Sheridan Walter
PRE-AUTHORISATION
The pain started somewhere
between the braai tongs
and the benediction—
a jagged heat
in the lower right quadrant
of the Sunday conversation.
My father is cursing the referee;
you are talking about “lifestyle choices,”
and my body proceeds
to internalise the debate.
Dr Coetzee says
the inflammation is acute.
He has hands like cold briskets
and a bedside manner honed
in the grim efficiency
of the Pretoria Academic.
He draws a circle on my hip
with a Sharpie
and marks the spot
where the history coils.
“It serves no purpose,”
he tells me.
He swipes the screen.
“It’s vestigial.
An evolutionary hangover.
If we don’t take it out,
it will poison the whole body.”
I nod.
I know this logic.
I heard it in the lounge
while the brandy was being poured.
Cut it out.
Before it bursts.
The anaesthetist asks me
to count backwards from ten.
I get to seven
and think of the medical aid exclusion list.
Discovery Health will pay for the organ,
but they won’t cover
the cost of the displacement.
There is no ICD-10 code
for the way cutlery pauses
when you mention
a boyfriend’s name.
Waking up
is thirsty work.
The recovery room is a white light
of a Highveld winter noon.
My mother is at home,
stripping the bed to the mattress,
washing the sheets,
trying to bleach the queerness
out of the weave.
A nurse brings me lukewarm rooibos
and a plastic cup of red jelly.
“You’re lighter now,”
she says, checking the drip.
She’s right:
I am missing 2.7 cm
of gut appendage
and an entire lineage.
They put the offending tissue
in a jar for pathology.
I imagine it sitting
on a steel shelf,
a pink furious shrimp,
screaming into the formaldehyde.
Something of mine
that refused
to be digested.
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