Into the Fire
She looked me dead in the eyes and told me that I was going to die. Not literally, not exactly. But that was what she was trying to communicate. The way her lips formed each word carefully, tactfully. Unwavering. Her tone was steady, and deliberate. Her sentences flowed evenly. She wasn't in the moment, not with me at least. This was a speech she had prepared and rehearsed in the mirror everyday. Impersonal. This was something she had to say a lot, and often. Clear, concise, but not directly to the point. She skirted the bad news while preaching false hope. She talked for a long time and never once used the words "die" or "death", she didn't say "kill" or "succumbs to." And she didn't have to.
You could see what she meant. The way the words sounded as they came out of her mouth. The way the hung in the air, petrifying the moment in time. Her kind sentiments and practiced statements pooled around me like sap, making the air heavy. I found myself holding my breath as the warmth behind her words evaporated as soon as it left her mouth. Frozen in time. I was a fly trapped in amber.
She paused after her speech, and there was a momentary silence before the sharp intake of breath from everyone in the room. Racing hearts skipped a beat, before settling into soothing denial. To my left, my mother placed a hand on my leg and squeezed hard. From the doctor's eyes it would appear that my mother was trying to comfort me. Trying to give me strength. I was actually the crutch that she was leaning on, an attempt to steady herself. She wasn't trying to give strength so much as steal mine. A quick glance around the room showed the condescendingly concerned faces of family and medical staff. The medical staff were of course faking, they dealt in death everyday. Genuine concern only came from my family, and even then it was the selfish type, focusing on how they would deal with my loss instead of how I would deal with myself. Every single person in that chilled room was busy putting on show for me. Dancing marionettes putting on a play. They were too concerned in their acts, in their deceptions to notice that mine was the real show.
The slight shaking, the nervous edge in my voice. My eyes turning glassy with the tears.
They didn't notice that they were all amateur actors, and I was the pro.
I wasn't afraid at all. I wasn't upset. I wasn't sad, or depressed. I wasn't really numb, or at a loss for words. I was not confused. I was not lost.
Honestly, my heart did skip a beat. Maybe even two, before going back to it's own steady doomed pace. I knew that the sadness, the feelings of loss, depression would all come later. In their own time. But everyone else expected it now, and I did my best to deliver.
But the truth was I was ecstatic.
I'd waited years. Years i'd spent depressed, years I'd spent alone. Years i'd spent in pain. Years of being told that I was faking it, that I was desperate for attention. That it was all in my head. The news of my impending death, my disease, was gratifying. I finally had a name. Something to call my pain. A reason behind it. I finally had the truth, my messiah and my murderer. Cystic Fibrosis.
My doctor kept talking about the symptoms of my disease, lecturing to me as she would a class. As if I didn't already know all the symptoms first hand. She went on explaing every facet of my illness to me and my family; but my head and my heart really weren't there. I was somewhere else entirely.
I had lept out of the frying pan, and was surprised to find that I liked the change of scenery. I was in that grey area between a rock and a hard place. I had just jumped over the rainbow, and lost my slippers. There would be no going back.
In the middle of being lectured, I got up and left. As I made my way to the door, the doctor continued speaking as if there had been no interruption. My family ellicited no response. I left the room and walked down the hall and into the hospital's waiting room. I look out of the big glass window and see a hearse drive by, which makes me laugh. What kind of asshole drives a hearse by a hospital waiting room? It should be some sort of criminal offense.
"Oh my god man, a hearse," a raspy voice laughs next to me. I smile and turn to see a kid about my age, maybe older, staring out the window, an IV pole next to him. He grinned at me, his smile goofy and crooked. "You can't write that shit."
"Yeah, I seriously can't think of anything more ironic," I said, as I rolled my eyes.
"I haven't seen you around here before, which is kind of a rarity for someone our age at Nelson," he said dryly. "Did you just move here or something? My name is Trevor by the way."
"No, i'm just a late diagnosis. CF." He looked thoughtful for a moment, before a knowing smile crept across his lips. I noticed he was wearing a buttoned up shirt.
"That's really late then, I have CF too, it's a hard life but you get used to it..." he seemed to be trying to comfort me. His shirt was plaid; grey and white and black. It was collared. I didn't know why, but I was focusing less and less on what he had to say and more and more on his chest. The top button was undone, and the way he moved his arm opened up the shirt a bit more, exposing the top part of his chest. I thought I saw something and couldn't get it out of my mind, so I kept staring. He kept blathering on about how you get used to the daily treatment regiment or something, lost in his speech and completely unaware I wasn't paying attention to his words. I stared harder and harder at his chest, wondering what I had seen that had so suddenly caught my attention. What had...
The top an angry red, raised scar running vertically was just barely visible at the top of his chest. Bright. Blazing, as if someone had painted a red line down his middle, bisecting him. He finally caught the stare and blushed.
"Double lung transplant," he said apathetically as he unbuttoned more of his shirt. "The scar wouldn't have been as bad, but they ran into some trouble..." I tuned him out again. I could now see the scar in it's entirety. I thought of that old song about the little doll with a pain in her sawdust, and how the doctor's could never put her back together again. I tore myself away from his chest and looked him calmly in the eye.
"I have to go to the bathroom, sorry, where is it?"
He pointed down the hall, and I saw the telltale stick figures emblazoned proudly on a set of doors. I turned and walked into the men's room and into one of the stalls, closing it shut and locking the door. I stared at the military green door for a couple of seconds, carefully listening to hear if anyone else was in the men's room.
After I was sure that I was as alone as I felt, I hung my head in my hands and cried.
Originally Posted by Braxton
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