The Beginning of Everything

room when I was seven, eight. There was a piece of furniture there that had come with the house, a wooden bar stand, just taller than a tall dresser, and we liked to use it to play house, setting up our dolls and animals on the shelves inside it. One day, reenacting the gymnastics moves we’d learned in class, we dared each other to try more and more risky things. I was brave then, or braver than I am now, and so I stood on top of that bar, my hands reaching up to graze the low ceiling, and volunteered to do a flip off it onto the floor. Never mind that I’d never once in my life done a flip. There was a thin gym mat there for me to land on, I could do it. My sisters looked skeptical, but that only fueled my confidence.

I remember the leap, the free-fall feeling of wishing I could take back my boasting, my stupid bravado, the expressions on my sisters’ faces as I jumped off.

I landed on the back of my head. I hadn’t flipped enough in the air to get all the way around. And I had the wind knocked out of me a little bit. But the main priority was that we not get in trouble, so even though I cried, and even though it hurt, we agreed not to say anything to our parents. Later I told my mom I’d somehow tripped walking up the steps to the laundry room and hit my head. I think she gave me aspirin. I think I went to bed early. My sisters and I never talked about it again. A few times in my life I’ve thought about that moment, how lucky I was. One slight shift of gravity and I could have died. I could have literally broken my neck. Instead, evidently, I just fractured it.

I have the X-rays done first. Once I’m gowned, I’m made to stand against a metal square, with a smaller metal square in front of me, a light shining into my eyes. They have me look straight ahead, chin slightly up; then with my mouth so wide open it feels like my jaw might get stuck; then facing to the side with my head normal, then down, then tilted back. After that I’m escorted to the CT/MRI scan area. The last time I’d been there, for an MRI, I’d curled in a chair, trying my best to get horizontal, crying from the pain. Today I sit with the other gowned patients in the waiting area, CNN on the overhead TV, the women who need contrast for their procedures commiserating over the terrible drink they’re required to ingest. Mocha, berry, banana—all, apparently, equally awful. A woman my age is given two bottles of the stuff by a tech. “Both of these?” she asks, apprehension clear on her face. “Yep,” he tells her, “but it’s okay, you have forty-five minutes to get them down.” She winces open the first one and puts a straw in, and the other women sad-smile in solidarity.

I’ve been having a kind of sharp, stabbing pain on the side of my head, just behind my right ear, all morning. I google “sharp stabbing pain” and learn that “ice-pick headaches” are a thing. I feel myself panicking a little: Is my head hurting like it used to? I’ve been upright since 7 A.M., that’s a long time, is the leak back? Can a person die from ice-pick headaches? Are ice-pick headaches a sign of a brain tumor? Are ice-pick headaches a sign of a failed epidural blood patch? I reminded myself not to google “failed epidural blood patch.” I’ve done it before. The discussion boards are terrifying. I try some deep breathing and tell myself it’s normal to feel anxious, especially since the last time I was here I was in so much pain, but that I’m okay now, and even if I’m not, guess what, I’m in a hospital, so, yes: Everything will be okay, one way or another.

Eventually it’s my turn. I’m brought back to the room and placed on a movable slab, my head resting in a cradle extension sticking off the end of the table. A nurse tells me not to move or swallow, and then remarks that hearing that probably makes me want to move or swallow. And even though I hadn’t wanted to move or swallow before she said that, I suddenly feel the urge. “You can swallow when the table is still,” the nurse says, “so just try to save it for when the table isn’t moving.” I try to move and swallow extra before the scan starts to get it out of my system. With my eyes closed tight against the light panic of being in a somewhat enclosed space, it’s hard to tell when the table is moving or not. I swallow at one point, unable to hold off any longer, hoping the table stays still while I do it. Then it’s all done, and I’m able to move freely and swallow whenever I want and change out of my gown and into my clothes and go back out into the world.

The last time I was here, I’d gone to the second floor landing, which always seemed to be more or less empty, and had lain on the couch for half an hour or so until I could face the five or ten minutes of being upright to hail a cab. Today I go to the food place in the lobby, get a snack, walk to the taxi stand like a normal person, and go home.

I feel so normal, but of course I’m not back to normal; my brain just thinks I am. And compared to even a week before, it’s not wrong. Still, once home, I have to rest. I lie in bed, listening to a podcast, eventually falling asleep, the long chain of events of the French revolution narrating my dreams.

When I wake