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Once there was a real solution, she’d confess the problem.
Whitney followed the GPS directions to the specialist’s office, but twenty minutes later, she wished she was back in the traffic jam. The clinic waiting room was standing room only, and she paced near the door, answering emails, checking her social media profiles…making a grocery shopping list… She looked up and glanced around. It didn’t seem like anyone had been called in yet. The reception staff were chatting among themselves, and she could see several doctors in the lunchroom—a half-eaten birthday cake on the table.
What on earth was taking so long? What was the point of making an appointment if they still made you wait? She checked the time.
Six minutes? That was it? That’s how long she’d been there? It felt more like six hours.
“Whitney Carlisle?” a nurse called, appearing in the waiting room with her file.
She nodded. “That’s me.” Grumbles and annoyed looks followed her as she crossed the waiting room, and then the nurse led her down the hall to an examination room.
“Dr. Kyle will be right with you,” the nurse said, sliding her file in a plastic holder near the door.
“Thank you.”
The door had barely closed before it opened again.
“Whitney!”
She jumped, startled by the doctor’s booming, cheerful voice that hardly fit the setting of the clinic. The place was full of patients with incurable diseases. Maybe she’d selected the wrong specialist.
“Hi, Dr. Kyle.” She crossed her legs, but seeing her swollen ankle protruding over her heel, she unfolded her legs and shoved them back under the seat. It was silly, but maybe if she didn’t appear to be sick, he’d tell her she was okay.
“Nice to meet you. Dr. Forester told me you were his favorite patient,” he said, taking a seat behind his desk.
Whitney blinked. Her family doctor had said that?
“Kidding,” Dr. Kyle said, opening her file. “Jennifer Aniston is his favorite patient.” He paused, glancing up at her. “Kidding again.”
Whitney forced a smile. “Funny.” Not exactly what she looked for in a specialist.
“You’re nervous,” he said, removing his glasses from his lab coat pocket and putting them on. His eyes immediately became tiny and faraway through the inch-thick prescription.
Were they joke glasses? Another attempt at humor to put her at ease? She cleared her throat. Best to just jump into the reason she was even there. “The symptoms have been getting harder to live with lately. I’m exhausted all the time, my joints are swollen, especially my ankles, and my eyesight…” She hated to admit all of this, but she was there hoping for answers, desperate for a way to fix herself. Without it, she would need major life changes. None that she wanted to make.
After her car accident the previous year, the attending physicians had discovered something in her blood work even more serious. Dr. Forester had said that sickle cell anemia had no cure, and a year ago, she’d barely felt sick. If it hadn’t been for the accident, she may have gone on for years not knowing. She’d made it to twenty-nine not knowing she had the hereditary disease. She’d thought the headaches and poor vision were from stress and working too much. Long hours staring at a computer screen. But tests at the hospital had revealed a blocked artery in her chest, and further testing had revealed she had the disease.
Being adopted and moving states as an infant, not all of her medical files from birth had transferred with her. From her own research about her disease, both her birth parents had had to be carrying the sickle cell trait in their DNA to pass it along to her. She’d been one of the “lucky ones” to live without symptoms up until the year before.
Thank God she’d found out before she’d gone through with marrying Trent, having children. And that their pregnancy scare early in their relationship had been a false alarm. Not that she wouldn’t have been thrilled to start a family with him, but she refused to knowingly pass along this gene to a child, and it shattered her to know that children may not be in her future. Or Trent’s…
“I’m going to send you for more tests,” Dr. Kyle said, filling out a medical requisition form. “And then we can go from there.”
Whitney fought to control her annoyance. “I’ve already had tests done. The results are in the file.” All this sneaking off to see doctors was stressing her out more than anything. She wasn’t ready to tell anyone about her illness. She just wanted a fix. Or at least for something to make the symptoms less debilitating. She’d gone through all the tests already, and she’d had to wait several months for this appointment. She felt like she was running out of time…
“These are from a year ago,” he said, taking the test results out of her file. “When you weren’t having any other symptoms except the blocked artery in your chest and mild vision problems. I want a full, complete evaluation of your blood cells, your sight, everything… I’m also sending you for an MRI.”
Suddenly she missed the not-so-funny funny guy who had walked in. This new serious tone was making her stomach twist. Air struggled to make it all the way to her lungs. “Okay,” she said tightly.
There really wasn’t a choice. She suspected he was right to assume that things had gotten worse in ten months. Maybe they shouldn’t make people wait so long for appointments.
Annoyance toward the health care system helped to refocus her emotions away from the intense fear that threatened to take hold when she stopped too long to think about her illness or all the things in her life it could affect. Ignoring it, or at least trying to, made it a little less real. Made it feel a little less like she was teetering on the edge of a cliff.
“As you know, there’s no cure for sickle cell anemia, but we can certainly try to make the symptoms less severe.” He handed her the requisition. “Don’t put off these tests.”
The urgency in his tone wrapped around her, cinching tighter until her next words were barely more than a whisper. “I won’t.”
…
