The Craigslist Murders - Brenda Cullerton [18]
When the woman leapt out from behind the lab door, scowling, Charlotte stepped back as if she’d been ambushed.
“Follow me,” the woman barked, as she headed down a long, dark corridor. Opening the door to a small cubicle, she ordered Charlotte to remove all her clothes and put on a paper robe. “Leave the front open,” she added, before slamming the door behind her. Charlotte was shivering as she lay in the dark on an examining table with her knees up. She didn’t dare move for fear of ripping the thin sheet of tissue that lay stretched beneath her.
The excruciating pains had started in college. It was Vicky who had taken her to the local emergency room and explained the symptoms to an intern. After two days of tests and no sleep, the pain had finally subsided.
“There’s nothing physically wrong with you,” the inept young doctor had told her.
“Nothing we can find, anyway. But I’d like to recommend the name of a good psychiatrist.”
Charlotte had tightened the belt of her robe, repressing a flash of anger. It wasn’t just the careless arrogance of the doctors. It was the unforgivable fact that her mother hadn’t even bothered to make an appearance at her bedside. She was down in New Orleans, celebrating some honorary degree that Tulane had given her father. As if he needed another honorary degree. Years later, when Dr. Greene had the gall to suggest that it might be her own rage, twisting up her insides and eating through her stomach lining, Charlotte had wanted to kill him.
A thin shaft of light pierced through the gloom as the technician re-entered the room. Squeezing a jelly lubricant all over the wand-like probe, she then placed a pillow under Charlotte’s hips. Charlotte had never felt so exposed, so out of control. As the cold, plastic probe delved deeper and deeper inside her, her helplessness triggered a spurt of pure terror.
“Stay still!” the woman hissed. “Or we’ll be here all night.”
For forty interminable minutes, she was subjected to the technician’s ruthless intrusions; to the clicking and stopping, clicking and stopping, as she photographed the shadowy depths of her womb.
Charlotte knew there was something in there. She sensed it. It was something ugly and vile. Made of her own hair and muscle, of bits of bone, blood and the tears she had never shed, it clung to her and grew, sapping her energy and sucking the air she breathed. Nothing could expel it. It had always hurt, this thing that grew inside her. It hurt so much that she imagined it was tearing her insides apart. When she smiled and politely asked the technician what she was seeing on the screen, the woman ignored her. It was only when Charlotte closed her legs and threatened to leave that she responded.
“I’m not allowed to answer your questions, ma’am. It’s company policy.”
“So when I will know the results?” Charlotte asked as the woman wiped the wand clean with a white towel.
“We send them to your doctor,” the woman replied coldly, handing her a wad of Kleenex. “But I wouldn’t worry about it too much,” she added casually. “Now please wait until I check the film.”
“What the hell did that mean?” Charlotte whispered to herself. “I wouldn’t worry too much?” Wiping the lubricant off her belly, she imagined the woman casually gossiping about her cancer with colleagues. When the technician stuck her head in the door and told her she could go, Charlotte struggled like a zombie through the motions of putting on her clothes and trembled. What if it is a tumor? she thought. How will I pay for it all? How will I work?
10
She was walking so fast towards the News Bar on 3rd Avenue and 23rd Street, she was short of breath. There had been something horrifyingly familiar about the experience of lying on that table; about the helplessness. Slowing down her pace as the first cramp