When I got inside the room, everything was bright. I must have said something funny because the people in the room laughed and asked if the anesthesiologist had given me something and I said yes. They all said, "oh" in unison.
Someone asked me if I could move to the next bed. It was the chiropractic bed and I moved over groggily.
They asked me to turn over so my face was in the hole and I felt a little claustrophobic but I laid there. I wished my mom was there but the nurses and doctors seemed nice. I heard Dr. Lindsor come in.
He said to me, "I am going to give you a series of shots to numb your neck. I will make them small and often. Please don"t flinch away from me."
I laid there and waited for the first shot. Wow, that one hurt. The second one didn"t feel so great either. But eventually, I guess the numbing started to work because the pain wasn"t as sharp. I felt him give eight shots I was so glad when he was finished. Dr. Sherrill must have sneaked in because I heard his voice.
"Whitney, can you hear me?" he asked.
I said I could. He said that he was going to pinch the area on my neck to see if I felt anything. I didn"t feel anything and he said that was good. After that, I could not really describe the feeling except that I felt a pulling sensation, it did not hurt, the whole thing lasted about half an hour. They kept asking me if I felt pain and I would say no. I was so woozy, I don"t know if I would have felt any pain. When they were through I felt them put tape around the area they didn"t numb. I guessed they put a bandage on the wound.
The woozy, good feeling was wearing off and I laid there breathing deeply.
"Everything is fine," Dr. Sherrill said to me.
"Okay," I said.
They slowly helped me up and put me in a wheelchair. I was glad because suddenly I felt like c.r.a.p.
"We are going to take you out to your mother now. We will send the biopsy to the lab and call you with the results," Dr. Sherrill said.
"All right," I said.
Someone pushed the chair behind me and I started to feel my neck again and it hurt, I wanted to cry, when I saw my mom"s face, I was so happy that she was there for me.
When they signed me out of the outpatient hospital, they gave me a prescription for pain, I was glad, I needed it. The nurse had my mom drive around to the front of the hospital, so I didn"t have to walk. They pushed me right up to my mom"s car in the wheelchair. I got in my mom"s car gingerly. I didn"t want to move my neck. I was getting a headache, also.
We stopped at the drugstore on the way home. The doctor had prescribed Tylenol with codeine. I took one immediately and I laid my seat down so I could rest on the way home. My neck was so sore I couldn"t get comfortable, so I sat up and I felt a little woozy. When we got home, I was surprised to see my dad"s car in the driveway. My mom helped me out of the car and we walked up to the house. The door was unlocked so we went right in. My dad was sitting in his chair.
"Dad, you stayed home today," I said happily.
"Of course, I couldn"t have done a decent job today, I was so worried about you," he said. I walked over and gave him a kiss on the cheek and was immediately sorry because I felt woozy again.
"I need to lay down," I said.
"I have your blanket and pillow all set up on the couch," my father said. That was so sweet of him, I got on the couch and laid down.
"Honey, are you hungry?" my mom asked.
"No, I couldn"t eat a thing," I said.
"It is around eleven and you haven"t eaten all morning," my mom said.
"I am afraid if I eat, I will throw up," I said.
"Then no food for you," my dad said, smiling.
I tried to get comfortable on the couch and my neck ached. Not just in the surgery area, but all over like someone had been pulling on it. I finally fell asleep with my hand dangling off the couch onto Gretchen. She was very quiet and her amber eyes looked at me with a worried expression.
I woke up when the boys came home from school. They were their usual noisy selves. When they saw me on the couch, they ran over and asked how I was.
"I think the surgery went well," I said.
"Do you know yet if you have cancer?" Jordan asked.
"We won"t know until the doctor calls with the biopsy results," I said.
I sat up and I started feeling woozy again and I didn"t know if I liked the pain pills the doctor gave me and my stomach hurt, too. My mom came in and she had some broth for me to drink. It was chicken. I drank some gingerly and I felt a little better.
Chanda came to visit and she said everyone at school was worried about me. This was such an exaggeration since I didn"t know everyone at school. She told me to turn on my phone because she had been trying to call me all day. I asked her to bring me my purse and she did.
I turned my phone on and it took a few minutes to come on. Finally, it came on and I had one hundred and three messages. I almost laughed but I knew it would hurt.
"Look Chanda, I have one hundred and three messages," I said to her.
"Well, there are only four from me," she said.
I started listening to the messages. After about nineteen or so from the creeper, I could see a pattern. At first, he was concerned, then he was angry, then he was sorry.
"Did you tell everyone we know about my surgery?" I asked Chanda.
"Yes, I wanted them to pray for you," she said.
"Somehow, the stalker heard about me. He was getting kind of weird toward the end of the messages I heard. I will listen to the rest later. It creeped me out a little," I said.
"Did you hear my messages?" she asked.
"I never even got to yours, he blew my phone up so much that my voicemail box got full," I said.
"All I said was, we were all praying for you and to have a safe surgery," she said.
"Thank you, Chanda, that was sweet," I said.
My mom let Gretchen out and then in again she came over and nuzzled me.
"She is such a good dog, she knows I am sick," I said.
"That is so cute," Chanda said.
My father came in and he was holding a huge bouquet of red roses in a gorgeous gla.s.s vase.
"Daddy, those are beautiful," I said.
"Yes, they are, but they are not from me," he said.
"What do you mean, dear?" my mom asked coming in from the kitchen.
"They were sitting on the doorstep when I went to go outside," my father said.
"Chanda, were they there when you came over?" I asked her.
"No, I think I would have said something," Chanda said.
"Of course, I am not thinking right," I said.
"How long have you been here?" my father asked her.
She looked at her watch.
"Oh, about five minutes," she said.
"He is long gone then," my father said.
"Let"s see if there is a card," my mom said, after my father put the flowers down in front of me.
I looked through the flowers, but there was only one of those cards that you get when you buy flowers.
It said, "get well soon," in print. Nothing personal.
"I don"t want them," I said.
"I think I am going to take that vase down to the precinct. It should give us a good print if he didn"t wipe it down," my father said.
"Take the whole thing, let them enjoy them," I said because they were making my stomach hurt.
"Okay, honey."
Jacob came in and said, "Wow, Dad, did you get those for Whitney?"
"No, I didn"t," my father said grimly.
Jacob, who usually had to have things spelled out for him, got who they were from and didn"t say anything more.
My dad told my mom he would be back soon and he left with the flowers after he poured the water out so it wouldn"t spill in his car.
I got another text asking me if I loved the flowers. I turned off my phone. I thought I might need to get another phone number.
Chanda stayed and talked for a while then she went home.
I was getting hungry and I asked my mom if I could eat something and she said she had made Jell-O a couple of hours ago, and asked if I would I like that.
"Yummy," I said sarcastically.
"I am sorry but the doctor wants you to have a liquid diet. I will make you some toast and eggs tomorrow," she said.
"Okay, thank you, Mom," I said.
She brought me the Jell-O, which was orange, and I ate it.
My dad came back and he said he had to be fingerprinted since he had touched the vase. He said, so far, there hadn"t been any fingerprints on anything we had given the police. They are hoping for a print on the vase.
The phone rang and my mom picked it up. She mouthed to me that it was the doctor and she walked into her bedroom and talked. My stomach, which was already nervous, got more nervous. She was on the phone for five minutes and she came out of her room, smiling.
"The cyst was benign," she yelled.
My father gave a whoop.
"What does benign mean?" I asked.
"Not cancerous, it was just a normal cyst," my mom said.
"That is so great," I said relieved. I hadn"t realized I was really afraid that I might have cancer. The boys came over and hugged me and I hugged each one of them back.
"Tomorrow, we will celebrate by going out to dinner," my father said.
"Sounds good to me," my mom said.
I laid on the couch the rest of the night. My neck hurt most of the night and I had to get up and take my pain pills twice.
My mom wanted me to stay home another day and I didn"t fight her. I think the codeine in the Tylenol was making me a little loopy.
I turned my phone on and I had so many messages that they couldn"t all come through. I was bored, so I listened to them.
All of them were from the stalker. He was using some sort of voice-changing machine so I couldn"t recognize his voice. This scared me more than if he didn"t use it. I wondered if I knew this weirdo and he was toying with me. Why would he change his voice if we didn"t know each other?
I made a list of every boy who had ever asked me on a date and then crossed out every name as I asked myself if any of them were capable of terrorizing me. I didn"t know anyone who was that mean, or that crazy. It seemed impossible that a sixteen-year-old male cla.s.smate, or maybe older, was the likely culprit. We were all justakids.
I made a list of every male teacher I had ever talked to, and every staffer. I asked myself if any of them had ever been the least inappropriate toward me, the answer was no. One by one, I crossed off all of their names, I was completely baffled.
I thought of another list to make: boys at church who also went to my school, but didn"t have cla.s.ses with me. Again, I came up with no likely suspect. Those boys were squeaky clean in my mind, in their choir robes and Sunday School skits.
I thought of clubs at school, I was in a ton of them last year, before I had to drop out because I had mostly honors cla.s.ses this year. A lot of boys liked me in glee club because it was just so fun and I was good at it. I had often had soprano solos in our many singing productionsa "Ugh!" I said, ripping up all the stupid lists of suspects and burying them at the bottom of the kitchen garbage. "Stop it, Whitney!" I told myself out loud.
I was frustrated and upset as I had mentally picked apart every single male I had contact with for the last year. I was unsettled and felt horrible for judging them: my cla.s.smates, my friends, my teachers, my church friends. I felt terrible and my head was spinning with all of their faces in my mind.
I slept on and off most the day and when my father came home, I got dressed and we went out to eat. It hurt to put my shirt over my head, but otherwise I was better.
We had a great dinner and the boys were in a great mood talking over each other, telling stories about their day. I ordered a hamburger and fries and it was delicious, I realized it was the first food I had eaten all day.
I decided to stop taking the pain pills or if I needed something, to just take regular Tylenol. I wanted to be normal again.
We drove home and we were dismayed to see our house had been egged. There were about a hundred eggs thrown at the house. It was a huge mess. No adult would do such a thing. This was definitely a teen boy. Short of questioning every teenage boy I had ever known, I was out of answers and out of patience.