by Alexandria Yakes
The waiting room around me is silent. I am standing at the front desk, checking in for an appointment I have rescheduled three times already. I hand the receptionist my ID and insurance card.
“You’re early,” she comments. I nod. “Take a seat. The nurse will call your name.”
I choose the couch furthest from the hallway that leads to the exam rooms. I reach into my shoulder bag and remove the last book my therapist recommended to me before I fired her. Therapists never recommend light reading, so naturally, the book is about how trauma is stored in the body. It rests on my left thigh as I drum my fingers on the cover, my right leg bouncing slightly.
I wait.
Five minutes after my scheduled appointment time, the nurse leads me to exam room one. She takes my weight and asks whether I want to know what the scale reads. I consent quickly. A conditioned, impulsive Yes. I don’t know why I agreed – I haven’t weighed myself in years – but I did, and the nurse told me, and now my body is a number, one that I didn’t expect to see.
The energy in my leg has traveled up to the middle of my chest, aching. The nurse takes my medical history. I’m a new patient at this clinic, but she isn’t thorough. I remind her that I need to update my chart. My dad survived cancer last year. “So sorry,” she says, not looking away from the computer she’s using to take notes. Her typing sounds louder now.
“Do you have any concerns for the doctor?” she asks. Just one. I tell her. She chuckles. “That’s normal.” She doesn’t write it down.
The nurse opens a drawer and removes a large sheet of blue paper. It is folded like a t-shirt, perfectly creased. The paper is made of the same material as the bibs that dentists use to catch runaway drool during teeth cleanings. “Sorry about this,” the nurse says sheepishly as she hands me the sheet. “They stopped sending us fabric gowns. Budget cuts, I guess.”
The nurse leaves. I am alone. I take off my jeans and pull the faux gown over my shoulders. It is itchy, hostile to my skin. It rips as I pull it into place, exposing more of me than it should. There is nowhere to hide under these fluorescent lights.
The doctor enters my room after another few minutes. She’s young, only a few years older than me. I relax a little. Maybe she hasn’t been a doctor long enough to be jaded yet. Maybe I won’t have to explain.
She begins by asking me about the issue I mentioned to the nurse. “That’s normal,” she replies. I tell her that I’ve talked to other women in my life, that none of them have this issue. She asks no follow-up questions.
“Any other concerns?”
I try to steady my breathing. I’ve done this exam before, I remind myself. I know what to expect.
“I’m anxious,” I admit.
“About what?” she asks, her face softening slightly.
“The exam,” I reply, avoiding eye contact as I hear my voice break. Tears gather at the edge of my eyes but I blink them away. My face flushes. The trauma response is visible, I’m sure of it. I’m mortified. I want her to leave. I want to disappear.
“That’s normal,” she says. “Let’s get started.”
She motions for me to lie on the exam table. I oblige. She pulls the extended footrest from its hidden compartment and places my feet in the stirrups. “Open your legs a bit wider,” she commands apathetically. “Just relax. This will be quick.” She doesn’t know that I’ve heard those words before.
She turns her attention to preparing the speculum for insertion. I use the spare moment to brace myself. I clench every muscle in my body as tightly as I can – my thighs, my glutes, my biceps, everything. My fingernails dig into the palms of my fists, and my forehead aches from the force with which I am squeezing my eyes shut. A beat passes. I exhale, and all that tension floods from my body at once, allowing my hips to sink into the bed underneath me. I am ready now.
The sandpaper gown snags at my skin. I focus on that, the itching. It helps me ignore the sound of my vaginal walls being cranked apart.
The doctor makes small talk as she works. She asks me the same questions everyone always asks strangers in this town: When did you move here? Do you like the rain? Despite the dissociative inauthenticity of discussing the weather while a stranger digs around inside of me, I am grateful for her questions.
The doctor finishes the exam and thanks me for my time. She doesn’t ask how I’m feeling. She leaves and I am alone again, half-naked, with a cramping cervix, lube running down my thigh, and the threat of panic boiling in my chest.
The paper gown rips again as I stand.
I dress quickly, wiping away the one tear that managed to escape down my cheek. I feel ashamed. I feel exposed. I feel overwhelmed. I feel violated, all over again.
I pass the front desk on my way to the exit. I am almost to the door when the receptionist calls after me, “Do you want to schedule your appointment for next year?”
The nurse is back in the lobby again. She calls the name of the next patient. “Exam room one,” the nurse instructs. The next patient rises from her seat with too much force, too hurried, and knocks her phone from the side pocket of her purse and onto the floor. She bends down to retrieve it, and when she stands, our eyes meet. She wears the same furrowed brow and wide eyes as I do, anxiety hardened into both of our faces. She sees me, and I see her, and the staff in this clinic can’t see either of us. She gives me a half smile, shakes her head slightly, then follows the nurse down the hall.
The receptionist is still looking at me.
“Sure,” I reply after another beat, my shoulders tensing again. “Let me pull up my calendar.”