Guts: The Endless Follies and Tiny Triumphs of a Giant Disaster (11 page)

As he took the X-rays, he kept ordering me to stop shivering, as though I were doing it just to be difficult. But I couldn’t help it. I was constantly and violently shuddering because not only was the drafty, old hospital as warm and cozy as a meat locker, but all I had to keep me warm was my revolting tank top and putrid sweatpants. I’m also quite sure that I was close to going into shock. He finally took pity on me and kindly tossed me a thin hand towel, which I covered my face with so he wouldn’t see me cry.

I lay on that cold, black slab and immediately reverted to when I was a little girl, that baffling time in my life when I tried so hard to be good, yet somehow always mysteriously failed.
If I was still and wasn’t loud and screamed only inside my head, then would my mommy come?

Finally, the torture was done, for now.

Then I began an eternal journey, with no explanation, somewhere else deep into the bowels of the cavernous, old hospital. Even though my life had clearly been awful in many ways, I had always been proudly self-reliant, independent, and 100 percent self-sufficient. Probably to a fault.

Yet, in the space of a few hours, I’d been utterly decimated. All those years of bravado crushed to dust. So easily. I watched it all fly away, helpless to stop it.

What remained was a powerless, nameless creature being wheeled through a busy hospital on a gurney, helplessly obligated to the bored gentleman assigned to push me. I was no longer a person, I was now something people gave pitying glances to or gossiped over in the elevator, something that no longer had a name, a voice, ears, arms, or legs.

I now was a
patient.

And let me just say that if I knew then what was about to happen to me, you better fucking
believe
I would’ve rolled right off that dolly and turtle-crawled my ass all the way back to New York City.

don’t ask
me how my memory of these events is so lucid when I can’t remember what I ate for breakfast, what time my weekly shrink appointment is, or even the last name of the guy I finally lost my virginity to. (I wasn’t some slut, okay? I was nineteen years old and had waited far longer than most of my slutty friends. I was just an insecure, gangly lush. I
do
remember I was wearing Donald Duck panties and that it was an Easter Sunday. . . wait, okay, on second thought, maybe I was a slut.)

Anyway, for some reason almost every unfortunate moment, from waking up in my gore-splattered bathroom to the day I finally checked out of the hospital two months later, is burned into my memory. It used to baffle me because I’m renowned for my terrible memory, yet
this nightmare
is what I choose to retain? But now I understand. How could the events that lead to your life changing forever
not
be seared into your memory?

I remember lying on a gurney in some sort of ward crammed with people. I was terribly disappointed to discover that, other than for its being overcrowded, this ward bore zero resemblance to the London hospital wards described by Charles Dickens. This was white, sterile, and cold, as if designed by Stanley Kubrick’s tacky younger brother, Jim Bob.

The fantastic news was that the thirtieth shot of morphine had finally kicked in about five minutes earlier and I was feeling better. I was cured! I could just get a prescription for six hundred painkillers with four refills and be sent on my merry way! That thought made me feel close to excellent.

Since I was then able to remove my knees from my chin and stand for ten seconds at a time, they changed me into a lovely white hospital gown (and by lovely I mean in relation to what I’d previously been wearing). As they removed my vomit-hardened sweatpants (“Yes, I’m positive, Nurse. Please just throw them away. I mean, unless
you
want ’em?”), they emptied out my pockets and then moved away to bring over the scale. I spotted my cell phone (the one I had bought when I was the other Kristen), and something told me to grab it and hide it. Having a cell phone there might be completely fine, but because I’m a lying, pill-popping lush, it’s hardwired into my brain that anything I want or need isn’t allowed and therefore must be hidden. To this day, even if I’m taking an Advil, I have to resist the urge to shout, “Wow, look at the squirrel!” and quickly pop it into my mouth when backs are turned.

The phone made it under my pillow just as they came over to weigh me. The nurse kindly offered to translate my weight from stone to pounds, without even being asked. “That would have you at just over 190 US pounds, dear!” (One hundred and ninety pounds! Holy crap, that’s not just bloated! I’m a fatfatfatty-kins.) But because I was ensconced in my morphine bubble, I found it funny instead of deeply depressing.
Fatty.

I was put back in my bed and waited until they left. It was too early to call anyone in the United States, so I called the stage manager to tell him I wasn’t going to come in today. He seemed rather alarmed when I told him what had happened, but I assured him, “Malcolm, relax. I’m as tough as they come. I’ve never missed a show before in my life. I’ve even gone on with the flu.” I would run to the wings, vomit, and return right back to the show. Just because I’m addicted to painkillers doesn’t mean I’m a pussy.

“Okay, you worrywart, I’ll call you as soon as I know anything, but I’m positive I just pulled a stomach muscle or something, and I’ll be good as new tomorrow!” Now that I think back on it, I was bizarrely chipper. He must have thought I had actually lost my mind. (That is, if he hadn’t already.) I mean, who the hell would be bubbly at a hospital at a time like this?

A drug addict who’s high, that’s who.

I don’t know how long I snuggled into my downy-soft morphine duvet, but suddenly the mood in the ward shifted.
Something’s happening,
I thought to myself, just as a team of about ten impossibly serious-looking people rounded the corner. It took an embarrassingly long time for me to realize that they were coming toward me. Which was baffling, until I realized that the hospital must have finally realized that none other than “Ivana Humpalot” was in their very hospital and had quickly assembled an impressive-looking welcoming committee to apologize for their previous unpleasantness. I smiled forgivingly.

The group took formation around my bed, a well-practiced ballet designed to impress. A few of them looked as if they had just started grade school. Not one of them looked older than twenty-three. That is, with the notable exception of their leader. As he walked toward me, I have this fuzzy and hopefully untrue memory of my jaw dropping open. (Oh, dear God, please tell me I shut it at some point.) He reached out his gorgeous hand to shake mine and introduced himself. This man was so elegant, darkly stunning, and breathtakingly handsome, I instantly thought of one of those impossibly perfect heroes found only in Danielle Steel novels my sister used to beg me to read aloud.
“His icy eyes focused on her pillowy lips and suddenly she knew she was his, forever. . .”
We could easily spend an entire Saturday doing this, laughing until our faces hurt.

Lost in this memory, I slowly realized
his
pillowy lips were moving.
Whoopsies, he’s talking.
Seeing as I was committed to making our relationship work, I decided to listen to his soft-yet-commanding voice. I missed the beginning, and most of it was medical lingo that flew over my addled mind, but I’ll give you the gist.

“. . . ulcer for quite a long time. I’m surprised you haven’t experienced more discomfort before this. Regardless, this has caused an erosion of the gastrointestinal wall, which has led to your intestinal content spilling into your abdominal cavity. We call this acute peritonitis, which is the reason for the sudden onset of your intense abdominal pain. To be blunt, Ms. Johnston, you could die at any moment.”

My smile faltered. This wasn’t at
all
what I expected.
And where’s the cheese plate?

“We must perform a very risky surgery, called a gastrectomy, to fix this. We are rushing you ahead of all other patients. We will try to fix this problem with laproscopic surgery, meaning, through five incisions around your stomach. However, there is a very good chance this won’t work, and then we’ll have to cut you open with a rather large incision across your stomach. Obviously, we’d like to avoid that if we can, for obvious reasons.”

Obviously. I nodded in total agreement. We’d rather avoid an enormous, disfiguring scar across the tummy, if at all possible.

“Unfortunately, your X-rays are, to say the least, very confusing, so we’ll have to make some difficult choices whilst you’re in surgery. I want to be very clear that anything could happen, really. We need your signature that gives us permission to make the appropriate judgment call.”

He then looked around at his minions, who immediately murmured words of agreement. “Ms. Johnston, I suggest you let your loved ones know.”

I smiled dreamily at him. “Okay, Doctor. You do what you gotta do.”

He leaned forward and looked at me seriously. “Do you have any questions?”

“Ummmm. . . Yep, no, I’m good.”

This seemed to disappoint him. But what was I supposed to do? Start screaming,
“Noooo! I want to live!!!”
? I just didn’t have it in me. He held forward something to sign, and I eagerly scribbled the signature of a drunken toddler. His face remained blank. “Yes. Well, Ms. Johnston. See you very soon.”

“Okay, bye-bye.” I’m pretty sure I waved. I hope to
God
I didn’t wink.

And with a whoosh, they were gone. I sighed, in love. I wondered if I looked hot. I’m pretty sure not, because when I coyly reached up to fluff my hair, I found it to be rock hard. Aww, puke-mousse. Bummer.

All was quiet. I looked around the packed ward and it was then that I realized that I was the only one alone. Well, other than for my boyfriend Mr. Morphine, that is. Who was a
total
sweetheart for being here, but was (no offense) not so good at getting me water, saying comforting things, or wiping my brow.

Suddenly, my attention was caught by the grief-stricken face of an ancient lady who was holding the paper-thin hand of an equally ancient and clearly almost-dead lady in the corner. I immediately knew they were sisters and were all each other had, their whole lives. I also knew that once the sick one died (in two days), the other would follow within the month, of a broken heart.

Thankfully, the Indian family to my left distracted me from that total bummer. These people were fascinating because even though the giggling little boy in the hospital gown was obviously cured of whatever had once ailed him, they were clearly in no rush to leave. They were clearly so happy to be together. The loud uncle in the Cosby sweater had everyone laughing, and a little birdie told me
he
was no stranger to Jesus Juice.

He quickly became annoying to Mr. Morphine, so I turned my head to the bed to my right, where an attractive middle-aged (wait, oh my God, am I middle-aged?) blond woman was being comforted by her husband. She had clearly eaten something bad, which in London, where even an apple smells like beef stew, isn’t exactly a shocker. I cleverly deduced that they were German tourists because he was wearing a man-purse and clogs. The fact that they were speaking German was also helpful. (Well, it could have been Austrian, Swedish, or even Russian, but I’m an American, we don’t need to know such things.)

Wherever they were from, I wondered if she knew how lucky she was to have someone who, despite his unfortunate taste in accessories, was willing to gently rub her back even while she vomited bile into a bowl. He suddenly looked sharply up at me, and instead of pretending I hadn’t been staring, I smiled. He was not charmed, so I looked away. Oh! I got it. . . he must’ve thought that because no one was with me, I was one of those creepy, friendless people. Someone so awful that no one would comfort them, even on their deathbed. I was sorely tempted to explain that my longtime lover
was
here, thank you very much, but something told me he wouldn’t understand. How could he, when even I didn’t?

I realized I had my cell phone, and after about forty minutes of trying superhard to figure out what time it would be in New York (math and morphine are not friends), I called my oldest friend in the world, Jackie. The second I heard her voice, I burst into tears.

“What? Oh, my God, Kris, what is it?” she asked, alarmed.

I took a shallow breath, wiped my tears with one of the tiny sheets of sandpaper conveniently located in a box next to the bed, and said, “Listen, Jack. Don’t panic, okay? But I’m in this hospital in London, and apparently my stomach blew up, and they’re going to operate on me and I called you because I wanted yours to be the last voice I ever hear.” (By the way, when dying, being a drama queen is perfectly acceptable, and even encouraged.)