks me if I feel sleepy and tells me not to worry about nodding off if I want to.

How can I sleep?

The curtain blocks the view of my legs harnessed and spread wide inside stirrups. Despite the injection, I feel the air of this room like I am standing waist-deep in cool water. I hold to the pillbox wrapped about my neck with my fingers and try to block all thoughts of doctor’s child from my mind. I block out the possibility of this child having ever lived inside of me. I block out the possibility that this child might have ever taken the place of the baby Jamie and I made, so long ago. Perhaps along with this mechanical procedure, so too can my guilt be erased, as though it never existed. The low hum of the machine is surprisingly quiet, the feel of the components warm, but tight up against my insides. The process runs for a few moments, the noise of the machine low and steady at times and then suddenly high-pitched and intense and then low again.

The sound is the antithesis of conception.

This doctor positions and repositions the stainless-steel device and I feel the shift in pressure inside my body. When doctor removes the hose device he hides himself behind the curtain. I think, That wasn’t so terrible.

Then I feel it.

The cold, steel feel of the instruments, the rough scraping and the red-hot pressure against the interior of my abdomen. The pain that no anesthetic can hide (“Sleep, if you can,” repeats the doctor). The feel of the scraping is like sandpaper rubbed against rough wood. I feel scraping throughout my body. It feels as though he has stuck sewing needles into my belly button.

How could I ever sleep?

My abdomen is on fire.

When the operation is finished I am fitted with a pad for the bleeding. I am shuffled through a small hallway where I lay prone on a cart dressed in nothing but a baby-blue dressing gown.

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