Bringing in Finn by Sara Connell

trauma.”
    â€œOh,” I said.
    Dr. Bizan glanced at her phone. “I really do have to go,” she said apologetically.
    I nodded and thanked her. “You will be in good hands with Dr. Colaum,” she said, shaking my hand. “Keep me posted on your progress.”
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    I took side streets back to my house, driving fast. It was already 9:25 AM, and Bill and I had estimated the drive to Evanston would take at least forty minutes. I rounded the corner to our house, parked my car in the garage, and ran around to the front, where Bill was waiting in his car with the engine running.
    â€œThe MRI came back positive for empty sella,” I said, once we’d found the main street that would take us north to Evanston.

    â€œOkay,” Bill said, keeping his eye on the cars in front of him. “It’s good that we’re meeting with the specialists today, then.”
    â€œDr. Bizan said I have secondary empty sella,” I answered, feeling unable to repeat what she had cited as the cause.
    I leaned against the seat and squeezed my eyes shut tightly.
    â€œWhat is it, hon?” Bill asked, glancing at me and then back out the windshield.
    â€œShe said secondary empty sella is caused by trauma,” I said, trying not to cry.
    â€œThat makes sense,” Bill said. “Your ovarian cyst was a real trauma.”
    I nodded and let out a jagged breath. The surgery had been a horrific experience. I preferred not to think of it and rarely did anymore, usually only when filling out a form that asked, “Have you ever been hospitalized?” Then images of that day would streak to the surface in shards: the metallic taste of adrenaline in my mouth; the excruciating pain; the confusion on the doctors’ faces as to what might be wrong, then the palpable shift in the room when they discovered the cyst and rushed me to surgery; being wheeled to the OR, my parents’ worried faces bobbing up and down next to me as they ran to keep up with the gurney; an IV drip of Demerol in my arm; an oxygen tube inserted in my nose; a blue protector sheet going up like a laundry sheet—no time for any explanation about what was happening. Counting backward from ten, nine, eight, seven . . . and then blackness.
    I woke up after surgery in a private room, still with no clear understanding of what had transpired. I folded myself into the bed, pulled a pillow around my ears, and tried to become as small as possible. The surgeon came by on his rounds and told me about the cyst, that it had ruptured, that it had been a messy ordeal, and that the surgery had lasted six hours. He told me that my ovary had been removed and then, kindly, before I even asked,
told me that what had just happened would not impact my ability to have children. That was when he told me that the human body was miraculous, that I would still have a period every month. That each ovary had more than enough eggs—hundreds of thousands, enough for many lifetimes.
    Â 
    I hadn’t been thinking of that trauma, however, since the moment of disclosure in Dr. Bizan’s office. When she said the word, my mind offered another exhibit, exhibit A, the memory of which now swam toward me now like a great silvery fish, its belly scales flashing glints of light into the deep, dark water in which it swam.
    For so long I had not even really remembered. There were signs: hysterical reactions to hearing about children abused in the news; having difficulty staying in my body during sex; leaving the theater in the middle of a film if there was a rape scene. “It’s just a movie,” a boyfriend once said in college. “You act like it’s happening to you.”
    In England, with an ocean separating me from my birthplace, the memories emerged. In my first acupuncture session, I watched, in full color, my mind reveal those events that I’d known in some dungeon of my mind had transpired, but had not consciously remembered