The Last Word On Nothing

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“What even is consciousness, though?” my friend B wondered yesterday, squinting into the sun. The air was full of cottonwood dander. Floating on the breeze, the tufted white seeds looked like they were suspended in deep water.

She was nervous about the anesthesia. Four masses in her abdomen, one the size of a football. Likely not cancer, but they won’t know for certain until they “dig around,” the surgeon said. B traced the line of the scar-to-be down her belly with her finger, imagined gloved fingers pulling out her guts. If all goes well, she’ll get to keep an ovary.

To entertain or maybe distract her, I told B about my latest obsession: a wandering web of nerves that carries sensations from our organs to our brains and back again. Most visceral sensations never reach our conscious perception. That’s good. It would be awful to know what your liver and spleen are up to from moment to moment. But it also means we’re largely strangers to our innermost selves. It’s incredible, really, how little we know.  

At first B thought she was allergic to gluten. Then she tried to lose weight, and although the pounds dropped off, the bulge in her stomach didn’t go. A year went by, faster than you’d think in a pandemic. She put off going to the doctor until she got a vaccine, then went for a scan, and that’s when they found the tumors. 

I’ve known B and her wife for years now, watched them suffer greatly and recover. Neither has aged much on the surface. If anything they’re both more beautiful now than they were before, the way linen gets finer and softer while retaining its strength. No tumors can destroy these women, I thought when they told us. No, no, no.

Signals from the gut to the brain can influence our memory, emotions, and decisions, often without us realizing it. Maybe when the masses in B’s gut are gone, some of the dread and exhaustion of this year will go, too. She loves space and plans to go there someday. Her face lights up when she talks about going to the moon: Beam me up, Elon! She already has a degree in space studies; after she recovers from the surgery, she says she’ll overcome her fear of deep water and learn to scuba dive, so she can train in a weightless environment.

This whole year has been a form of training, B jokes. The isolation of a pandemic, and now, four alien babies. The anesthesia will feel like flying; maybe hospital food will be like spaceship food. “What do you think, am I ready to go to space?” she asked me yesterday. “Absolutely.” When they take her into the operating room, she said, “I’ll imagine I’m a rocket, preparing to launch into orbit.” This morning, she texted: “Ad astra!”