7. Georgie
CHAPTER SEVEN
GEORGIE
The thing is, no one ever tells you how to deal with chronic illness. There’s no handbook, no be-all/end-all game plan to make things magically better. There’s no right or wrong; there’s only through.
But each chronic illness is different. It comes with its own set of challenges or limitations and struggles. It does not consider how well or how poorly you take care of your body. It does not judge. It takes and it takes, until you have nothing left to give.
The spoon theory is something I truly believe in.
I read about it once, about this metaphor someone created for their friend who has lupus as a way to explain what happens to their energy living with chronic illness.
You have a set number of spoons representing your energy each day.
Each task takes a certain amount of energy or in theory, spoons.
So, what might take a healthy person 2 spoons to shower could realistically take someone who is chronically ill 7 spoons to complete.
Now that may not seem like much, but if they use up their spoons too quickly or on a task that takes more spoons than average, they might run out faster than a healthy person with ample spoons to spare.
In my mind, I like to imagine that my spoon set is mismatched.
I have some small spoons, some large, some are twisted, some bent out of shape.
I only have a couple of perfect spoons. Each kind has a different amount of energy, each important.
But sometimes I forget to wash some of them, and sometimes I lose a few.
I can hope that one day I’ll have a complete set of regular spoons, but for now I take care of the mismatched ones I have as best I can.
Looking up from my bowl of cereal, I gaze over at my sink, knowing and dreading that in mere minutes I will make my way over there to place the dirty bowl in it.
Or maybe the counter. By the looks of things, the dishes have piled up again.
I swallow my final spoonful of Fruity Yums (look, I buy generic brand cereal because name brand is too expensive for barely flavoured cardboard) and sigh at the pink, cereal-dust flavoured milk in the bowl.
I could drink this, it is customary with cereal after all, but that requires a spoon—the metaphorical kind, not literal—that I just couldn’t be bothered to use right now.
I cringe as I get off the couch, mindful of everywhere my body aches.
My back cracks, my thigh burns. The monster is still there and rearing its ugly head.
No bandage, no matter how thick the padding is, covers it enough to take the sting away.
It rubs every time I walk, turning my thigh this way or that to escape it.
A friendly cousin monster has bloomed from all the stress of everything too.
It sits right under my breast, where the skin pulls across ribs in just a way that reminds me it’s there with every breath I take, angry and red and covered with a bandage to save my shirts from the impending shit storm.
There’s absolutely no way I am wearing a bra today.
I get the bowl to its final destination, dumping the milk into the sink of dishes and the bowl goes on the kitchen counter next to the other bowl from my morning cereal.
“George?” Franny’s voice echoes through my apartment.
Franny is the only person other than my parents who can call me George.
Well, I don’t communicate with my dad much anymore, he decided that a new life with a new family in a whole new city was better than sticking around and trying to make things work with the one he had.
So, I guess it’s only my mom and Franny who call me that now.
I clink the dishes to pretend I am doing something productive. She peeks around the doorway, her golden hair with purple tips swishing as she shakes her head at me when she spots my mountain of dishes.
“Francis,” I say to her coolly, pretending I know nothing about the dish mountain in question behind me.
“Did you need some help with those?”
She’s not mocking me, I know. Franny has always been there for as long as I’ve known her.
The first day I moved in was supposed to be the start of something great.
The first day in a new life with Brandon, who wasn’t even here to help me with the move.
It was just my dumb luck that the elevator broke (go figure), and the other one was already on service for another couple moving out who refused to let me use it for one trip of big furniture.
So, I had to haul my things one by one up five flights of stairs, heaving and huffing the whole way only to find that my apartment door had locked behind me after the first trip.
I had to call the building manager to be let back in, which just so happened to be Franny.
She not only let me back in, she also helped me with my smaller items up and down the stairs, and then forced the couple using the elevator to let me use it for the big furniture.
Building manager authority and all. But her act of kindness urged me to make her cupcakes as a thank you, and a ‘hello I’m your 4 floors away neighbour, please like me’ gift, and that was it.
I had her hooked the moment she tasted homemade marshmallow buttercream.
So yes, I know she’s not mocking me when she asks if I need help. But I know that she knows that I will refuse, and instead of continuing to let the dish pile fester any longer, I use my remaining spoons of energy to clean the kitchen.
“Georgie,” Franny says in a tone that sounds an awful lot like ‘come on, don’t be stupid, let me help,’ but I just wave her off.
I set the water temperature to scalding.
I begin cleaning the dishes in order. Cups formerly filled with milk and juice, a shot glass from a tequila shot I regretted last night.
Then cutlery, spoons, forks and knives. Cereal bowls, of which there are four, and last, I do the small and large plates from dinners I microwaved straight from the freezer to plate to stomach.
Thank God for my mom’s meal planning obsession.
“How are your hips doing?” Franny asks casually. I turn; she’s hopped up on my countertop and is scrolling through her phone while she waits for me to finish being stubborn.
This is a new question that she’s taken to asking lately.
The first couple of times, I didn’t hide it from her.
I’d roll down the waistband of my pants, showing her the blooming marks from the aftermath of the elevator.
But today I don’t want to be honest with her.
If I am honest with her, I’ll have to tell her that they are still littered with bruises that are slowly fading from dark and angry to a gross green-yellow, just like my dignity.
It’s hard to believe that everything happened almost two weeks ago, but these splotchy bruises are proof that I didn’t dream it.
The fact that I take the stairs every time now? Not a coincidence.
“Hey,” I say to get her attention as I towel dry my hands. My next plan is to flop back onto my couch and watch Schitt’s Creek until sunrise. Franny looks up at me, waiting for me to continue. “Did you ever find out about the call? Like, how much it cost and all?”
“Oh!” She hops off the counter, a smile on her face. “I must’ve forgotten to tell you. It cost Rivera nothing. The elevator company said it was their employee’s decision to stay on the line without asking, so he will be the one to pay for the call. Thank God. It saves me a lot of paperwork.”
I wish I didn’t have such a physical reaction to this, but my body betrays me and tenses and my breath hitches.
He stayed on the line, knowing he would get in trouble, for me.
Now he was being made to pay… God knows how much out of pocket or off his paycheck?
He hadn’t left my mind, the man on the other end of the phone.
He was there in the back corner, hanging out and waving every time I remembered something new about him, our conversation.
I refused to let him become my every thought.
I was like that once before and look where it got me.
With Brandon, everything was on hyper drive and unrelenting and so, so good.
Until it wasn’t. A part of me wondered if the life he left behind was because it was no longer what he wanted or because I was no longer what he wanted.
I don’t understand how you can just love someone one minute and the next, you don’t.
It never seemed that simple to me. It was his loss, and I am definitely over him, but it still bothers me sometimes.
“You want to watch the episode where Patrick sings to David?” Franny throws herself down into my armchair, and I gracelessly flop onto my couch, onto my stomach and chin pressed into a pillow to support.
“Nah, I’m back on season five again. Let’s watch this one,” I click on Season 5, episode 13. Franny rolls her eyes, but if you know you know.
We settle in and watch the episode as if we don’t watch it every other day.
“So, the elevator company said they were just going to fine the guy… how much?” I chew on the inside of my cheek, eyes and ears watching and listening and taking in the show, but my mind’s a million miles away.
“I don’t know, like… assuming it’s a couple dollars a minute…” Franny tries to do the math but huffs in defeat, throwing her hands in the air. “A lot.”
I try the math myself, but it makes me feel terrible.
Even if it was 2 dollars a minute, that means this random stranger who I connected with on quite possibly the worst day of my life to date will be paying $240 of his own money just because he stayed on the line with me.
Though that may not be much to some, it could mean everything to someone else.
It could mean no groceries on a table. The loss of a job.
“Franny.” Super casually said, and totally not suspicious.
She rolls her head away from the direction of the TV to meet my gaze. “George,” she says back in the same way, but this time it’s dripping with sarcasm.
“What’s… what’s the name of the elevator company?” Innocent. So innocent.
She tucks a stray piece of hair behind her ear. “You know I can’t tell you that.”
“I mean, isn’t it a public knowledge thing?”
“But the elevator company is not the same as the company that answers the phones. It’s all very confusing, but I can’t tell you, G. I am sworn to building manager honour. Just let it go, okay? It’s not that big of a deal.”
But I can’t let it go, and it is a big deal to me. I can’t just forget him and what he did for me when he could’ve left me in the dark cold elevator forever. He was kind to me, he was selfless, and he deserves to know my gratitude. He doesn’t deserve to be punished.
Franny refuses to budge on the matter, and I refuse to give this up. There’s only one thing left to do. Investigator Georgie Wright is on the case.