THE PORTALS OF TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES
by Nora Wendl
What ended up being wrong was that I had hungry bones. What ended up being wrong was that I needed to be taking massive doses of calcium supplements to stabilize my body after surgery, but it would be six weeks before my doctors realized it. All I knew was that I could not walk farther than a block from my apartment without getting dizzy and needing to turn back. All I knew was that I had this tunnel vision, as if my eyes had been pushed back an inch or two in my skull. I felt like I was looking out from a grave. And since looking out from a grave is not on the list of possible symptoms of anything, my doctor could only pat my knee and said I’m sorry and order some more tests.
In June, I’d had a simple surgery: the removal of one parathyroid gland with a non-cancerous, though problematic tumor on it that had been wreaking havoc on my body—calcifying it, as my doctor put it. Removing this gland meant I would stop calcifying, that my body would stop putting the calcium that was meant for my bones into my blood, turning into sludge and stones in my kidneys. After this diagnosis, I went to Rome to visit a friend who had a fellowship there. Everywhere, the calcified bodies of men and women draped in equally calcified robes, spitting water into the Trevi fountain or lounging on a calcified chair in the Borghese gallery, calcified tits out, or pierced by arrows to the heart, tumbling backward like Saint Teresa, frozen in calcified ecstasy. I had mixed feelings about leaving this ancient company, about being turned back into flesh—there is something eternal about the element of calcium, and calcification sounds like immortality.
And then my father died, unexpectedly. And it was as if my own body began rehearsing death, without informing me. In the aftermath of the surgery, I felt strange in my body. Something was wrong that I could not name. Not just the tunnel vision—looking out from a grave—but the disorientation, the extreme fatigue, the way I had to concentrate to breathe, the sudden stabbing pains in my chest out of nowhere that would radiate to my back and make my heart pound. Decalcifying, turning back into flesh, is not for the weak. It is also not a very predictable experience, as I would learn. My doctors would listen and say I’m sorry to hear this. It doesn’t sound like anything my other patients have experienced. Sometimes surgery is hard on the body. Try getting some rest.
I would sit in the emergency room for seven hours with an I.V. lead in my arm waiting, while my labs were sent to the wrong place, then more blood was drawn, then they sent it to the right place. I would wait. While I waited, while my blood made these journeys, a man named José sang to us all. That’s beautiful, José, said the security guard. He had been screaming and screaming and she told him that if he wanted to remain in the room, he’d have to stop. So, he sang. Jesús Cristo, I heard, and the rest washed over me. There was a way in which the emergency room suspended time.
The last place my father had been alive was in a hospital in Omaha, Nebraska. He’d come in through the emergency room. For reasons we would never uncover, he was given the name Noselite Santiago—it was a label attached to all of his personal effects, even the medical bills. They gave him a birthdate of January 1, 1900. He was born John Romain Wendl in rural Iowa on November 16, 1953, and died Noselite Santiago in Omaha, Nebraska, at 124 years old on January 7, 2024. In the emergency room, anything was possible. My father could still be alive, the version of him before he became Noselite could walk through any door as I waited, holding my breath as much for myself as for him.
Noselite is not a name, it turns out. Or not only a name. It is clearly someone’s name (not my father’s), but it is also a mineral. Noselite was first described in 1815, in Rhineland, Germany, and it is a fluorescent mineral that forms white, gray, blue, green and brown crystals. It is rare, but can be found in many places, from ocean islands (Tahiti, for instance, Wikipedia offers) to Utah. The image that comes up on Wikipedia is beautiful—long, clear fingers of rock that reflect light almost like a diamond.
In death, my father had been calcified into this other thing, this noselite. For two months, the confusion made it impossible to settle bills, to finalize anything with the hospital. They would call for the family of the recently deceased Noselite Santiago every day, for weeks, and no amount of explaining or hours-long conversations would resolve it. Every day, we were reminded of Noselite’s death. Every day that Noselite had died, my father still felt alive. The suspended time of the emergency room entered our lives. Who had died, who was alive?
Returning to emergency rooms seemed to be a way to see him, to be around him, in some way. Like when people erect ghost bikes or a cross and flowers where a loved one died. I kept returning to a version of that place where he was last on this earth. The hours I spent, undiagnosed, in emergency rooms felt like being with him, or at least being in that suspended space of not knowing, where healing is possible and help is right around the corner. Where the experts on bodies are right there, can piece you together, can even raise the dead, some part of me had hoped.
Nora Wendl is an essayist, artist, architect, and associate professor of architecture at the University of New Mexico.
