SUZANNE SAMPLES
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PASSING THROUGH
The hungry darkness of Tunnel Number 12 swallows me like the anesthesia before my craniotomy three years ago. I don’t remember anything from the medically induced blackness, but similarly to how I feel now, I could not escape. For eight hours, I was trapped in the nothingness of circuit oscillations and obscure memory loss. I woke up terminal. The surgeon told me generally 11-13 months, but here I am, years later, hiking through a deserted, ink-drenched corridor four miles from my hometown. I did not want to move back, but I had no choice. Diagnosed in my mid-30s, I could explore hospice options or move in with my aging parents and pretend I was caring for them instead of the other way around. Hood up to protect my head, I am halfway through Tunnel Number 12 when I realize I cannot move my bad foot. But still. I believe the supernatural can occur in these passages. I believe I can enter disconnected, disturbed and emerge on the other side, bare limbed and brave. I believe the ghosts of passengers long gone can whisper well wishes and encouragements. You have more time. Now just breathe. We aren’t ready for you yet. I had no symptoms before the devastating discovery of my tumor. Instead, I sat inputting final grades at a café as a seizure rolled up my leg like the trains that once passed through these gaping, open-mouthed channels. In the mid-1900s, caravans brought supplies to this foggy, middle-of-nowhere town. Without this method of transportation, those who came before me would have frozen or lost the fat from their bones and resembled the native white-tailed deer in a starving season, their ribs prodding through sickly taupe skin with mangled fur shed on snow long ago. But presently, I stand centered in Tunnel Number 12, unable to move. My right leg, paralyzed for three months after the seizure, seemed to petrify when, seconds ago, I stepped into a puddle and became part of the stony structure.
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Volume 17 • 2022
