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Protocol for What to Do after Hearing Another Rape Story in Exam Room Five

July 11, 2024/Margaret Adams
  1. First: Make sure your patient is safe. Hope that you gave the appropriate caveats when you told them that this visit is confidential, and make sure they don’t have any plans to hurt themselves or others. If they’re a minor, you may have to call Child Protective Services. If you didn’t properly warn them that this could happen if they disclosed this kind of harm, well, you are a huge asshole. Too late now. Let’s just hope you did.
  2. Once you’ve made sure they’re safe in an immediate, physical, legal kind of way, start saying the right things. Tell them it’s not their fault. Tell them they’re not alone. Don’t tell them, Hell, yours isn’t even the first rape story I’ve heard TODAY. When you get the urge to say this, lean in hard to the open-ended questions. What do you need? Offer forensics, advocacy, Plan B, antibiotics, therapy, water, tissues. Respect whatever they want. Don’t offer your own thoughts or opinions.
  3. After they’ve left, document. In your note, don’t use the word alleges. Don’t put “sexually assaulted” in quotes like you’re not sure. You would not write “patient alleges broken arm,” so don’t let the reflexive doubt of women seep in here. Don’t say simply that they were upset; describe instead the way their face didn’t move when they cried.
  4. At this point, even though you’re done, their story is alive in your skin. Your brain is a lurching mammal, the large kind, but the large kind that eats grass and dies easily. Notice this.
  5. Look down and realize that your shoes feel funny and that is because you now have hooves.
  6. Tell your coworkers you are leaving for the day. See if they notice if you look different. They don’t, or you don’t, it’s unclear.
  7. Go outside and lie on the grass. Don’t eat any of it, yet. Feel your limbs press into the ground. Try to loosen, let the earth do the work of holding your bones up. Your face feels furry. It’s hard to tell because your eyes are widely set now.
  8. Get up and run around. Run around and around and around. Avoid the road, but also poorly lit areas. It’s hard to do both, but try. The sun will set soon.
  9. If you are hit by a car, lie stunned on the side of the road, and know that the worst part is that if you live, you’re going to have to get up and keep going, eat more grass and have fawns and rub your rough fur on the sides of trees and probably, statistically speaking, get hit by another car, because deer are basically the pigeons of suburban America, and modern cars are pretty durable. Because that’s how society has dealt: we’ve made stronger cars.
  10. Run home. Your hooves clop on the walkway to your door. Swivel your eyes and hold your keys like a weapon until you put them in the lock.
  11. Sleep. Don’t remember how you got into bed. Don’t remember if you did or didn’t watch a few hours of television. Don’t remember if you drank water, or how.
  12. Wake up. Pull pants on over your human legs. Pat moisturizer on your cheeks. Go to work. Ask the questions. Say the right things. Follow the protocol.

Margaret Adams

Margaret Adams’s stories and essays have appeared in over two dozen publications, including The Threepenny Review, Best Small Fictions 2019, Joyland, and Pinch. She is the winner of the Blue Mesa Review 2018 Nonfiction Contest, the Pacifica Literary Review 2017 Fiction Contest, and a Notable in Best American Essays 2019. She is a healthcare worker and a writer, and she currently lives in Vermont.

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