JAMIE ETHERIDGE
Ianna of the Underworld
Glazed double doors hiss as they glide open. Thermometer screech. Red, then green explosions across a screen. An elderly couple, bent and glacial, extrudes onto the sidewalk. At reception, a masked nurse shrugs toward clipboard forms. A pen hung lifeless by a long, fraying string. Insurance not symptoms, it wants to know.
Yesterday my daughter devoured key lime pie. Fluffy custard coated her lips like white caps on a sparkling sea. We sprayed canned cream and laughed with our mouths overflowing. Complex sugar highs. A birthday extravagance. Yesterday she cracked jokes and cast teenage scowls. Yesterday she felt as fine as a clear summer sky.
Today she cannot stand by herself. 24 hours, nine spent vomiting. Today, she fainted in the elevator. Head slamming against steel wall. Body dropping to carpet. Today syncope (pronounced sing kuh pee) ricochets awkward and bulky in my brain.
Nurses behind plastic partitions bark out names. Two women coil together in hardback chairs, their arms interlaced. Dividers carve the waiting room into us and them. Sick and healthy.
Yesterday my girl played Eminem records, parroting lyrics she’s still too young to understand. She squabbled with her little sister over who would wash the dinner plates.
Today, she slumps in a wheelchair. Her petite frame shrunken, skin transparent. Today her face is gray and overcast. Her head lolls unsteadily.
A triage nurse in blue scrubs steers us into a cubical.
“Height/weight? Is she allergic to any medicines?” She click clacks information into a computer. She doesn’t look at or touch my child or even check her temperature.
Help us please, I resist the urge to scream.
The questions flood, then ebb like a tide retreating. We are told, “A doctor will see you shortly.” Time slinks. I watch our waiting.
We are stranded on hardback chairs, flotsam and jetsam on a windless beach.
Later there will be eight hours of fluids, an MRI. We will watch vital signs crash and sink. Life lines erratic and spiraling across an indifferent screen. She will sip warm Sprite with cracked lips. Her eyes flittering closed, then open, then closed again.
When Ianna returned from the underworld, brought back from death by the loyal Ninshubur, I wonder if she smiled the same cheeky smile my daughter will wear—tomorrow. I will wonder if she ripped off the deathmask, smirking and thought: “I am a god! Even death cannot hold me!”
Today, I notice another young woman, older than my daughter but in similar sweatpants and tie-dye T-shirt. She paces the tiles of purgatory, shouting into her mobile, explaining why she left work early, why she cannot sleep, why the headaches squeeze the inside of her brain until she cries, Good lord, cries for mercy.
Mercy, I whisper and lift my child’s legs onto my lap. I recite religious verses in my head, rocking back and forth. Mercy, I pray.
Jamie Etheridge is CNF editorial assistant for CRAFT Literary. Her writing can be found in Anti-Heroin Chic, Bending Genres, Essay Daily, Identity Theory, JMWW Journal, Pithead Chapel, Reckon Review, X-R-A-Y Lit and elsewhere. She is a Fractured Lit Anthology II 2022 prize winner and was chosen as a Kenyon Review Developmental Fellowship finalist in creative nonfiction. Nominations include Best Small Fictions and Best of the Net. Twitter: Lescribbler. Website LeScribbler.com.