There is no worse torture than someone touching you with cold fingers.
Correction: there is nothing worse than your doctor touching you with cold fingers.
“Oof,” I wheeze.
Dr. Parkes smiles up at me with her crescent moon smile. Her teeth are so blindingly evanescent, like the flesh of the small white astronomical body that controls our waves and counts my cycles. Dr. Parkes definitely counts my cycles. Her fingers, like the icy edges of space, are frozen on my ribs.
“Does that hurt?” she asks.
“No, your fingers are just cold,” I say. And that's the truth and not-so-truth, but this is not that story.
“Well, everything feels normal,” she informs me, digging her icicles deeper into my skin. Her fingers melt into my flesh or maybe I am glass fusing into her — skin touches skin and becomes one. She blinks at me with crater eyes. “It's probably just phantom pain.”
Phantom pain.
I imagine a ghost, hovering behind me, wrapping silvery intestines around my waist and crushing until mine squeeze out of my skin. I blink. “Phantom pain?”
“It’s pain your brain sort of makes up,” she tells me. “Honey, I wouldn't worry too much about it. You're in college. Stress happens.”
*
The coffee at the restaurant costs $7.50.
I can't stop blinking at the menu, as if willing the number to change before my eyes.
“It's imported coffee,” the boy sitting across from me mentions, nervously. “I remember you mentioning how much you like Italian coffee, so…”
I'm glad that the lights are dim enough for him to not see me blush. He listens. He remembers.
I do not remember what I say to him. I do remember that he pays for our expensive coffee and holds my hand like it's an ice sculpture he's scared to break on the bus ride home. I remember the way he kisses me later that night. He can't stop smiling, but he can't stop kissing me either. He kisses every inch of my face and sighs into my mouth and I want to cry but I know if I start, I might melt away.
I think about sex and I wonder if sex is holding yourself together. Hot-glueing all your cracked pieces until you are a mosaic Frankenstein wobbling through the sheets.
We listen to music into the night on his record player. His fingers tap melodies onto my thigh. I fall asleep with my cheek pressed against his chest. I dream that I am Adam and he is Eve and I pluck this blue-eyed wonder from my ribs. Somehow, he is all heart and no bone and I would give every piece of me to make him happy. I dream of angering God and I wake up.
I leave early in the morning, trying not to wake him. I tiptoe around his room as if I am scared of breaking something, but really I am scared of breaking apart in front of him.
*
The coffee at the restaurant costs $8.50 the next time I go there.
There is a different boy. I nod and smile and say all the right things. I am pretty like an ice sculpture, and he touches my thighs as if he hopes I'll snap between his fingers.
I bring the boy home and turn on a movie. While he is watching, I throw up the coffee I drank in the bathroom. I stare at myself in the toilet water like the opposite of Narcissus.
I crawl into bed with the boy. He digs his fingertips into my skin and kisses me with his mouth wide open, as if he can eat my face bit by bit. Maybe then I won't be a girl, but water swirling around in the toilet bowl, staring back at some other brown-eyed girl.
“Oof,” I wheeze.
“What's wrong?” the boy asks.
“Sorry… Just. My rib.” There is an absurdity in the comment, but I feel it. A dull ache, quietly stirring beneath my ribs. As if a bird had made a nest there and was discreetly trying to flap its way out. “I think you may have… bruised it.”
And for a second, we both laugh. But it’s just a second.
“I should go,” he says.
“Okay.”
I think about sex and I wonder if sex is wishing you held yourself together more. I catch my fragmented bits in my hand, holding the jagged parts in my fingers even though it cuts my skin and I bleed. I think about sex and wonder what hurts more.
*
There is no worse torture than someone touching you with cold fingers.
Dr. Yang smiles up at me with her sunny grin. There is something safe about a smile like that. Her fingers rest below my hips.
“Does that hurt?” she asks.
“No, your fingers are… warm,” I say. And that's the truth and not-so-truth, but this is not that story.
“Well, everything feels normal,” she informs me, pressing her fingers in. Her fingers melt into my flesh or maybe I am glass fusing into hers — skin touches skin and becomes one. She smiles again and the sunny heat melds us together. “It's probably just phantom pain.”
“Phantom pain?” I ask. I imagine a ghost, fingertips digging into my thigh, confused about the pain I identify in my ribs.
“You imagine this is going to be painful, so your brain just makes up pain,” she explains. “Like a placebo effect. But we are almost — there.”
There was a moment, a brief stab, a flash of pain. But as quickly as it came, it faded. Dr. Yang’s hands slide back, and she pats my thigh, comfortingly.
“There you go, IUD fully inserted,” Dr. Yang informs me. “You are good to go. However, I want you to be careful going home. You may experience some pain—”
“Phantom pain?” I ask, joking. It hurts a little to move my legs as I sit up. I think about sex and push the thought aside. I am holding myself together.
“I was just teasing you,” Dr. Yang tells me. “There is no such thing as phantom pain.”