You can’t help but catastrophize. Obviously. No one is telling you anything of value. Now you are alone in a wheelchair in a bright clean room, head spinning. You move from the chair to the bed. The paper crinkles beneath your weight. It’s something, at least. It’s a familiar sound; you try to hold onto it. You are going to die. No one is telling you what’s wrong because the blow will be too heavy. They need a professional to do it.

Two quick raps at the door and it opens politely. A small smiling woman in glasses comes in, asks your name, says hello. She introduces herself; she is a doctor. She asks how you feel. You are ready to burst, you can’t help it. What’s going on? you ask, unconcerned about the unfamiliar panic in your voice.

Did no one tell you? she says. She is bewildered. She wasn’t expecting to have to deliver the news. No, you say, and laugh. It is not a nice laugh; it is a laugh that if you squint might be crying.

Well, she says, it’s a good thing you got an X-ray today. Your left lung is ninety percent collapsed. I would say the only reason you’re still up and able to function at all is because you’re nineteen years old and otherwise healthy. She takes the X-ray from a folder and shows you the image’s half empty canvas. There should be a lung there, she says. We need two to survive.

She tells you what’s next, explaining everything patiently. She understands the threat of not knowing, and the fear of finding out. She knows you are a teenager. We need to operate immediately. We will make an incision between two of your ribs. We will move a tube through the incision to vacuum out the liquid that has collected in your lung; there’s a lot to get out. You will need three to five days to recover; the tube will remain inside during this time, sucking while your lung recovers. It could likely rupture again at some point. We hope not, but to a degree we expect it. When it does, come straight back for more intensive surgery. We will contact your parents. Leave everything to us. They are preparing the operating room for you right now. They will come in to get you in a little bit. It’s all going to be OK.

She leaves you alone again. You sit with the answer. You picture your body opening up to masked strangers. Its red jelly. Its vibrating soup. You have forgotten already that no one will be opening your body; it’s only a slit in the ribcage. It doesn’t matter. You sit with the mystery of your body. You wonder why this happened. You imagine your lung seizing, rupturing itself in the middle of the night, taking on water like a ship. It strikes you that it has been taking on water for ten days. You walk yourself back through all ten, running through classes and meals and collegiate bullshit with this new knowledge. Sleeping night after night with one lung collapsing. You were trying to catch your breath. You were telling yourself it was nothing. You live inside a form you will never understand. You are dictated by its whims. You are not in control. You realize for the first time that you are afraid of your own body. You realize it isn’t you; it has you.

Two knocks on the door. They’re here to wheel you to your operation, and you let them.

Brad Efford is the founding editor of wig-wag. He lives in Bed-Stuy.