Middle Ground

“Are you traumatised, my dear?” asked a stern face from above.

“What?” I blurted.

I had been kept behind a closed curtain in a white room the size of a small walk-in closet for over twenty minutes with an overweight Scottish woman as my sole companion. As the smell of spices and bleach slowly invaded my nostrils, I had been given the strict instructions to relax, partially undress, and lay still. Indian folk music was playing on the radio.

“You are shivering!” she noted, touching my shaking legs. 

“Yes, well I mean, I am naked after all,” I said nonchalantly.

“Listen. Is this traumatising for you?” she repeated, with forced motherly tenderness.

“…No.” I replied, with scepticism and caution. The face before me creased in agonising disbelief, raising its left eyebrow.

Oh…my god, I thought. Does saying I am not traumatised make me sound…traumatised? Scenes of Simon Cowell pressing his buzzer and uttering the words “It’s a no from me” flashed before my eyes. Panic overran my mind, and my body became a cesspool of hot lava. As my brain receded from the outside world, I listed all the conceivable reasons I could be traumatised for, weighing the answers against each other so that I wouldn’t be accidentally and forcibly institutionalised for a distress I wasn’t experiencing. Still, I was positive that I was in no way traumatised. I settled for humour.

“Traumatised? By a little routine inspection of the good old ute, eh?” I shouted, with a huge grin on my face, as if to say Look, lady, we are just saying things to each other right now that don’t make sense, I understand you, my sister.

I detected my faux-pas immediately. The practicing nurse stared back at me with wide, dry eyes, no doubt very concerned. In that moment, I was sure no one had ever abbreviated uterus to ute during a pelvic examination before, much less a fully-functioning, educated, young adult. This devastating split-second decision would end up costing me another half hour in the white walk-in closet. It was not unlike a theatrical inquisition, Bollywood meets the Highlands, in a Windex incense hell-hole of a clinical abyss. The nurse was sat in a rolling desk chair, leaning over me, hands clasped into a V shape under her chin.

“If you are-”

“I am not…”, I calmly noted, cutting her off.

“But if you were…”, she whispered, waiting.

“Ok, if…”, I whispered back, humouring the absurd staccato game I was playing with this creepy middle-aged woman.

“If you were in any way traumatised…”

“Right…”

“Or let us say shocked and confused…”

“Ok…”

“You would know that it is alright?” she bizarrely suggested, seizing my cold hand like a crazed evangelical preacher. I stared at her with what must have been a blank expression of anguish.

“What I mean is, that everyone’s first examination can be disconcerting,” she offered.

“Yeah, well, it’s not my fi-,”

“It is not abnormal, it is in fact quite common. Pelvic examinations are important, despite any stigmas.” There was a much-needed, yet very awkward, pause.

“Yes, of course,” I conceded, “But, where I am from we talk about vaginas at the dinner table, this is honestly not a problem.” I sensed that this was not the right answer either.

“Right, w-”

“I am also Danish”, I quickly added. I was in fact referencing the quite liberal conversations I have had with friends and relatives on my maternal side, though describing genitalia as a prime subject-matter during supper was maybe pushing it.

She leaned back into the plastic chair to pull up her sleeves, revealing henna tattoos on her cocoa-coloured skin. She inhaled her snot loudly. In one swift movement, she pulled the curtain open, rolled herself over to her desk to grab her clip-board and started scribbling on a piece of paper. This was the stage direction telling me to get dressed. As I slipped my underwear back over my purposefully unshaven legs, I asked myself what could be more reassuring, more indicative of combatting social stigmas and systemic trauma, than showing by way of leg hair that no negotiating with the patriarchy was being done today.

Though I was now already dressed, the nurse suddenly closed the curtain that had been hanging ajar, giving me some delayed privacy. I sat there for a few seconds, imagining a world in which one-night stands would also end with a curtain pulling to a close to signal a costume change: from nude to not. I opened the curtain again, and went to sit in the chair in front of the GP. I had forgotten the name of the woman who was about to start a folder on my private life. But she looked like a Gloria.

“Are you having unprotected sex?”

“No.”

“Are your periods regular”

“I think so…” Gloria looks up at me with a raised eyebrow, “Yes. They are.”

“Are you experiencing any abnormal discharge?”

“No.”

“Burning or itching?”

“No…”

“Any trauma to the area?”

The area? I shook my head. She looked up once more. I shook my head again, almost desperately. As she continued to scribble on the prescription form for the hydrocortisone I was picking up, I found solace in her use of the word area to refer to the vulva, as if it were a landing platform for a Boeing, or part of a beach that had been cordoned off pending a murder investigation. Ute wasn’t too bad now.

She turned around to type some numbers into a system on an old PC. For the first time, I realised that she was rather elegantly dressed for a nurse on the job. The light from a projector reflected off of the odd sequin sewn into her black blazer. Underneath, she was wearing a charcoal jumpsuit with pinstripes. As she turned around to face me again, she scratched her thigh and filled the room with a reverberating Velcro-like sound. Her lipstick was the colour of a wet plum, like the one worn by Priyamvada Gopal in her twitter profile picture.

“Do you wear any tight clothing?”

“Not really, actually I dress quite comfortably,” I mumbled, glancing furtively at her sparkling sequins, then back at my grey sweater.

“Good, because those thong things, G-strings, are god awful! I would never. I don’t know how people do it,” she snorted.

Gloria had changed tactics – it was clear – making a sharp turn from demented Evangelist to down-with-the-kids cool cat, you-can-tell-me-if-you’re-traumatised hip senpai. Unfortunately for my companion, the days of my ute replies were long gone and I wasn’t chancing another bizarre answer, lest it lead to a second hour in the walk-in closet playing with Venn diagrams and ink paintings.

“Well, the walls are in a very healthy condition,” she said happily. I peered distractedly at the room’s ivory colour.

“I guess they are,” I said, continuing to observe my whereabouts. She raised an eyebrow again. It was the tell-tale sign of an incorrect response.

“Despite the small tear, everything else seems in order.”

Right, she meant my walls: the area, murder scene, Boeing platform, walls.

“I mean, they are! Good, very good,” I said belatedly. Gloria looked concerned. I smile awkwardly, like one of those housewives from a sexist 1930s Kellogg’s campaign. The harder a wife works, the cuter she looks. I looked back down at my hairy legs, and then at my cold hands. I was pretty cute despite it all, I thought, and definitely not traumatised.

“Here’s your prescription,” she tears off a paper and hands it to me. I pick up my bag, and turn to the exit, but a quick hand seizes mine. I freeze, but my head turns back to Gloria.

“And remember…” she says. I wait for what seems an eternity.

“Remember?” I ask reluctantly.

“What I said,” she smiles.

“Yeah…” I mutter, as she releases my hand from her grip. I storm out into the reception, vowing never to return without the key to trauma’s middle ground.