My surgeon looked like a giant rabbit. I was leery about letting him cut into me, because he was from Texas and had a mustache. His medical degree made no difference. I didn’t trust Texans, and a rabbit was just a rodent in disguise. I set my sights on the woman surgeon in the practice, the one who, according to the website, was an organic gardener, rescued greyhounds, and thought of her patients as friends. Of course, she was booked.  So, I got the Easter bunny. He’ll be sticking his paws into me on Tuesday at 8:30 a.m.

Dr. Rabbit informed me that my right ovary’s abnormality appeared identical to ovarian cancer; neither endometriosis—the suspected culprit—or cancer could be positively diagnosed by the ultrasound I had before I showed up in his office.

I was seeing a fertility specialist, both of us dead set on figuring out why a fertilized egg wouldn’t attach itself to the wall of my womb. Upon feeling a lump she didn’t like, she ordered an ultrasound. When the results came in, she called me at home. Surgery. My first question wasn’t whether or not I could have a baby, but whether I’d lose an ovary.

She said no, she didn’t think so, but when she explained the results of the ultrasound, I looked at her freehand drawing and knew immediately that she couldn’t make such an assurance. She obviously spent some time on the illustration, a pen and ink drawing that in no way resembled the female reproductive organs on display in plastic model form on her desk. Initially, I thought I was looking at her doodles of the solar system. One ovary became a crater-filled Mars, the other, Pluto. Between them, my uterus appeared as a sandwich bag lost in space. She said it was a drawing of a cross section. I stared and stared, trying to make sense of it.

She suspected the same bloody substance that lined my uterus decided it could grow elsewhere, engulfing random organs in my abdomen, swaddling them in highly adhesive, thick procreative blood, like those old sci-fi flicks about invasive entities of a difficult-to-describe shape and substance—“The Blob” or “The Thing.” She expected that a surgeon would open me up to find my right ovary completely covered in it, plus bloody strands spread throughout, like webs of bubblegum that got lost in my hair during sleep, or during a particularly wild carnival ride.

My new rabbit doctor ordered a blood test that would serve as a better indicator of my true affliction. Cancer didn’t make sense to me, but I indulged his diagnostic detective work.

Isn’t it better to be sure, my partner suggested.

Of course, I said.

The phlebotomist was a sullen man with bad posture who didn’t know any good jokes. He directed me to hold still please when I began drumming on the floor with both feet, as if to warn my brethren of approaching danger—force of habit whenever a needle was pointed in my direction.

The results of the blood test showed a potential malignancy, which prompted my rabbit doctor to revise his original surgical plan to do a tiny incision and use a teeny-tiny vacuum to suck me clean in there, while he watched live on a video screen. Now, I was slated to have a bigger deal slit in my belly and he’ll probably remove things intact. He said he’ll give me OxyContin, and I’ll be asleep. I won’t know about the cancer verdict until it’s over.

Cancer? I said. Like the kind that kills people?

Doctor rabbit told me that if he could rule out ovarian cancer, I might still have a chance at pregnancy. I was sitting on the edge of the examining table wearing a blue paper dress, my legs dangling like a child’s. He suggested that I seek out a woman half my age, one with younger, healthier eggs. His gut rolled over his belt, and his neck oozed out over his collar.

Oh, I said, Oh. My toes itched. My skin was dry. The hair on my unshaven legs was wild.

The only time I ever hallucinated in my life, I saw rabbits. They were crossing the highway, and I was behind the wheel. I saw snow, too, even though it was summer, and I was sober. I was driving back to Pittsburgh from a bachelorette party in New Jersey for a wedding I didn’t want to be in. The husband-to-be, drunk, slumped over me one night and tried to peel my clothes off. I knocked him over and fled. I should have told my friend, but I didn’t. She was seeking true love, and I hoped his behavior wasn’t a habitual trait.

I was excessively sleep deprived that night after driving six and a half hours of endless highway from Newark to Pittsburgh. The only other gal who knew how to drive a stick shift was passed out in the back seat. Now, I wondered if I’ll wake from surgery all doped up and see a room full of rabbits.

Maria McLeod is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Mother Want, winner of WaterSedge Chapbook Contest 2021 and Skin. Hair. Bones., published by Finishing Line Press in 2022. She’s been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes and has won the Indiana Review Poetry Prize and the Robert J. DeMott Short Prose Prize. Her writing has been featured in several leading literary journals, as well as part of Painted Bride Quarterly’s Slush Pile Podcast and on Sound Poetry, Radio Tacoma. Originally from the Detroit area, she resides in Bellingham, Washington, where she works as a professor of journalism for Western Washington University. Find her on Instagram @mariapoempics.