Flush
By Judy Budnitz, first published in McSweeney's
When a young adult accompanies her avoidant mother to a mammogram appointment during a visit to her suburban hometown, she receives terrible news that throws her identity in flux.
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Plot Summary
Lisa is a 27-year-old woman living in an urban setting. One day, she finds herself bleeding irregularly and thinks she’s suffering from a miscarriage. She calls her sister, Mich, who advises her to go visit their parents for a while. Lisa flies to her suburban hometown, where her parents pick her up from the airport. Her dad asks her to accompany her mom to her mammogram appointment, which she’s been avoiding for a year. The two women get to the clinic, but Lisa’s mother disappears and Lisa covers for her by receiving the mammogram herself.
Later, she returns back to her life. She goes to work and no one notices she was gone. She breaks up with her boyfriend and learns that Mich has also broken up with hers. She receives a call from her family that her mother has to go back to the clinic because of something concerning her mammogram. This time, Mich flies home; their mother receives terrible news and cries. Mich realizes that Lisa was the one that got the test done; she likely has breast cancer. Numbed by the news, Lisa thinks of her mother and sister and forgets which one of the three of them is the one with the lump, if only for a brief moment.
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