*"Convey the Experience"

As I said in this post, Catherine Belling, in her paper Overwhelming the Medium: Fiction and Trauma of Pandemic Fluenza, mentions the importance of narrative when trying to understand past suffering. "Suffering must be reconstituted within a story told be a narrator who can inhabit and convey the experience of the sufferer" (page 56). In this case, for this project, I have made myself that narrator. It feels as though this is what I am trying to do; shed light on what has happened at the individual level. I'm telling the story because I'm still around to deliver it, even though I was not really a part of the original trauma.
Sarah gets that prize alone. I ache when I think of the fear. She would text me details of procedures that she went through, but I'm not sure I have the stomach to repeat them here.
The stomach was one of her more decimated organs, and nourishment was unwelcome by the end. They found lesions down there when they passed a camera beyond her throat, as though snaking a goddamn drain. But like I said, I won't get into it.
Even if I were to share the details of her last days, I'm not sure it would stand as the sort of narrative that Belling has in mind. I could only give some insights into the physical hardships and the frightening uncertainty. These are not the backbone of trauma, but are instead some of the more evident side effects. Trauma is (as one of our readings details) the absence and the loss experienced. The reading splits hairs over one versus the other, but I'm not going to do that. As time passes, the two feel about the same.
Trauma is what's no longer there. Trauma is shock.
I was shocked when I finally managed to visit her. My wife and I had been living in Pasadena, on the west coast, when I received a text from Peter. I re-read it again and again as my mind, heady with marijuana, tried to figure out just what in the hell I was seeing. "Sarah has cancer." The odd thing about it was that no matter how many times I read it, I never felt surprise. I didn't feel sad, or even scared. I just felt a sudden, legitimate sense of urgency. It was time to move.
And so I did. Andie and I rented a car the following day and made the drive across the island, to "be there."

I finally made my way to the hospital and figured out where it was I needed to be.
She was in intensive care, or some other ward that has its own signage. I wasn't allowed in. Family only.
Well,  I wasn't family, but I was certainly something. Wasn't I? She spoke to me when she felt like complaining about her family, so that's pretty good.
Of course, I didn't think any of this. I just buzzed the thing and heard myself tell them I was a brother (she didn't have any brothers), and then I was past the door. I suddenly found myself wearing this yellow smock thing that swished when I moved, and the whole place smelled like a tattoo parlor, and all of the staff looked the same, and I wasn't sure which room it was and why in the hell would she be in here? Where was she actually? This was some sort of Andy Kaufman shit. This wasn't happening to anyone. This had never happened. How could it?
I found her then. She looked the same as usual, thanks to her glasses and the moles that refused to quit. She didn't look like she was dying. She just looked tethered, like she had committed a crime, gotten wounded in the process, and was now handcuffed to this place until her lawyer could straighten things out. Myself, I felt like I was supposed to fill that roll, and suddenly I was embarrassed that I hadn't brought a briefcase or any documentation--I wasn't even wearing a suit. What was I doing here?
Herself and Peter had the same question for me. How did I get in? I think they were okay that I was there, but still a tad shocked. Where was the security in this place?
I told them what I had told the intercom and then I just kinda stood there. I was only there a few minutes and I have no idea what I said and I suddenly understood that I wasn't family. Not family enough to be so unannounced. I can't convey her suffering, but I can say that we shared a look, and it told me that she felt like washing her hair. She felt like doing anything else but this.
I left my surrogate parents and went into the nearest bathroom, assuming I'd throw up. I cried instead, and then got ready to leave, though I didn't want to.
From her diagnosis to her departure, the whole thing took eight days. Maybe seven. Maybe ten, but it didn't take long.

Weeks later, my wife and I returned to Pasadena to pack our things and never return. Andie had bought a pumpkin to carve, and by the time we got back it had collapsed into this goo that oozed and pooled over the kitchen table.
Andie's passport was on the kitchen table as well, so she had to apply for a new one.
I thought it was kinda funny.