In The Hospital

Being in the hospital with a victim is very different than with my parents. I usually don't arrive until after the patient has been admitted, when called by hospital staff or law enforcement. There's no mystery, even if what happened is unclear, because all I need to go on is that the victim believes they experienced a sexual assault. Anything mysterious or unclear is the responsibility of law enforcement or medical staff. I usually have to make a stand on at least one issue with medical staff on behalf of the victim. Take your pick: reporting vs. non reporting, HIV risk and prophylaxis, discharge from the ER. And once the call is done, I leave, go home and rest. I try to follow up, but sometimes the victim only sees me as a reminder of the assault. I know I did the best and most that I could. I sleep at night.

I spent more time with my dad in the hospital than I did with my mom. We waited to find out what was going on, what symptoms were cancer, or treatment side effects, or just the hazards of living. Medical staff are more deferential to cancer than rape. 

But ultimately you go to the hospital for things that were done to you (unless it's a "Darwin Awards"-style accident). I can now joke that my one personal trip to the ER was for a rogue appendix, but at the time I definitely cursed my body for what it was doing to me. Rape is a betrayal of trust (you are more likely to be assaulted by someone you know). 

I realized, on my most recent work trip to the hospital, that cancer is a betrayal of trust too. It was the stupid hospital socks that got me thinking, about feet in beds and the grips on the bottoms of those socks in case you get up. Cancer betrays without the malice of the rapist, but  forever mars the ability to hope or trust the body's cells. Your body makes cells, using energy, for the purpose of maintaining the body's life. And when that cell is done it should have the good sense to die, to make way for new cells for the good of the body. But cancer cells refuse to die, and then they populate.

Then doctors treat the cancer. They talk in terms of numbers, of years left and percentages in studies and lab test results. My mom's doctors have her amazing news in May and she died in August. I can't decide if I wish I was never told that May news, because I'm so far from the hope they gave me. Cancer and its medicine yanked my hope like a rubber band. And at some point it snaps.