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There’s a tickle at the back of my brain, just where my spine connects. Meningitis? I shake my head (but gently, just in case). No. It’s not physical. It’s memory.
Holding this paper, reading about the Theodore B. Halverson show, I remember how it felt to want to be part of a performance. I remember the tingle of excitement as I sat in a stiff chair wearing a long black skirt, that chaotic disharmony of an orchestra tuning, each musician focused only on the sound of their instrument. The feel of the tension as I wind up my bow, and the gentle friction of rosin across the horsehair. Precisely how the light both soaks in and bounces off the wood grain of my violin.
Every sense is a memory. Every part of my brain recalls the sounds, sights, scents.
I remember it all, but I don’t feel it anymore. It’s a bizarre sensation, the echo of a memory of a feeling. I’m that far removed from the me I was when I wanted this.
I turn toward the recycling bin, but as I stand over it, I can drop in only the magazine and the grocery store circular. I pocket the invitation. Not because I plan to play. I have no intention of being in the orchestra with students. None at all. But I might like to attend. Sit in the back so I don’t stare at the violinists and evaluate their bowing and fingering. Listen to Theodore B. Halverson sing in that voice as rich and sweet as honey.
Just how long has it been since I sat in an audience seat in the Chamberlain auditorium? When I was a student, at whole-school assemblies? It was only a couple of years ago, but it feels muffled in my mind, like it’s been ages.
I guess sometimes eternities happen faster than I would think.
As I keep myself busy ignoring all the false alarms of Dr. Mercer sightings (and hearings, and sensings), I occasionally touch the invitation card through my pocket, just feeling that it’s still there. Which of course it is. It’s not going to disappear, because it’s real. Physical. My love for the violin may have blown away like a morning fog on a lake, but that was bound to happen. Feelings don’t last forever. My time as an excellent musician was a phase.
The thought shocks me. I actually stop moving between two bookshelves.
A phase.
That’s a terrible thought.
But it’s true.
I’m a person who went through a long, lucky, very expensive phase.
Like my mom’s foreign investment phase, which ended with a weekend-long “smart money course” for the whole family, given by our broker. Or my dad’s golf years. Each of us got a dad-trip to one continent or another and stood on grass verges while he hit balls into cups in Scotland and Australia, Ireland and New Zealand, Japan and France, not to mention all over New York. Now there are closets of clubs and ugly shoes and strange uniform pants nobody even looks at anymore.
I guess it’s a Whitney thing, these phases. We don’t stick with anything forever.
I’m not even a little comfortable with this idea right now. It makes me feel flaky. Flighty. Inconsistent in a way people with real character wouldn’t be. How is capriciousness the fatal Whitney family flaw, and why is it only now that I’m recognizing it?
I slide my finger along the edge of the cardstock again, and this time, I feel the hot pain of a paper cut, right at the corner of my fingernail.
That’s going to hurt for a long time. Every time I use a keyboard, wash my hands, or button something. And it will probably get infected.
Maybe it will be one of those antibiotic-resistant infections that causes my finger and then my whole hand to swell up. That will make me perfect bait for flesh-eating bacteria.
I could lose my hand. My whole arm.
My paperwork is going to look ridiculous. Cause of death? Papercut.
My heart rate is increasing in an unpleasant way, and I make my way to the workroom to do the calming-down ritual.
I take a piece of gently used printer paper from the stack and turn it to the clean side. With a pen from the cup on the table, I write the chain of events in my head, from paper cut to humiliating death certificate. I make sure not to miss a step, and my brain helpfully fills in any and all possibilities between paper cut and death I may have missed in my previous moment of worry.
Then I look at the list and give everything a probability. Paper cut? 100%. I can feel it, right there, throbbing and stinging. Death? For the purposes of this exercise, that one always gets a 1%, even if the actual possibility is much higher. (Okay, or lower, which I’m already beginning to see is the case today.)
From there, I work backward. What percent of people colonize bacteria on the scale to actually eat their arm off? Lucky for me, I don’t have a weakened liver, and I’m not immunocompromised. Those are points in my favor, but still. Tragedy happens. Bodies get colonized. Germs are powerful. And I’ve done the research—many hours of research. When accounting for both strep and staph versions, we’re looking at between .3 and 15 people in 100,000 who contract the bacteria, but every reputable website admits that their numbers are probably low, accounting for rising cases. This, I’d like to say, is not helpful. Thanks anyway, internet.
Okay. But I know what is helpful. Write it down. The odds. Likelihood of being the one person whose paper cut goes septic.
It’s a very small percent.
And see, here’s where the problem gets tricky again. I am a one in a million kind of person. I have years of experiences that most people don’t get, from the combination of red hair and blue eyes (.17%) to the chance of being one of the very few people accepted into the music programs I’ve been part of. Here at Chamberlain, I’m like everyone else, but in the world? I’m—through no fault of my own—exceptional. That makes playing the odds with WebDoc.com, well, not comforting.
I really might be that one person who develops the fatal and nearly-eradicated illness. Not to claim I’m special, but I’m kind of special.
I finish the exercise, because numbers don’t lie, and my therapist has convinced me this helps. She’s right. It helps. I look over the list of worst-case scenarios and see, right there in my own handwriting, that it would take a series of truly remarkable coincidences for this paper cut to end in death.
