The Speed of Mercy by Christy Conlin (good books for high schoolers txt) 📕

Dr. Singh cleared his throat. He never rushed. She remembered him from before, not from his face or his voice but the way he moved. Deliberately. Intentionally. She watched how slowly he gestured with his hand as he spoke. Nothing about him indicated a rushed personality. In an emergency he would be methodical, calm, precise, steady.

He smiled. “Ah, awake. You had a short nap. Grace was just giving me some background. Do you remember me, Stella? We’re just doing a checkup. It’s called a colposcopy. It won’t hurt. I’ll take a tissue sample. That might pinch. I’ll swab you with a bit of a vinegar solution.” He gave her instructions but Stella couldn’t keep track of them, her heart thumping so much, her throat and eyes dry, her legs spread open like locks on a canal — what she had studied as a child in geography, when she was young — the air cold on her privates.

“Stella, Stella, you need to move your knees.” It was Grace. Tapping her on the arm. “Stella.”

Stella’s knees pressed together. The doctor held a speculum. He smiled. She spread her knees apart and felt the metal between her legs.

“It will only take a moment. Just a peek. There we go . . . sorry. Just a bit more. Okay, now just tightening it a bit, so it won’t slip. Just a bit of a pinch. I see you have a prolapsed vaginal wall. Anterior and posterior. Now, just putting a vinegar solution on your cervix.”

The doctor and nurse now gazed at a screen, which apparently displayed her innards. She felt sick. Why hadn’t they put her to sleep? That’s right, Stella remembered. She had a phobia of general anesthetics. Stella would rather be conscious. Sedated consciousness. They begrudgingly respected her wishes.

“Do you play the piano?” Dr. Singh. She knew his name.

For some reason, Stella lifted up her hands and wiggled her fingers as though she were playing Chopin. He laughed. He was a nice man.

“We’ll have the test results soon.” Then Stella wasn’t able to help herself and out came the pee she was holding. The doctor left and Grace came to her side as the nurse handed her a warm wet towel.

“There, there, Stella. It’s okay. It happens to most of us ladies at one point or another, the prolapsing. And I know it’s easy to put off pap smears. It’s not pleasant. No one talks about it, is all. That’s a problem. But it’s good you’re here now. Dr. Singh will find out whatever’s happening . . . down there. Don’t you worry a bit. That’s a good girl, Stella,” Clara said, smiling as if Stella were her child.

A trickle of tears ran down Stella’s temples and into her hair, into the soft pillow. Grace stood beside her. The room was quiet except for the thin buzz of the fluorescent lights. Dr. Singh was back, studying the screen Stella couldn’t see, which was fine because Stella did not want to see her inside world, the deep Under Land beneath her flesh. His face didn’t move but it was hard to tell through his black beard flecked with bits of white, similar to someone’s hair she just saw. Whose hair? Seraphina shouting in the lobby. Who was looking for Stella? The psychiatrist had told her years before to work on time orientation, so she could avoid temporal displacement. Stella felt this way now, moving in time, that she needed the North Star so she could stay fixed. But some part of her was paces ahead, orienteering with a compass, forcing the rest of her to follow.

Stella tensed up again and then it hurt inside in a remote way and she cried out, not able to make words, just sound, but the words in her mind so loud, crying for her mother, for Catriona, who died years ago. Grace patted her hand and dabbed at her face with a tissue. A fan clicked on and cool air billowed out of an overhead vent.

Seabury Barbeque.

Tommy Jessome.

The Purple Hour.

Then

Stella is quieter than normal before they leave for the barbeque — the new Stella, silent, shrugging, face blank. Her father gives her an aspirin and sends her to her room to rest, but when she mentions staying home, he frowns. We’ll get to see Cynthia. Won’t that be fun? Fun for him, Stella thinks, noticing how he includes himself, like he is part of a new club.

Stella knows he doesn’t want to go alone and yet is reluctant to drag his sick child who obviously should be at home. People might judge him. Stella knows he sees this choice he has to make as Stella’s fault. Her headache is better from the pill but her hip still throbs. She digs deep through her toiletries bag and finds a package of bandages her mother must have put in there a few years ago. They are still sticky and hold in a criss-cross over raw flesh. Stella asks her father again when the moving truck will come. In a week or so. She knows she must rest her brain, but she wants to put her books, her mother’s books, on a shelf, to participate in the healing ritual of organizing books—arranging and stacking them, looking at the spines, sniffing the pages—just as her mother did. Stella wants her mother’s photo albums, the framed photographs. The silver-birch china dishes. Country Roses china plates. Her mother’s Depression-glass water pitcher, cake stand and bowls. She pictures the bright pink, blue and green glass on the shelf near the kitchen window in Athens. The sheets and pillowcases trimmed with her mother’s meticulous embroidered flowers.

The waterfront park teems with people and there are tables set up at the southern edge of the park near the wrought-iron fence, tables with heaping paper plates of food and a handmade sign that says help yourself. Her father loads up his plate with potato salad and coleslaw and a thick