The Body Violate

Warning: the content of this post is graphic.

Last night I saw a woman’s leg snipped away after being ripped from her body in a terrible accident, her other limb flayed from hip to toe. As I watch her abdomen is slit wide and packed with handfuls of gauze, her ribs bisected with a saw to allow access to her floundering heart. Crimson blood pours into her veins, bag after bag squeezed through tubing to circle her body before soaking her sheets and dripping inevitably onto the floor. A roomful of humans hovers around her, each absorbed in his own small part of the desperate yet intricately choreographed task of preserving her personhood against the ebb of fate.

In that room the words sound again and again in my mind: Is nothing sacred? Is there no part of the body that remains untouched, inviolate?

A calm surgeon leading the trauma team reaches into the woman’s chest and urges the heart along, slippery and clasped between her two hands. The surgeon has a boldness within her that shines as light in her eyes – she is unafraid. And yet, this is the same woman whose fingers tremble when she gets too hungry, who wears worn sneakers to work and can’t resist the candy at the nurses’ station. This woman is fallible, and made of the same flesh she confidently cuts. I am awed by her hubris.

Despite the horror, despite the unspeakable violations of the body, there is a tacit agreement in that operating room. If her legs must go, they go. If her body is sliced from top to toe to expose her injuries, so be it. Tissue is moved, arteries cauterized, skin and muscle sacrificed. Everything is expendable except for this woman’s consciousness – she is why we are so bold, so seemingly cruel. She is what is untouchable, inviolate.

Hours later she opens her eyes, gaze as unfocused as a newborn's. I’m standing beside the bed and for a moment her eyes catch mine – I am struck with a deep sense of unworthiness, of my own experience being inadequate to understand hers. This woman has touched darkness, traversed a mysterious hell I hope I’ll never know. Her lips twitch around the breathing tube and she gives a hesitant thumbs up. Instantly I feel myself grin. She’s there.

For a moment I cast my eyes around the room at the spotless floors, the grimy white coats, the competent nurses, chemical concoctions and disposable tubing and think to myself: This is what humans can do.