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I make a note to call her rheumatologist tomorrow and stick a rocket up her ass.
I make another note to request a tracker implant be inserted.
After today, I can’t risk another unscheduled meeting again.
18
ELLA
Please don’t giveme ‘the sigh’, anything but that.
I’m sitting in my rheumatologist’s office, staring at her mouth, hearing words but not really understanding them. I’m waiting for the medical equivalent of a hammer to fall and smash up that sweet little illusion I have going on with myself right now, the one where I’m not really that sick.That the joint pain and muscle aches will ease up eventually if I get more rest, less stress, take every vitamin known to woman...
Bad news always comes after a brief pause, and then—
Sliding her gaze from the computer screen displaying this week’s blood results, Dr. Erin Bailey finally gives me what I’ve been dreading: a subtle little zephyr with the force of a cyclone.
It’s almost imperceptible, but to me it’s the loudest sound in this room, beating out the ticking clock above her desk and the muffled chatter coming from the waiting room outside.
The sigh.
The dark hole.
The death of delusion.
Tears threaten my eyes, but I blink them back fiercely. I’ve dealt with shitty news before. I can deal with it again. Besides, I didn’t get much sleep last night and that’s why I’m feeling so vulnerable. I heard a dog barking in the apartment next door, but my bodyguards just stared at me blankly when I’d asked them about it this morning.
“How bad is it?” I force a modicum of strength into my voice, wondering if once this appointment is over, Dr. Bailey will go home to her nice house and her accountant husband and her two beautiful children, and take a long, hot shower to wash away all the not-so-great news she’s given out to her patients today.
“Your rheumatoid panel isn’t good, Ella,” she says gently. “Your C3 and C4 proteins have dropped again which indicates the current course of treatment isn’t working.”
I suck in a shaky breath. “Can’t we just increase the Plaquenil? It’s worked great since I was seventeen.”
I have an image of myself at that age. I’m the edge of it, just like in that Stevie Nicks song I love so much. Fast forward a year, and there’ll be a cold ocean and strong arms, and a night I try so hard not to think about.
I’d do anything to go back to that moment, when I was his sun, and he was my darkness.
Dr. Bailey places her wrists on the edge of her desk and leans back in her chair, creating a bigger distance between us so her next blow will hurt less.“The Plaquenil isn’t suppressing your immune system alone. You’re getting too many minor infections on top of everything else. I know you’re adverse to this idea, but I think we should consider a three-month course of Methotrexate to calm everything down.”
Chemo.
She wants me to go back on chemo.
I can feel my whole body sagging into my chair. The last time I had this kind of treatment I was fifteen. I didn’t lose my hair, and I could still function, but the nausea and exhaustion made every day a battle.
How the hell am I supposed to keep working a twelve-hour day?
No one apart from Ivy knows about my lupus butscrew it,I’ll find a way to make it work. I don’t have a choice. Leaving isn’t an option. Everyone will just have to think I’m in a constant state of hangover for three months straight. There will be whispers and rumors, and…
“Will it be an IV, tablets, or—”
“Tablets. Once a week. It’s quite simple and the side effects won’t be as brutal as some of the others. We can handle any nausea you may experience with an extra strong dose of Phenergen.” She pauses to let all the medical jargon sink into my skin like a blunt blade. “I’m sorry, Ella. I know this isn’t the news you wanted.”
As she starts to list off the other side-effects, I drift away again. I’m back in that ocean, at the exact point the wave took me under. Once I’d stopped fighting against the current, a sense of peace had taken over my fear right before Edier saved me.
I want that feeling now.
I want it so badly I’d sell my soul for a taste.
