Rachel,

I spent Friday night, overnight, in the emergency room for stomach pain. I've always been scared of appendicitis, and this was on my lower right side, I swear. I had my own bed and it was clean. I guess I thought in the NYC ER I would be given a corner, maybe a stool. Or share a bed.

I shared a curtained room with one woman who had gone through three bags of IV fluid and was slowly being cured of her dangerous diarrhea. The nurse called them banana bags, because they contained potassium. He hung one for me too, on my side of the little fluid bag tree that looked more like an appliance for hats. He snapped it into my IV and it felt cool, once it was pumping in. Drinking through the arm feels exactly how it sounds. My right arm is bruised from where the needle wouldn't fit.

I'm sorry, I said to the nurse. I have bad veins.

Don't say sorry, he said.

Me and the other woman both had our banana bags on the same IV tree. I said, What if I have to pee?

The woman said, We'll go together.

I think she had more morphine than me.

When she stood up, later and shuffled away, the back of her gown open, she had the most horrible rose tattoo on her upper-butt I had ever seen. It flashed before me, a vision of the future.

She was very nice.

The whole time in the hospital I was thinking, I don't have appendicitis, I will not have surgery, my Dad is going to say, Why did you go the hospital for non-appendicitis? Why didn't you go for real appendicitis? And I would say, Aren't you glad I didn't actually have appendicitis? Yeah, he would grumble. I guess.

The Attending came in. She was the only one around wearing hiking boots instead of clogs. She pushed on my lower belly and wiggled the bed, said, It might be appendicitis.

Next up: CT Scan.

Rachel, did you know that sort of scan is not spelled like my favorite animal? I never knew.

At around 2 in the morning the woman with the diarrhea was replaced by another woman, weeping. Both women had men who seemed to love them. Both men wore jeans and looked scared. The woman seemed to be in so much pain it made me think I wasn't in nearly enough pain, that I definitely did not have appendicitis. They gave her rounds of painkillers, then moved onto more powerful painkillers, little bags they put into her IV and hung from her IV tree. She had her own. Her man was angry and kept touching her face. They were speaking French when the doctors were away.

I was asleep and in my sleep they were weeping in French.

The nurse gave me a box of liquid to drink before the CT scan. I guess it was after 2. It's lemon flavored and icy, the nurse said, and gave me a straw. And it's really not that bad.

I thought it was delicious. Lemony and icy, and faintly medicinal. I drank it all and passed out. A man woke me up and they took me to the scan.

Two men who looked like they had been gamers in a past life were hopping around their machines, getting things ready. They were probably worried about radiation exposure, I would assume. They called me hon and sweetie and I like that a lot, did I ever tell you that? Anyone can call me hon. They said to pull my pants below my knees, so I did that, but then they said you can keep your briefs on though, and I said, briefs? I was tired. Your panties, one said. And I said Oh and pulled them back up.

It was an open scan, which I've heard is much better than the other kind.

I slid in on this platform, and then one of them had my arm and popped something into my IV and he said, this is going to feel warm and your bladder will warm, as if you're urinating, but you're not urinating.

Ok.

And if you do, it's not the first time.

It hit me like a faceful of hot tea, all over my chin and then my cheeks and ears, behind my eyes, oozing down my blood and body, and then I felt my bladder as I'd never felt it before. I felt it as a shape, a soft triangle, and it was warm and lovely as if I was peeing but better and I knew I wasn't because I had been warned.

Wow, I said. Awesome.

And he looked at me like this was the first time he had heard this.

Your scan is normal, your appendix is fine, the surgeon said four hours later.

The whole time I'd been on my little bed, sleeping with my shoes on. There was ultrasound jelly all over my back and belly. It was freezing. My sister sat on the edge of my bed the whole time, not even leaning back to rest. She was listening to the doctors because she works with them, knows a lot about medical products and pharma goings-on. I think she was interested. Later, in the cab ride home, she told me what had happened, which ones were incompetent and wrong and how she knew. I believed her.

They let me go at 6:30 in the morning. My sister was awake the whole time. It's a beautiful thing to have a sister.

I was feeling better but the woman next to me was not. Your health is one of those things. I still need to read On Being Ill, by Woolf. My students write these dramatic stories where people die right at the end, jump off balconies at the last moment, and I just want to say, life is this thing we have, why pretend it can be thrown off like that? Treat it seriously, even in stories. It deserves to be important. Have they never watched someone in pain? Or felt it while someone was watching?

On the cab ride home, the sky was grey and endless and empty and light. The streets too. Brooklyn was another world. The lights in the ER are those natural lights, the ones that are more blue, that make you feel like it's summer. I'm glad the people who work there have that. It must be hard to live the hospital life.

The cab ride was 14 dollars.

The visit was probably close to 6,000 dollars, my sister said. Thank God you have insurance.

When we got home my boyfriend was in the shower. He had a test that morning at 9 and I'd sent home from the hospital. I told him not to come. He said, I'll come because if I don't I'll just be worried about you anyway. I told him to study in the waiting room but my sister told me he leaned back and took a nap. She sent him home around midnight.

He's going to do real estate, if he passes the test. There's another one on Tuesday. He told me that when he makes money, we'll go to Vietnam. I don't care if he makes money but I would love to be with him in Vietnam. Maybe he could broker a deal for an apartment in Vietnam and we could live there, like Anthony Bourdain, and have beef bone broth for breakfast, with green herbs in our drinks.

I got ready for bed like it was night but it was morning. My contacts practically jumped out of my eyes. I slept until noon and then watched Toddlers in Tiaras. I still don't feel great in the mid-region; my innards feel blown, tight. It might be an ulcer. It's okay, Rachel, I'll live through it, I always do. Like you.