negative

He handed me an index-card sized period tracker, and I couldn’t help but notice the age spots on his hands and the way his bones jutted through crepey skin. These were signs not only of the many years between us, but of the miles of misunderstanding that stood between the information I gave him and what he received. 

“Use this calendar to mark down days you have any spotting or bleeding,” he said, handing over the card with a nervous hand. 

He wasn’t who I wanted to see that day, but he’s who I got. Sure, he had the medical degree required for an examination and to speculate what might be causing my lack of periods, but I knew the moment he walked into the exam room and didn’t introduce himself or attempt to make any small that that he wasn’t what I needed him to be that day. 

I’d debated whether or not to tell him the issue I was having or simply tell him I wanted a yearly check-up. I more or less knew what was going on and didn’t plan on making any significant lifestyle changes that would remedy the problem. I’d thought perhaps this was my body’s way of telling me that after losing the only person I’d ever thought about having babies with, that was it. No need for a period when there’s no chance of having a baby. Was I being put out to pasture by this absence or retaining what shamanic cultures call “wise blood,” on my way to accessing healing powers beyond my wildest dreams? The words were pennies in my mouth, nearly worthless, but I told him anyway that I wasn’t having a period and hadn’t had one in about four months. The solution he gave, to keep track of bleeding that wasn’t happening, as well as this piece of cardstock, was laughable. 

I pursed my lips, wondering if any of his patients or relatives had ever shown him the myriad of options of period tracking apps, or even, dare I say it, a Google calendar. I’d been keeping track of my period for as long as I can remember and that’s precisely how I knew it wasn’t happening. That’s part of the reason why I was there. There was of course the other, more pragmatic reason: my health insurance benefits were also about to dry up and, ever my mother’s daughter, I thought it wise to squeeze that last bit of juice. I didn’t want to make the appointment at all. For the better part of a year, I didn’t have to think about my health at all; I’d replaced any identity I had before with that of caretaker. I kept calendars and picked up prescriptions and asked questions and I was happy to do it because it was for someone that I loved. These logistics were the very thing that kept me from crumbling under the weight of the reality that these tasks were simply prolonging the inevitable. 

When that identity died, I was left with a need to take care of someone but an inability to turn that need inward. I wasn’t able to take care of myself because I didn’t know who I was anymore. How was I to know what this stranger needed? After seeing someone die of an illness he’d only discovered seven months prior, I thought surely I was next. Once you’ve been struck by lightning, you’re more likely to be hit again. If there was something wrong, maybe I wouldn’t have to continue to deal with emotional pain because physical pain would take its place. I felt the naked chill of shame every time I went outside and the sun warmed my skin, or when I enjoyed a meal I’d cooked for myself. I don’t deserve this, I thought. So I consumed less until my body told me it wanted more. Once even, slumped over the toilet with my fingers lodged down my throat, I tried to rid myself of any pleasure I’d consumed. It was as if I’d been split in two; a more graceful version of me stood at the other end of the bathroom watching her clumsy and sweaty counterpart try on an identity that was ill-fitting. This isn’t you, it never has been and it never will be, these two screamed at each other in perfect harmony. 

“How many miles a week would you say you run?” 

“Uh, ten?”

“Is that about how many you ran…before?”

“Yeah, about.”

After I told this doctor about the emotional turmoil I was in, he clung to the white coat around his arms, to his education and experience, racking his brain for a scientific reason for my predicament. Instead of saying “before his death,” he simply said before, as if mentioning the death of a man many years his junior might make it contagious. I didn’t tell him the truth about my decrease in consumption (what’s the point anymore) or my increase in movement (using my body means not using my mind) because if I did, I wasn’t sure he’d know what to do with it. That was evident in the way, just before this conversation, he placed a speculum inside me without any warning, and pressed on my belly. “Don’t hold your breath,” was all he said as I winced. It was evident in the way I wanted to cry when he left the room and I put my clothes on, feeling like this effort to care for myself was proof I shouldn’t. Exposed in front of this stranger on the examination table with my legs spread, I felt like produce on a scale, this doctor simply inspecting the price per pound and the fruit for any imperfections, but not talking me through the process. 

I didn’t expect to be triggered in the way I was. I had only ever seen female gynecologists, but when this doctor was the only one available given my timeline, I didn’t see any harm. Had he seen me as more than just a reproductive system attached to a body, perhaps I would have felt more at ease, less like a younger version of myself whose words and thoughts, to more than one man boy, seemed far less interesting than my body. This was after years of my own scrutiny of this very body that I cursed daily for everything that it wasn’t. I’d taken time since to cover that girl with an umbrella from the hot blaze of shame that her desperation to be seen, to be desired, had bathed her in, only occasionally losing grip. For more than a decade then, I’d handed that responsibility to someone else, who made an impossibly difficult task seem easy. Without him now, I didn’t have the strength to hold it anymore. I felt on display, I felt twenty-one years old again, hoping to pass a test for which I hadn’t been given a study guide. 

I took the index card from the doctor, placed it in my purse, and zipped it up. When I got in my car, I opened the period tracker on my phone. Your period is over 120 days late, a notification said. Learn about missed periods, the app prompted. When I pressed the prompt, the app listed several reasons why a period might be late or missing. While dead husband and shamanic powers buffering weren’t listed, stress and activity levels were, which sufficed for the moment. The next day, I was surprised to receive an email saying my test results were available. I opened my medical app to see the doctor had ordered a pregnancy test. This was after I’d first told the nurse that no, I wasn’t sexually active, then told the doctor that my husband had recently died. Negative, the results read. I knew there was no way I could be pregnant, but reading that word on my phone’s screen, it was more than the result of an unnecessary test. It was an addition to the ever-growing list of reasons my body wasn’t right; there was no easy solve for the issue I was facing. Nine months of pregnancy, I reasoned, would be a walk in the park compared to a lifetime of wishing for resurrection. 

Back on the home screen of my app, a new notification appeared: You have a new medical bill. $10 for a pregnancy test turned mental spiral. $10 they would never see from me. I closed the app, never to open it again.