I enter the ER with little more than my Wonder Woman hat, a library book I’ve barely begun to read, and a pain that is only familiar to those of us with an unruly uterus. I’m greeted by a sign that says it will be more than five hours before I can see a doctor, and I hope the book is a good one. The woman at the desk assures me the sign is accurate and asks me if I want to stay. I’m confused by this question. I explain I was told to come in by the on-call doctor and ask her if she thinks I shouldn’t be here. She confirms it’s a good idea that I’ve come in, but then asks me if I want to stay. I shrug and say I don’t think I have a choice.

The night passes in a haze of pain. I’m given a bed in a room that is clearly not meant to be a hospital room. It feels as if I’ve been shuffled off into storage. I’m largely left alone with little communication from the nurses who are bustling between patients. Eventually I’m wheeled away for a scan. When I return, a male nurse scolds me for leaving my bag behind, making it clear I’m lucky it wasn’t stolen—as if I were at all thinking clearly and didn’t already have enough to worry about.

A resident comes into my room with results from the ultrasound. She looks nervous. She explains my fallopian tube looks inflamed. I’m so exhausted I barely track what she’s saying. I try to sift through her words to find out how serious this diagnosis is. I think maybe I’ll just need antibiotics. That doesn’t sound so bad. She leaves me alone once more. I never see her again.

Another doctor comes in some time later. He’s older, an attending physician. He’s not nervous. He dismisses the previous doctor’s diagnosis outright. He explains to me that he suspects I have endometriosis, but the only way to diagnose it is through surgery. He suspects it’s a pretty severe case.

More than twelve hours after I first enter the ER, I’m wheeled into a room upstairs where I’m greeted by a nurse. She sees immediately that I have been up for twenty-four hours straight. She has the same name as my college roommate and this fact comforts me in a nonsensical way. She boasts about what a great doctor I have.

“Women come from all over the Midwest to be seen by him,” I’m told. She then promises me no one will disturb me until absolutely necessary and closes the door behind her. I try not to cry from gratitude as I curl into the fetal position, letting the real bed envelop me in a way the gurney in the ER refused to do. I sleep.

Too soon I am in the OR prep room, and I smile and make polite chit-chat with the seemingly never-ending stream of doctors and nurses and medical students who feel the need to introduce themselves. I suppose it’s only polite that I know the names of everyone who is about to see me naked and cut open, even though I will be knocked out for the procedure. I can’t help but feel there’s a clown car outside the room that they’re all pouring out of. I desperately want to return to my amazing nurse upstairs so that I can sleep some more.

Soon I’m sleeping without a choice. I awake slowly and painfully. I fight to keep my eyes open but fail. Somehow an hour and a half passes before I am awake enough to go back upstairs. It hurts to move back into my hospital bed, but I do it with only a little assistance.

Over the next few hours my nurse will find me a phone charger, get me a vegetarian dinner, chat with me about my library book, and remove my catheter without me having to tell her how much I hate it and despite the fact that another nurse told me I’d have to put up with it through the night. I think about how she brags about the doctor she works for and wonder if anyone ever takes the time to brag about her. I’d come from all over the Midwest to have my mind read by her.

My doctor comes by either really late or really early. Hospital time seems to move differently. He explains that they removed a cyst from my left ovary:  3 centimeters. They also removed a tubular endometrial cystic formation—not Fallopian tube like they originally thought they saw on the ultrasound:  7 centimeters. After that, the descriptions get less specific. They cleaned me out. My insides were basically stuck together. My bowel in particular was stuck to something or other. Maybe I’m just too groggy to follow. But I picture my internal organs free-floating inside me, happy to be independent once more. I wonder if I should feel lighter now.

Towards the end of my stay, my nurse comes into my room to say goodbye and introduces me to the next nurse on duty. She’s leaving for a well-deserved vacation. She plans to pick up a copy of my library book to read before she goes.

One day post-op, I am back home and learning to sleep with a pillow pressed to my belly, protection from my seventeen-pound cat who is prone to jumping on me in the middle of the night as a way of expressing his urgent need for early breakfast.

Five days post-op, I follow-up with the surgeon with the great reputation. I immediately refuse the treatment he is recommending. I have done research on endometriosis since leaving the hospital. I am wary of the chemical menopause that he suggests. I try my best to explain that after more than two decades of walking a tightrope over depression, I am not inclined toward drugs that will have me slipping down into the murky darkness below. “Mmhmm,” he murmurs, lips pursed as if holding back the words he really wants to say.

I explain my plan for exercise and a plant-based diet, and how I’ve been seeing my acupuncturist now for six years. To his credit, he doesn’t flinch at the word acupuncture, but neither does he acknowledge it. He brings up cancer, explains my heightened risk for it. He acts as if he is the first doctor to tell me this—the standby refrain to scare me into using artificial hormones that simply mask symptoms. I’ve been hearing it since I was nineteen. Twenty years later, I am no longer as susceptible to a man with a god complex. I work acupuncture into the conversation several more times just to see him squirm and explain to him that depression is far scarier than cancer to me. He has nothing else to offer and indicates I’ll be back. He makes a hasty retreat.

He is wrong. I do not return to him, but instead seek out doctors who listen, who are open to a more holistic approach to treating my endometriosis. I do not regret this choice.

Seven days post-op, I’m listening to the spring rainstorm rage outside as I try to sleep, the pillow still pressed to my belly, though maybe not strictly necessary anymore. I am healing. I have finished reading that library book and am infatuated with the characters, so grateful they kept me company through my ordeal. I imagine my nurse sitting on a beach somewhere with her own copy of the book, absorbing her vacation minute-by-minute like she deserves. I press my hands gently to my abdomen. I know what’s inside me now. I have a plan. I feel lighter.

Diane D. Gillette (she/her) lives in Chicago. Her work is a Best Small Fictions selection. Her chapbook “We’re All Just Trying to Make It to January 2nd” is available from Fahmidan & Co. She is a founding member of the Chicago Literary Writers. Read more at www.digillette.com.