The Boy With the Thing on his Belly

Once there was a boy who got a disease.

It happened all at once.

He was quickly taken away in the darkness. Confined in a scary place. White sheets. White walls. White coats. Smells.

He was prodded and poked by strangers wearing stained white coats. At a machine, his bottom was filled with white stuff and then he was placed on a cold hard table, and buzzed by the eye overhead, over and over, lead coverings only for the white coats behind the wall.

Why was he here? He felt fine. He just wanted to be home.

But at least the nurses (mostly) were nice - and cute.

He was nearly murdered in that place. It was after that one time when they had put him on his stomach and raised his bottom higher than his head, and then shoved a shiny cold hard rod into him, and plucked out some of his insides. Hours later - hot, he was so hot - an ice mattress was put under him – now, so cold - and then off to surgery at the crack of dawn. He awoke with a rubber tube in his belly, white stenchy pus oozing from a cut into his once perfect virgin body. It didn’t kill him, but that’s what they said - it could have. He was told he could display that scar for life, as his “prize” for surviving. But that wouldn’t be his only scar.

After forty-two days, he finally saw home again.

Two years later, he was told he needed this other surgery, it was to be a “cure.” It was his choice, sort of, but not really. After all, he was still just a boy, and not old enough to make decisions for himself. And not old enough to be fully informed.

And so the boy acquiesced to the second operation, trusting his parents, and the white coats.

So back to the scary place. White walls, white coats, smells. Bright lights, out cold.

After eight hours “under the knife,” he awoke with a huger scar than before, up and down, above and below, and next to his belly button. But now, next to his belly button - a thing on his belly. It was odd, peculiar, a curiosity. Blood-red and like the head of a fat worm, wiggling on its own. The thing was covered by a clear plastic bag, the bag continuously filling with brown gooey stuff, stuff which should only be on his insides. That’s where it belonged, and certainly not displayed like this, for others to see. But there it was.

And his bottom was now sewed shut, forever, just like Barbie. Or Ken.

After two weeks, he went home.

But two weeks later, so much pain, and puke. Back to the hospital and they had to do it all over again, because, it seemed, they had messed it up the first time.

The boy survived all that. Sort of. He tried to live his life.

* * *

When the boy grew to be a man, he met a woman. A woman who cared about him, would care for him, and be with him. And be with him, even with the thing on his belly. She loved him in spite of it, and perhaps even in some weird way, because of it. Because, after all, it was part of him and part of who he was and became, and she understood all that. Even if he could not. Even if he could not love that part of him that she did. And so they married. And spent seventeen years together. Seventeen good years.

But the thing on his belly, along with other stuff, took its toll on him, and them, and his wife left their home. He did not stop her. He could not. He would not. She deserved better.

Decades later, the man now approaching old age. He hates that thing. More than ever. Because he’d learned the thing’d never been truly needed in the first place.

It took a lifetime, but, finally, he understood, how beautiful, and wonderful, and compassionate, and perfect, had been the woman who had loved him, even with the thing on his belly.

. ♥️ U J