Clara looked down at her belly. The bruise was a small, defiant fist. It wasn’t a coincidence. It wasn’t a cyst. It was a tiny, rogue uterus living in her navel.
: Cyclical bleeding or a reddish-brown, sometimes foul-smelling discharge from the navel. Causes and Types navel endometriosis
Clara never got her old navel back. In its place was a pale, straight line. She would look at it sometimes in the bath, the water rippling over the scar. It was a reminder of a strange, quiet war fought in a tiny, forgotten corner of her body. A war she had won by refusing to be a ghost in her own story. Clara looked down at her belly
She ignored it for three months. Then it bled. It wasn’t a cyst
The surgery took forty minutes.