Chapter 4: The Unwelcome Prescription
The shower ran for a long time. Jane lay perfectly still, tracing the water stains on the ceiling, listening to the distant rush. She imagined Kate under the spray, scrubbing away the memory embedded in her skin. The room felt charged in her absence, a stage freshly cleared. Jane’s own stomach, a dull, forgotten ache, suddenly tightened in a fresh, suspicious cramp. She placed a hand over it, willing it to be quiet.
The water stopped. Silence, then the slow drip of the showerhead through the walls.
When the door finally clicked open, Kate emerged wrapped in a cloud of steam and institutional soap-smell. Her hair was a damp, dark copper coil piled on her head. She looked younger, softer at the edges, but her walk was careful, deliberate. She didn’t meet Jane’s eyes as she crossed to her bed, her movements speaking of a deep, physical soreness.
She had just pulled the fresh sheets back when the squeak of returning shoes echoed in the corridor.
Jane’s breath caught. It was too soon for rounds.
Nurse Patricia entered, but her attention wasn’t on Kate. She carried a small metal tray, its contents covered with a blue cloth. A fresh, unopened bag of clear tubing dangled from her other hand. Her eyes went directly to Jane. The cool, assessing look pinned her to the bed.
“Jane. The doctor reviewed your latest vitals and abdominal film. There’s a significant backup.” Her voice was factual, a weather report of misfortune. “The mild ache is a symptom of impaction. We need to clear it before it complicates.”
Jane’s world shrank to the nurse’s mouth, forming the words she already knew were coming.
“No,” Jane whispered, the sound barely leaving her throat. “I—I just have a cramp. Can’t I just take something? A laxative?”
“Laxatives would be ineffective and potentially dangerous at this point. The fastest, safest method is an enema. Several, most likely.” Nurse Patricia set the tray on Jane’s bedside table. The metal clink was final. She pulled the cloth back. There was a plastic bottle, not the clear one from before, but filled with a thick, ochre-colored fluid. Milk and molasses. A different tool for a different problem.
Jane’s heart began a frantic, irregular pounding against her ribs. Her vision tunneled. She saw the curtain, felt the ghost of Kate’s humiliation seeping through it. She heard the muffled sobs, the brutal, liquid sounds. A cold sweat bloomed on her lower back.
“Several?” The word was a croak.
“Until we achieve a clear return. It’s standard.” The nurse was already pulling on gloves, the snap of latex brutal in the quiet. “We’ll begin now. Preparation is key.”
Jane looked past the nurse, a desperate, pleading glance toward Kate. Their eyes met. Kate stood frozen by her own bed, one hand clutching the neck of her gown. Her expression wasn’t pity. It was a grim, horrified recognition. A shared sentence. She gave a tiny, almost imperceptible shake of her head—not in refusal, but in solidarity. This is happening.
“Please,” Jane said again, but the protest died in the sterile air. Authority had entered the room wearing white clogs and a calm, implacable face.
“Roll onto your left side, Jane. Draw your knees up.”
The instructions were so familiar, an echo from the other side of the curtain. Jane’s body moved, obeying the command before her mind could mount another defense. It was a slow, dreamlike turn. The starch of the sheet scratched her cheek. She drew her knees up, making herself small, presenting the vulnerable curve of her back to the room, to Kate. The humiliation was instant, a scalding wave that had nothing to do with medicine.
She heard the rustle of the plastic bag, the clatter of the bottle on the tray, the soft, ominous squirt of lubricant.
“Just try to relax. Breathe.”
Jane couldn’t breathe. Her lungs were sealed. She stared at the beige wall, at a small, smudged fingerprint near the baseboard. She focused on it. It became her world.
The sensation was cold. A shocking, gelid intrusion that made every muscle in her body lock tight. A sharp, burning pressure filled her, a dense, invasive weight that was nothing like her minor ache. This was a profound, internal wrongness. She gasped, a short, animal sound.
“Retain it as long as you can. Five minutes is optimal.”
The nurse’s voice was distant, a voice from the surface of a deep, cold lake where Jane was sinking. The thick, warm fluid inside her seemed to expand, a heavy, foreign presence claiming space. Her abdomen distended slightly, a firm, uncomfortable swell under her gown. Cramps, deep and grinding, began almost immediately—not the vague discomfort she came in with, but urgent, kneading fists clenching in her gut.
The clock on the wall ticked. One minute.
She heard movement. A soft shuffle of feet. She squeezed her eyes shut, wishing for the curtain to be drawn, for any scrap of privacy. It wasn’t.
Two minutes.
The cramps intensified, sharpening into blades. A low moan escaped her. She pressed her face harder into the pillow.
“You’re doing fine,” the nurse said, her tone devoid of any assessment of ‘fineness.’
Three minutes.
Jane was trembling. Sweat beaded on her forehead. The need to expel this monstrous volume became an all-consuming scream in her nerves. Her knuckles were white where she gripped the sheet. Her thighs shook with the effort of holding still, of holding it in.
Four minutes.
A tear escaped, tracking hot and fast into her hairline. She thought of Kate’s closed fist, opening and closing on the sheet. She understood it now. It was the only part of your body you could still command.
“Alright, Jane. Now.”
The permission was a guillotine’s release. She sobbed as she scrambled, her body moving on a primal instinct that overrode all dignity. The nurse was there, the commode already in place, a horrifyingly public throne.
What followed was a violent, shocking expulsion that tore through any last vestige of her composed self. It was loud. It was messy. It was a body reduced to its most basic, shameful function. She cried openly, tears of pain and absolute humiliation raining down as her insides evacuated the thick, offending fluid in a series of wrenching convulsions.
When it was finally, blessedly over, she sat there hollowed and shuddering, unable to move.
A flush, impossibly loud in the quiet room. The nurse’s efficient hands helping her clean, redraping the ruined gown. Jane was a doll, limp and compliant.
“We’ll let you rest for twenty minutes, then assess,” Nurse Patricia said, wiping the commode handle with a disinfectant wipe. She noted something on Jane’s chart. “You did well.”
The praise was ash in Jane’s mouth.
The nurse left with the evidence.
Jane slowly, painfully, lay back down. She kept her face to the wall. She could not look at Kate. The silence in the room was a living thing, thick with shared, ugly knowledge.
After a long moment, she heard the soft creak of the other bed. Quiet footsteps. A cup of water appeared on her bedside table, placed there without a word. Then the gentle swish of the curtain being drawn closed between them, a belated gift of privacy.
Alone in her half of the room, Jane finally let out the breath she’d been holding. It was a ragged, broken sound. She stared at the white curtain now shielding her, the barrier she had been on the other side of just an hour before.
From beyond it, very quietly, came Kate’s voice. “The first one is the worst.”
Jane didn’t answer. She just closed her eyes and waited for the squeak of shoes to return, counting down the minutes until the next round began.