Wisdom Wears Neon Pyjamas

Lalit. It is difficult for me to speak. Words halt and shuffle under sentiment and I labor to breathe. All was as usual today when I hopped into a cab and was on my way to the sonography. Dr. D awaited me, it was just a routine scan, there wasn’t much thought to it. The fools they call staff around the place made me pee first and then guzzle four more glasses for the procedure. That brought my total to 14 since noon. I even looked over my shoulder a couple times, half expecting the BMC to rap my knuckles for excessive water consumption. Finally, I was in.

Good, good, murmured Dr. D as the cold gel spread over my belly, the smooth end of the pod bearing down on an alarmed bladder. Just mildly polycystic, she said, as she continued to examine my ovaries. They’re well-behaved, as you know. Haven’t ever been cause for trouble. So I lay back and let her earn her fat pay cheque.

Kidneys, check. Urinary tract, check. Uterus, the pod dug deeper. I casually turned my head toward the screen. Emptiness, naturally, stared back at me. A cavernous space, quiet and unused, minding its own business for three routine decades.

WHY AREN’T YOU HERE? I WANT YOU TO BE HERE. WHERE ARE YOU? WHY AREN’T YOU HERE, WHY, WHY? Half roar, half hysteria, the words flung themselves at the screen. I turned for Dr. D’s reaction. She was dictating away. The nurse in the corner hadn’t noticed anything amiss. The being formerly known as me pleaded with the blackness, willing my eyes to see a shape, railing in unreasonable hunger, consumed by a bodily need no logic could perforate. But baby, you’ll say (and I’ll pardon the terrible pun), you’ve never had a child! You aren’t planning one now either, so why the agony?

I don’t know, Lalit. I wish I could say it took me by surprise. But no emotion save blind urgency was permitted to address me while the virgin longing coursed through my body and held it utterly captive. In that moment, nothing else mattered. The room melted away. Dr. D travelled into another dimension.  The nurse ceased to exist. I did not obey my own body. All that excess water pricked the back of my eyes and flooded mountains in my throat. Atlantis drowned all over again and oceans rose to demand a tenant. For the first time in my three routine decades, it was just me and a baby I wanted to exist. I fear motherhood, Lalit. The erasure of carefully constructed thought, plan and reason.

Back at baseline, I reacquaint myself with consequent emotions and catch my snatched breath. Maybe what happened this afternoon was an aberration. Oh well, now we know I have somewhat healthy ovaries.