Chapter 5
Chapter Five
NYLA
The thermometer beeps, I take it out of my ear and read the temperature.
My thoughts immediately drift to the follow-up exam. Five more days, then I’ll know.
Oh God…
But that’s not the only thing that’s making it hard to breathe, because there’s also the bomb Dr. Franks dropped during my introductory interview earlier, as if it were just a pretty firework rocket.
Damn, how am I supposed to do this?
The lymph nodes on my neck are normal in size.
The ones in my armpits too. I get up and feel my groin.
Also no swelling, all good. I note that in the journal as well, then I strap on the blood pressure cuff and start the device.
The familiar humming fills the room, the cuff winding tighter and tighter around my upper arm.
Outside, someone thunders down the hallway. ‘Oof, that was close,’ I hear Olive curse.
When I walked past her open door earlier, I was able to glance into her room.
Not a single box in sight, not a speck of dust, but instead a perfectly lined-up orchid collection on the windowsill, a flawlessly made bed, and pictures hanging at perfectly measured distances from one another.
She’s the only one of the five of us whose room is already fully set up—however she managed that.
The values appear on the device’s display: blood pressure 120 over 80. I smile, satisfied.
‘Nyla, are you in there?’ Olive’s voice reaches me muffled through the door.
‘Yeah, come in.’ I jot the numbers down in my journal and stow the device in the drawer.
The door swings open. Even though Olive is wearing simple jeans, she looks as if she has just floated down from the catwalk to join us other merely mortal women here on earth. With growing unease, she scans the construction site that is my room at the moment.
In the light of the bare bulb that’s been provisionally mounted on the ceiling, it looks barren.
A dozen moving boxes are stacked in the corners.
Only the bed is already made, and the table where I’m currently sitting, carrying out my routine examinations and trying to keep my fear of everything that awaits me in the coming days in check.
Olive rolls up her sleeves. ‘Need help unpacking?’
Tomorrow ,she has her first shift in the intensive care unit at Halifax Harbor Hospital. ‘No, I’ve got it, thanks. You should go to bed, you’ve got a tough day ahead of you tomorrow.’
Shaking her head, she goes over to my suitcase, which lies open on the floor next to the bed. ‘You really need to hang up your tops, otherwise they’ll be full of creases.’ With determination, she grabs an orange knit sweater.
Wrinkles in clothes are, in my world, like perfectly furnished shared rooms from the get-go: incidental.
To her, though, they seem to mean a lot, far more than they did back when we were at uni together five years ago.
With infinite care she hangs the sweater on a hanger and lovingly smooths it out.
‘This orange is great, you should wear it more often,’ she says, opening my closet door. Pure shock suddenly takes over her expression. ‘My God, no, this won’t do.’
Without waiting for my reaction, she storms out of the room. I step up to the closet and look inside, but I can’t figure out what just shocked her so much.
A little later she comes back with a bucket of water, cleaning supplies, rubber gloves, and a rag. ‘Sit down, I’ll take care of this quickly,’ she says solicitously. ‘You’ve had a long day.’
She’s right about that, but I still can’t just let her clean my wardrobe, which isn’t even dirty to begin with. ‘I can just do it myself tomorrow.’
‘It’s no problem, I have to wind down before I can sleep anyway.’ Unfazed, she pulls on the gloves, wrings out the rag, and scrubs the top shelf clean. ‘So, tell me, how was the ER?’
I take a shirt out of the suitcase and spread it out on the bed. ‘It was nice to be able to help again,’ I answer, because that’s something good, and that’s what I want to focus on.
‘You should smooth that out properly before you fold it.’ Olive points at the shirt and then turns to the next shelf in the wardrobe. ‘Do you think you can handle the stress at work?’
I have to. I want to. More than anything. ‘I can do it,’ I say, but I can hear the doubt in my words.
She wrings out the cloth, her questioning gaze finding me. ‘Then what is it?’
‘What do you mean?’ I turn back to the shirt and fold the right side inward.
‘Your forehead is one big crater landscape—you really have to be careful, or those wrinkles will stay—and the corners of your mouth are drooping pretty badly.’ Olive rises gracefully from her crouch.
Not a single one of the droplets of water dripping from the cloth reaches her clothes. ‘So, what’s going on?’
With a sigh, I sink down onto the bed. ‘I prepared for working in the emergency room.’ For weeks I worked out strategies to cope with the stress.
‘But?’ My roommate’s cheeks flush softly, that’s how hard she’s scrubbing the wardrobe.
‘But now I’m not only supposed to work in the emergency room, I’m supposed to take part in a two-week program where doctors also ride along in the ambulance.
’ When Dr. Franks told me earlier that I’m expected to report for duty at the emergency dispatch center first thing tomorrow morning, for a moment I thought I couldn’t breathe.
I’m not prepared for what could happen out there. I have no idea what I’ll be confronted with.
Our patients aren’t lying in a sterile treatment room where we have everything within reach, the light is always perfect, and the surroundings are clean. We have to act wherever they happen to be. We act the way the situation demands.
That’s what this Jaden explained to me today, and I’m sure he knows what he’s talking about.
For a hero like him, it’s naturally no problem to save lives in heat, rain, or catastrophically bad conditions.
But right now I can’t be a heroine, no matter how much I’d like to be one.
I don’t have the strength to carry heavy things, nor the stamina to constantly run up and down stairs or throw myself headfirst into a rescue mission, no matter the cost. And my immune system is okay, but if factors like wet or cold come into play, it might fail.
‘I understand,’ Olive says sympathetically. Her gaze meets mine for only a moment before she goes back to her work. ‘You’re afraid.’
‘Yes,’ I admit. Terrible fear that I’m fighting with all my might, but that’s still there. ‘What if my body doesn’t cooperate?’ If it turns out that I can’t do my job after all? Because I’m trapped in this body that is so weak, so vulnerable, so exposed.
What if I have to quit in order to stay healthy? And what if I refuse to give up my dream of being a doctor, and my body gives out on me precisely because of that?
What if I have to live through it all again?
And what if it ends differently this time?
Twenty-five percent.
Only five days left until the follow-up examination.
My pulse speeds up. I don’t want to have this fear, but it’s there and it’s devouring me.
Suddenly, Olive is beside me and pulls me into her arms. Like a child who was just trapped in a nightmare, she rocks me back and forth. ‘I know how hard this is for you.’
No, she doesn’t, and that’s a good thing.
It’s a gift not to know what this fear feels like.
How it takes everything from you, your hopes, your dreams, your lightheartedness.
How, without asking, it poisons your soul and you forget how to be happy, no matter how hard you fight against it.
How it paints horror scenarios in your head, where your wishes used to live.
Olive pulls away from me and looks at me intently. ‘I understand that,’ she says in a tone as if it were actually true. ‘But I know that you’re strong.’ She nods vehemently. ‘I know that every inch of your body, every milliliter of your blood, every piece of your tissue is healthy.’
Yes. Now. But what about tomorrow?
Next week?
In three years?
She brushes the fringe of my pixie cut off my forehead, her warm fingertips gliding over my skin. ‘The strategies you’ve worked out for the emergency room, you can also use in the ambulance.’
‘I will, but …’
With a shake of her head, she signals to me that for her there is no but. ‘Repeat after me: I can do this.’
Indecisively, I chew on my lower lip; Olive’s gaze becomes more insistent in a loving way. ‘I can do this,’ I finally say, doing everything I can to believe my own words. With every fiber of my being, I want to believe them.
‘Nice.’ A broad smile dominates her perfectly symmetrical face. ‘And now wait a second, I have something for you.’
She gets up from the bed and leaves the room.
My gaze falls on the empty shelves of the wardrobe and I try to see light in the darkness, hopeful colors in the monotonous brown, new possibilities in the gaps.
But there is nothing. The shelves are empty, and filling them with colorful clothes won’t change that.
Not really. How could it, when it only takes a small movement of the hand to tear them out of the wardrobe again?
In the hallway Olive’s footsteps grow louder; she appears in the doorway, a pot with a tiny little orchid in her hand. It doesn’t have any blossoms yet, but several buds are already clustered on the two stems that lean elegantly against wooden stakes.
‘Isn’t she adorable?’ she asks, handing me the pot.
She is adorable, but also so fragile in her beauty, and that’s exactly why I give the pot back to her. ‘It definitely won’t survive with me.’
Visibly disappointed, Olive takes the plant back and for a moment studies the rich green leaves that arch over the rim of the pot. ‘But you need a bit of nature in this room.’
‘I’m still decorating, don’t worry.’ As soon as I find the time, I’ll pick out pretty pictures, airy curtains, and cozy cushions.
‘I wouldn’t expect anything else from our style queen,’ she says with a wink, and walks to the window with the pot. ‘You still need a bit of greenery in here, though.’ Lovingly, she places the plant on the windowsill and turns it until, in her opinion, it’s in the perfect position.
My gaze falls on the dwarfish little plant.
I would like to imagine how its buds open and its blossoms unfold. I want to watch as it grows big and strong and magnificent. Still, I’d better not allow this image to rise up inside me.
Nothing is certain.
To picture a future, to pour a foundation for it so you can one day build a house on it, move in, have a husband, children, a life. That’s what one-percent people do, in their euphoric unawareness, their blissful ignorance.
I’m not a one-percent person, and I never will be again.
‘Okay, then let’s finish cleaning your wardrobe.’ With these words, Olive whirls around, pulls on the rubber gloves again, and turns to the cleaning bucket.
I fold the T-shirt next to me into a bundle that will hopefully meet Olive’s standards, and reach for the next one. It’s dark blue, like the rescue uniform Jaden was wearing today.
Jaden.
I already realized during the treatment that we would see each other again. But that we might run into each other as soon as tomorrow at the rescue station—that I didn’t expect when we said goodbye today.
Until next time, Superhero. Take care of yourself, I said
His answer was, See you, Miss Worst Case. Don’t forget to smile.
Don’t forget to smile… his voice echoes inside me as I fold the shirt and want nothing more than for it to be as easy as it sounds coming from his mouth.