Lump in the Throat

At the point Izzy decided to go to the doctor, the lump in her throat had become noticeable to passersby. It was there well before. She knew it was there. Didn’t need to see it, could feel it under the pressure of her fingers against the side of her neck. And yet, for weeks, months, years, maybe her whole life, she let it grow, unimpeded. Ignored.

Almost every morning, she woke up and wondered why she didn’t go to the doctor for this mass. Not a lack of understanding of risk; if anything, she was certain it would be the death of her. To present this tumor to a medical professional would be entering into the next phase of her life. Entering the wind down. A surrender.

Unless it wasn’t life threatening. Maybe it was just something that was there. Izzy had a lump. It is what it is. We can all move on.

But it can’t be that. It was taking up space and had been for years, worse and worse, greater and greater, and keeping it below the surface had been exhausting for Izzy. So surely, this was impending death. The only thing keeping her going had been the constant, lifelong effort to keep the lump beneath the surface.

People always say that being presented with your own mortality as a timer spurs them into accomplishing the things they always wanted. Why wasn’t Izzy? If that’s what she faced with this lump, shouldn’t she have always been pushed into deadly-imminent action? She knows this thing is the end. Doesn’t that mean it’s time to finally, what, go skydiving? Open a restaurant? Audition for a role in a play? Something, anything. Anything but stagnating.

Yet stagnating was her way. A thin film of scum creeping up over her edges, growing over the rest of her as she sank into the ground, roots grabbing hold of what’s under her, keeping her there.

Finally going to urgent care couldn’t even be called leaping to action. She was walking down the street when an older woman stopped her and said something to the effect of “Jesus Christ that looks bad. Are you going to the doctor for that?”

“Yeah, I’m on my way there now,” Izzy lied. Then she felt bad about lying, and decided to make it not a lie. Like a child who said they definitely cleaned their room and rather than continue playing their chances fiddling with their GameBoy under the covers, just going ahead and doing it.

“Good morning, reason for vi – ssit?” The front desk attendant caught herself mid word as she looked up and saw the engorgement sticking out of the side of Izzy’s jugular.

“Yeah, it’s for the neck thing, here’s my insurance card.” Izzy sat down with the tablet asking her questions the nurse and then the doctor after them would ask her anyway. What’s the pain on a scale of one to ten? How long has this been growing? Do you have all your needs at home met?

She pondered on the last one an extra moment. Could the doctor help her feel a sense of purpose? Probably not what the tablet is asking about. And not like the doctor is going to read this anyway. They’re going to ask all these same things in mere moments.

Or, more realistically, in 20 to 25 minutes.

After 42 minutes of waiting, the tallest woman who has ever walked the face of the Earth breezed through the door, enveloped in a billowing cloak of white and pockets. Her flowing, red locks reached her shoulders and curled up and forward at the very ends. Her eyes were impossibly cold, especially against the fiery tresses framing her severe face.

“Morning, I’m Dr. Hammer. I understand you have a protuberance you need me to look at?” 

Looking up at her face hurt Izzy’s neck, so she turned away from the light, in so doing presenting the bulge.

“I’d noticed it a few weeks ago or so,” she didn’t want this incredible, powerful woman know how negligently she had lived her life. “But now it’s, like, visible and that seems bad,” Izzy had not gone to medical school. She barely knew the word protuberance. 

Dr. Hammer got very close to Izzy’s neck. So close, she could feel her breath spreading out its warmth on the surface of the lump. Without looking into her eyes, Izzy could tell the doctor had an intense stare. It had to be, if she could feel it through the side of her throat.

The candor of the doctor shifted upon getting an eyeful of the bulge. What was at one point another task to be completed during a dreary day at the office, Izzy’s visit had just launched itself up Hammer’s priority list. That’s probably a bad sign. Being fascinating to doctors was a state of being to be avoided.

But here she was, shedding the maybe-tumor that had been taking up space in her windpipe for maybe her whole life. What was it even? That question didn’t seem rhetorical at this point, but something told Izzy she wouldn’t receive an answer if she asked. Perhaps that was an assumed lack of bedside manner more than a direct indication.

It proved accurate, though. Izzy’s inquiry was met less with dismissal as much as complete obliviousness. She was no longer a person so much as an object of intrigue in this exam room. Dr. Hammer was less a person herself at this point and more a weapon of precision, looking for its target. 

Maybe Izzy was projecting a bit. But not much.

The slice was a shock. There was no pain; Dr. Hammer’s blade went through the base of the lump quick enough it was out the other side before Izzy even registered it had broken skin. In a single, full-armed swing, the tall doctor had taken the lump out of Izzy’s neck.

It was fitting the lump was gone almost without Izzy even acknowledging it would be going. She didn’t even decide to do this; she just didn’t want to upset someone on the street. So this thing that had been taking up space for her, could go now. The doctor could take it. Izzy wasn’t doing anything with it. Who’s to say someone else can’t decide it should be gone?

Blood was the first thing to pour out of the empty space where the lump was moments before. That was expected. Or at least, made some sense. Maybe expected isn’t the right term, since this was a doctor’s office and it seems like they should have ways of making sure you don’t spurt blood all over the place from a procedure. But this had stopped seeming like a doctor-patient relationship and more scientist-subject. What was that lump? Why did Izzy just let that lady on the street convince her to get rid of it finally?

The light was next. At first a soft glow seeping through where there were gaps in the blood, but growing stronger as the red streams dissipated. Where was it coming from? Was it always in Izzy? So much light. Blinding at this point. She couldn’t see Dr. Hammer or her lump. Not Izzy’s lump anymore. She was talked out of it. 

Like a stopper removed from a tub, the lump’s excision had allowed for everything in Izzy to pour out of her. Light, liquid, mass, hope. All forming an ethereal miasma, coating the floors, the walls. Stretching out from the rapidly deflating form that at this point wasn’t even Izzy anymore.

What was the lump? Why did Dr. Hammer want to take it so badly? And at this cost? Izzy just let it go after all these years turning away from it. She wasn’t using it and that lady on the street didn’t like it. 

Little by little, Izzy became less. As her body collapsed in on itself without the structure of what made her a person, the infernal and holy goop rushing out of her began to fade. Exposed to the outside, it cannot be maintained. Everything that could have been, soon to be made into nothing. Her whole life, dedicated to making sure this lump wouldn’t be noticed by anyone else, and with it gone, what else was there?

By the time Dr. Hammer was leaving the exam room with the lump in an unassuming jar, it was as if Izzy had never been there. Not even the outside of her was left. Just as that was keeping all the mess and bile that made her up intact, the light and blood was what made her exterior possible too. Taken apart from each other, neither one amounted to anything. It was the end of Izzy, decided by a stranger she passed and another stranger with a knife.

The front desk did not schedule a follow-up appointment.