Conditions of a Heart, page 2
I feel the performance stall a moment as I wonder how much he saw, but I never forget my next line: “I’m fine.” I wrench my arm free before his touch can singe my flesh. He steps back, eyes averted, and I want to throw myself against him and kiss him until some uptight teacher pulls us apart, as if we don’t all still have lost time from lockdown in our ledgers. But Oliver and I don’t belong to each other anymore, if we ever did at all. “Pat’s got a weak left hook.”
He points to the corner of his own mouth. “You’re bleeding.”
“I just need a paper towel.” I heave myself through space in jerky, lurching stumbles as security guards and administrators descend on the two teams. My hip and shoulder ignore the demands of my threadbare nerves, my body an unmanned vehicle, a hostage crisis.
And always that question—
“Are you okay?” TJ asks in the horror-stricken tone of someone who can only be serious three times a year, and this is one of them.
Ethan holds out a tentative hand, not quite making contact on my forearm. “Hey, you should sit down. The nurse is probably still here.”
I swing my gaze in lolling arcs across the crowd, seeing my friends seeing me for the first time. The smog of their compassion envelops me. What happened? Suddenly I’m in first grade again, realizing from my teacher’s bloodless, nauseated expression that I was not supposed to pull out four baby teeth during the story about the tooth fairy just because I’d discovered I could.
I stand up as straight as I can, affecting a slight lean onto my back leg that I hope is close to nonchalance. “I’m good. You might want to check on Brandon, though.” I limp away before I can attract any more attention. Some mobs carry torches and pitchforks; others bludgeon you with pity, a death of a thousand wishes well.
At last I reach the sanctuary of the bathroom. Beads of sweat form along my hairline and trace rivulets around the curves of my nose as I shut myself into the first stall. I lean against the door, the cool metal nothing but a raindrop on a wildfire. It hurts to breathe. I can feel the interconnectedness of it all, how one sip of air is the difference between relief and agony.
I mash my shoulder joint and attempt to force my humerus back into place. Come on, Left Shoulder. Somehow, narrating all of my body parts like they’re a bunch of inconsiderate houseguests has always made the pain easier to bear. I thought we were friends.
LEFT SHOULDER
You let the doctors poke me with scalpels too many times for us to be friends.
ME
I hate you.
LEFT SHOULDER
Wow, that’s very hurtful.
I hear footsteps smacking against the floor and jam a knuckle in between my teeth to avoid letting a whimper escape as I release my grip on my shoulder socket. “Hey, uh, Brynn?” Francesca calls out. “You still in here?”
“Yeah,” I say, a little sharper than intended. Where else would I be? I didn’t open an interstellar portal in the toilet.
I bite harder against my knuckle until I can taste the salt on my skin, the grime of the asphalt. I pull air through my nose in a slow drag. Don’t become a pain monster. It’s not Francesca’s fault. She’s trying to help.
“Brandon’s nose might be broken. Did you find some ice for your face?” she asks. I can see the tips of her fat sneakers through the gap at the bottom of the stall door, a trend I unwittingly started when I needed enormous clown shoes to house my arch supports. In a private school with uniforms, we’re all desperate to break the mold just a bit. “I’m supposed to meet Amber for our one-month anniversary, but I don’t want to leave you like this. She probably won’t care if I cancel. I could stay.”
I press the tips of my fingers against my throat to steady my voice. “That’s okay. Thanks. I’ll catch up with you later.” When she doesn’t move, I add, “Oliver helped me out.” That’ll distract her.
I hear a shuffling noise and see the end of Francesca’s hair hovering under the door. “Is he in there with you?” she hisses, sounding half-impressed and half-scandalized.
“What? No!” I would facepalm if my busted face wasn’t already well acquainted with the human hand. “I’m just saying that I’m good. Eliza’s going to want to get home soon anyway. Say hi to Amber for me.”
“I will,” she says, still sounding hesitant. “Feel better.”
“Thanks.”
I listen to her leave. The sound of her footsteps grows louder as she transitions onto the concrete, then disappears once she’s in the strip of grass that divides the restrooms from the parking lot.
I peck out a text to Eliza with one thumb—the only time I’ve ever been thankful for autocorrect—and arrange to rendezvous out back.
Eliza [2:32 P.M.]: WHERE ARE YOU?
Brynn [2:32 P.M.]: Bathroom by the concession stand.
Eliza [2:33 P.M.]: You ran away!
Brynn [2:33 P.M.]: Just meet me in the parking lot.
“You can drive,” I say in greeting as Eliza comes jogging around the corner.
Don’t let her see how bad it is. I grit my teeth and curl my toes inside my shoes. Don’t ruin her pep rally. It’s her day.
My purse, though abused, is still slung across my chest. I retrieve my car keys and dangle them from the pinky of my good arm.
RIGHT ARM
Am I the good arm?
ME
Yes, you’re the good arm. Shut up.
Eliza looks at me like I just offered her a bottle rocket instead of asking her to use the learner’s permit I know she has in her wallet. “I’m not allowed to drive with only you in the car. How’s your shoulder?”
My laugh is more of a wheezing grunt. I toss my whole lanyard at her, counting on her reflexes to kick in. She snatches it from the air. “You know how to drive,” I point out. “Just do the speed limit and no one will notice.”
“Did you even check your blood pressure?” she demands.
“I can take care of myself. It’s not as bad as it looks.”
I hate the tinge of desperation souring my voice. Eliza is like an auditory bloodhound, her ears attuned to the slightest inflections of pain. She plants both feet and lofts a single brow, a pose she absorbed from Dad. “It looks pretty significant.”
“It’s nothing.” I cast around us for something else to talk about. My eyes land on the fake oar jutting out of her backpack. “Your skit was funny. I recorded it for Mom and Dad, but I was kind of far away, so it’s not the best quality.”
Eliza ignores me and starts rattling off random guesses. “Knee? Elbow? Heart rate? Seriously, what is it?” When I open my mouth to speak, she holds up her index finger in a challenge. “Don’t even try to change the subject.”
“My shoulder’s still out,” I mumble, kicking at a crack in the pavement where two clumps of weeds are fighting for a sliver of space. “Everything else mushed back in already.”
“Can you put it back in?”
I shake my head, swallowing as a wave of dizziness passes over me at the motion. “I tried. You’ll have to do it for me. I can show you on YouTube. It’s easy.”
“I’m not going to let a YouTube video teach me how to do a medical procedure.”
I rotate my wrist to check the time, and shooting pain lances through my arm. I tug on the passenger-side door handle of my trusty Chevy Spark. “At least unlock it and let me sit down. I don’t want to be vertical anymore.”
Eliza clicks the button on the fob, her teeth scraping her bottom lip as she weighs her options. I open the door and melt into the seat, curling onto my side to alleviate the worst of the nausea roiling through my stomach. I hear the clunk of her bag getting tossed in the trunk.
I call Dad on speaker, balancing my phone on my thigh and stabbing at it with one hand. He picks up on the third ring. “Hey, I’m with a student. Can I call you back?” I hear a high-pitched caterwauling in the background that is either small animals being thrown into a woodchipper or an extremely new clarinet player.
“My shoulder is out and it’s doing that thing where it’s kind of stuck, you know?” It’s a relief to have Dad on the line, the only other person who speaks my body’s weird language. “My hip slid out a little too, but it was on my non-op side. I don’t think it disturbed any of the breaks or screws.” When my hip-dysplasia surgeon told me I could start moving more after reassembling half of my pelvis over the summer, I don’t think getting a haymaker to the face is what he meant by “high-impact activities.”
“What happened?” Dad asks.
“I got punched in the face by accident—I’ll tell you later—and I fell on my arm.”
Eliza climbs into the driver’s seat and shuts the door. She quirks her head as the clarinet gives off another shriek.
Dad makes a hrmm sound low in his throat. “You should go to the ortho or the hospital to get an X-ray and make sure you didn’t fracture anything.” His voice is muffled for a moment, the receiver scratchy as he gives some instruction or another to his student. “Our deductible is met,” he adds a moment later, though I’m not sure if that’s him talking to himself or talking to me.
I try to recall the numbers on the last insurance document I snooped when no one was paying attention. “What about the out-of-pocket max?”
“Let me worry about that. I’ll come by as soon as I can, okay? Just text me where you end up.”
I roll my eyes so far up in my head that I’m surprised I can’t see my own frontal lobe. “Fine. I’ll see you later. Love you.”
“Love you too.”
I hang up and groan, half from pain and half from the anticipated mental pain of having to deal with the hospital. “Actually, wait,” I say to Eliza, as if she’s in a huge hurry to illegally chauffeur me around. “Let me see if the ortho can squeeze me in.” Literally. But after calling and navigating the infuriating automated phone tree, the receptionist tells me that they have a packed schedule.
“No dice?” Eliza asks.
“Hospital it is.”
Eliza rises up in her seat to see better, peering down at my hunched form. “Here’s the deal.” She adjusts her seat to a rigid ninety degrees and grasps the steering wheel at the precise points denoted in the driving manual. “I’ll drive, but next time you need to ask one of your friends who actually has a license. I could lose my permit for this.”
Yelling would require me to breathe, which actually hurts more than I want to admit, so I stay silent. Eliza doesn’t understand. All it takes is one person finding out that I’m disabled and my whole life will unravel, just like it did when the non-disabled members of Dad’s extended family learned I was diagnosed before I’d even found out the truth about Santa. My cousin Tori never made a spectacle of me, but one voice isn’t enough to negate a whole ensemble at family reunions and holidays.
Oh, it’s so awful. Did you hear that Brynn has it too?
Or the weird celebration when Eliza wasn’t.
Thank the Lord that both of Jason’s kids didn’t get it. Can you imagine?
I don’t want to spend my senior year having everyone question whether I can do whatever activity, whether I need to take a break, take a pill. Calling me inspirational for eating a sandwich or scratching my butt. The scrunched, beaming faces people make when they refer to me as special or ask to borrow my handicapped-parking placard to go to a concert.
Eliza slows at a yellow light, stopping just in front of the crosswalk.
I knock the edge of my hand against the dashboard. “I know it’s farther away, but take me to Four Towers. I’ll die before I go back to University.”
She opens the GPS and pauses with her finger hovering over the touchscreen. “What’s the real name of Four Towers? I always forget.”
“Deaconess Medical Center.”
“I thought Dad doesn’t like that one,” she says, hesitating.
“I’m not Dad.”
A few minutes later I see the four towers that give the hospital its unofficial namesake stretching above the treetops. Eliza accidentally drives into the ambulance entrance and has to turn around. I chuckle under my breath, realizing that she doesn’t frequent these buildings like I do. “Main ER entrance is on the ground floor of the east tower.” I point in the general direction. “You can just drop me off.”
Eliza scoffs. “I’m not going to leave you by yourself.”
“Yes, you are.” The last thing I need is her hovering over me, asking me if I’m okay every six seconds while I drain my phone battery in the waiting room reading about every possible complication that could occur. “Unless you want to miss your SAT tutor.”
She groans. Checkmate. “Maybe I could reschedule.”
“I’m going to tell the doctor not to let you come back with me, so you might as well go make your enormous brain even bigger, nerd.”
After another few minutes of arguing and cajoling and calling Dad for reinforcement, Eliza agrees to go home. “But if you need anything, I’m coming right back.”
“I’m fine.”
“Just make sure you keep me posted!” she insists, sounding exactly like Mom in pitch and tone.
We have a brief standoff while she’s waiting for me to go inside and I’m waiting for her to leave. I cave first and check in at the desk, passing over my identification and grabbing a stack of intake forms. I fill them out in as little detail as possible, since no one ever reads them anyway except for the billing and insurance ones. I reluctantly write in Jenna Kwan as my emergency contact but only because Mom always answers her phone, while Dad’s gets drowned on a regular basis by screaming piccolos and sonic blasts from the business end of a tuba.
A triage nurse brings me into a separate room and asks me the same questions, eyeing my shoulder without touching. She rates me as a four, which means that I’m doomed to sit in the waiting room for all eternity, maybe even until the gross vending-machine food starts looking appetizing.
Dad [3:06 P.M.]: Hey, you hanging in there?
Brynn [3:08 P.M.]: Arm is literally hanging. I’m at Four Towers.
Dad [3:08 P.M.]: Sorry. I’ll head over as soon as I can.
Brynn [3:09 P.M.]: No hurry. They rated me a 4 in triage.
Dad [3:09 P.M.]: In that case, I’ll take a nap first.
Brynn [3:10 P.M.]: My phone’s dying. Tell Mom.
Just as my phone further protests its lack of charge, a different nurse leads me into another wing and takes my vitals in one of the narrow, cubby-like exam rooms. I need to remove my jacket to accommodate the blood-pressure cuff, which takes both of us and a fair amount of moaning to accomplish.
When she’s done, I flail my arm at my purse and accidentally knock it to the ground, not even caring that it’s my favorite bag and I’ll never get the smudges and scuffs out of the leather. “There’s a… a paper in there.” It’s the short version of the enormous medical binder I keep at home, an abstract to a dissertation. “Here, give it to me, please.” I realize belatedly how sharp my tone is, but it’s like the pain makes me into a different person.
The nurse passes it over and I dump the contents onto my lap, sorting one-handed through the mound of old receipts and Q-tips, loose pills and scarred coins. I open my EpiPen carrying case with my teeth and fish out the paper. I waggle it at her. “This has anything you might want to know.”
She gives it a quick scan. “I’ll give this to the doctor. He’ll be by in a minute.”
A real minute or a hospital minute?
“Thanks.”
She slips out through the gap at the edge of the curtain where it doesn’t quite meet the wall. There’s no television, so I sit in silence and appraise the room around me, my gaze drifting over the biohazard container and the cheap chair in the corner. I wonder if hospitals have a decorating committee where a bunch of designers sit around choosing the blandest color palette in existence.
The doctor’s introduction is so short that he forgets to tell me his name, and I can’t quite read it off the embroidery above his pocket. He has my medical sheet in his hand.
I point to the unnatural, throbbing lump that I assume is my bone. “It’s dislocated.”
He tilts his head a bit with a saccharine smile that drips with condescension and the wafting smell of wintergreen gum. “Well, a lot of people use the word ‘dislocated’ to mean ‘slipping slightly out of joint.’ That’s not the same thing. But let’s have a look.”
I unbutton my shirt and pull down the collar, pivoting on the bed to show him the worst of it. He startles. “Oh, it is dislocated.”
“Told you so,” I singsong through gritted teeth, my fist twisting braids into the thin sheet beneath me. They always sound like it’s such mind-blowing news. Call the press! Girl with condition that makes you dislocate everything dislocates everything!
“Have you ever dislocated anything before?” he asks, squinting at me with newfound interest, the way a child might stare at an exotic frog at the zoo.
I nod, almost shrugging before the pain reminds me to keep still.
“When was that?”
I think back. I popped my thumb out trying to open a bottle of chocolate syrup to make sundaes with Dad. It was so ridiculous that we laughed for ten minutes. “Last Tuesday.”
“I’m being serious.”
I lock eyes with him. “So am I. Did you read the notes?” I gesture to the paper he still has clutched in one hand. I can tell it’s my notes from the thick creases and a splotch on the back where I set it down on a drop of vanilla pudding the last time I was stuck in the ER during dinnertime.
“Ehlers-Danlos syndrome.” He sounds out each syllable like a first grader with phonics homework. “What’s that?”
“It’s a connective-tissue disorder. I also have its two comor—its two best friends, mast cell activation syndrome and POTS. The heart thing.” It’s always a battle to sound like I’m informed enough to not get gaslighted without upsetting some white coat’s ego by wanting to use actual medical terminology.
“Oh, is this the thing all those girls are diagnosing themselves with on the internet?” He squints at me over the top of the page. “What makes you think you have, uh, Evers-Damos?”
