“I love your scar,” the technician says.

I’m thirteen, reclined in a dentist’s chair, alone in a room with a woman I don’t know. This isn’t my orthodontist’s office—it’s a place I’ve never been before, and afterwards, I’ll never go back. I’m here for dental X-rays prior to my second round of braces, and the memory of metal twisting my teeth into place, bloodying my lips, bruising my gums, already has me on edge. As does the room: it’s more like a corporate office, without any of the usual sinks  and  trays.  There’s  commercial  carpeting.  The  wooden  door  is  shut. The overall impression is of beige anonymity—I could be anywhere. I could open the door and find myself looking out at Oz, or Kansas, or back at the reception area of this weird oral surgeon’s office stuffed into a soulless corner of suburban Silicon Valley. I could scream and no one would hear me.

The technician isn’t helping. She’s overly boisterous in the way medical professionals sometimes are with young patients, but I’m not that young and I’ve already learned that the more upbeat a doctor is, the higher the likelihood of intense pain. Between her bouncy blonde-brown curls and manic energy and too-eager smile, she reminds me of a jack-in-the-box. She’s just beyond my right eye’s periphery, but every so often she springs into view, smiling that smile and gesturing at my neck.

“I love all scars,” she says. “I collect them, like, when I see a cool one. I’m kind of obsessed.”

She launches into a catalogue of all the scars she’s harvested by ogling other people’s bodies, and I nod politely. It seems the type of situation in which Miss Manners would recommend a polite nod. Besides, interest in my scar is something I’m used to. It’s located at the base of my neck, on the right side: a series of holes left over from the central line that kept me alive for the first few months of my infancy. It fascinates adults. It’s not the first thing people notice about me, but it’s obvious, and it’s the type of scar that looks out of place on a child’s body. What’s more, it doesn’t have a clear-cut cause, like abuse or a freak accident—at a stretch, maybe a strangely healed dog bite. Other kids, when asked how they think I got holes in my neck, guess baby vampire nibbles.

The tech pogoes back into my peripheral vision, and this time her eyes are hungry. “Can I touch it?”

Surprisingly,  this  is  also  something  I’m  accustomed  to.  It’s  the  typical follow-up question, right after What happened? I usually say yes, because I’ve already had a lifetime of doctors touching my body in painful ways—a quick pat of the fingertips against some puckered scar tissue is minor, in comparison. And apparently this woman isn’t going to get on with my X-rays until she feels the neck holes for herself. So I nod.

She places her fingers on the base of my throat. At first, it’s no different from the way many other adults have touched my scar. Most people just want to see what it feels like, that collection of small craters stretching under their thumbs, and then they snatch their hands away and leave my nerves itching just below the skin. After fifteen or twenty minutes, the tingling goes away and I stop scratching at my collarbone.

But this woman keeps going. Her fingers move slowly. She’s stroking the scar. One minute, two, three.

I wait. Even though the rest of my skin has started to crawl, I tell myself it isn’t as bad as it could be. Earlier that year, a classmate I’d known since third grade reached across her desk and stuck a mechanical pencil tip in one of the holes, “just to see if they were really holes.” In the years to come, there will be boys who take pleasure in sneaking up behind me, digging their nails into the scar, and watching me writhe. I never learn how to tell them to stop. I don’t know how to explain that there are still nerve endings beneath that strange, useless tissue, that pain exists even in the dead places.

So I wait. I shouldn’t want to scream. In comparison to fingernails and pencil lead and a central line, this doesn’t even hurt.

And yet.

The stroking continues, as if the motion has become a compulsion, something separate from the technician and beyond her control. I have never masturbated,  but that’s what I’m  reminded of as she eases into a rhythm, palpating my neck, her eyes glassy and unfocused. She is masturbating my scar.

I wait some more.

I don’t tell her to stop. It will be sixteen years before a medical professional, a physical therapist, gives me permission to make noise if something hurts, rather than turn still and silent. But at this moment, I am a thirteen-year-old girl and a medical miracle: I owe my body to the touch and curiosity of others. And this, too, will become another kind of pain that exists in that strange, dead place.

Eventually the technician removes her fingers and starts taking my X-rays.

Rae Wolfe lives in Los Angeles, where she enjoys writing fiction and nonfiction, taking photographs, and being part of the local literary community. She holds an MFA in fiction and her work has appeared in various publications.

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