EXCERPT FROM SOMEBODY TOUCHED ME - CHAPTER 1 ADMITTED

“I was born by the river in a little tent. Oh, and just like the river I've been running every since. It's been a long time coming but I know my change is gonna come, oh yeah.”

As I was wheeled down the corridor on a gurney, the rhythmic thrum-thrum of the wheels hitting the floor seams echoed the exhaustion weighing heavily on my heart. I wanted to live—I truly did—but uncertainty clouded my mind. Life had been a relentless struggle, and I often felt powerless beneath its weight.

Deep inside, the little girl in me cried out desperately for help, yearning for change and rescue. She wanted the woman in me to answer, to protect, to heal. But the woman I had become was overwhelmed, silent, unsure how to help, burdened by years of pain and confusion. I didn’t want to die, yet at times I questioned if I truly had the strength to remain. Though I wasn’t afraid of the surgery itself, I was more afraid of dealing with my past—that’s how bad it was.

A tear trickled down my left cheek as I gazed up past the cold hospital ceiling lights. I chose not to wipe away the solitary tear, reluctant to let go of the last chance to cry from my left eye, so I let it fall freely. "What strength lies in a single tear," I mused, as tears continued to flow... the salt tracing a path over the initials JM inked on my left temple by Dr. Jean Mallovy—the marker for the fight ahead.

Deep inside, I knew that when I awoke from surgery, my world would sound different. In the quiet solitude of the days before, I had found solace in the voices of female geniuses like Leontyne Price, whose resilience reminded me that I too could rise. On this morning, the melodic strains of Smokey Norful's "God Is Able" filled my left ear for the last time. I thought about the science of it—the sound traveling through the ear canal, vibrating the eardrum, and passing across the tiny bones of the middle ear into the cochlea, the delicate snail-shaped organ in the inner ear. Inside, countless hair cells convert these vibrations into electrical signals, which journey along the auditory nerve to my brain, where the sound takes shape. I was listening through my airpods, clinging to the lyrics: “And when the doctor says no, who can still say yes... God is able and He won't fail.” At that moment, I mourned the loss of my hearing in the left ear that would soon take place, but I understood this sacrifice bore unseen gains for others.

The sudden silence of the hospital corridor rushing back in, grounding me in the present moment.

At that moment, a man in his fifties—a Native American—passed by, humming Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come." I could tell he had a great singing voice. He held a bouquet of red roses, their scent a grounding contrast to the bleach and medicine. Throughout my life, this song had appeared at just the right moments. I felt it was God's whisper to me. The man nodded a quiet "I see you," and I returned it, reciting inwardly: "It's too hard living but I'm afraid to die. I don't know what's up there beyond the sky..."

As the gurney moved across the sky bridge toward surgery, the sudden view of the world below through the glass triggered a memory. The cold draft from the vents felt just like the wind on our 23rd-floor balcony where I once stood, poised between despair and surrender, ready to leap. But then, a quiet voice had echoed within me: “You will live, my child.” Not just once, but again and again. It was a sacred vow that anchored me, pulling me back from the brink for good.

The weight of my history seemed to gather in that space. Jackson was there—an unexpected, steadfast presence. I had loved him from an unhealed place, and now he was here, a father stepping up to care for our children while I hoped as I fought for my life. And then there was Rose, a woman who had survived the same fires I had at the hands of my biological father. She stood as a bridge between my past and this future.

I took a final look, then consciously chose to rest my head back on the pillow. I closed my eyes, and for a moment, I wasn't on a gurney. I was that little girl again, the one on the book cover of the story I was finally brave enough to write. I was wearing my blue dress, my hair in two neat afro puffs—just like I had during the years when the "bad touch" stole my voice. I saw myself walking up a long flight of stone steps, moving away from the shadows and toward a light so bright it felt like freedom. At the top, the little girl turned around. She wasn't crying anymore. She reached out her hand, and the woman I was becoming took it. We were connecting. We were becoming one.

"I will live. I will love. I will receive the light. Selah," I whispered.

After all the thinking, I caught the eyes of the Assistant Anesthesiologist. I had forgotten he was even there, watching me, seeing every flicker of my facial expressions as I processed the weight of the moment. My jaw set. The "thrum-thrum" of the wheels began to feel less like a stroll and more like a march.

The tumor, nearly 4 cm of clinical defiance, sat as a stark symbol of all I had endured.

In my eyes, it was a physical metaphor, just as Dr. Christiane Northrup describes in Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom. I believed this mass wasn't just biology; it was the manifestation of unaddressed emotional needs and the energetic weight of past trauma finally taking shape in my body. The past reared its ugly face, but the woman I had become finally stood up, eyes clear, ready to answer the little girl’s cry. I was finally on the road to becoming whole, to becoming one.

Head-to-head and toe-to-toe, as the bell rang, we tapped gloves—and the fight began.

• S.J. MacKenzie - Author, Somebody Touched Me