CHAPTER 5 FRIENDS
AIFE
The past few days had passed by in a quick blur.
Anxiety had run amok in my brain since I’d completed my MRI.
If Dr. Su’s office would just call me, I’m sure I’d feel eons better.
There was so much trauma I had around anything medical and for good reason.
My therapist in Houston had officially diagnosed me with medical PTSD.
Unfortunately, I still got triggered often because I had to regularly see medical professionals.
To some extent, I’d processed my trauma, but trauma wasn’t linear.
I never knew how I’d be from one day to the next. Anxiety ate at my chest.
Every time my phone made a sound, my heart dropped into my stomach.
Anticipation and waiting were the most difficult parts of the medical process.
Anxiety would continue to war in me until I got some sort of notification, even if it just said my scan was read.
I craved it in a weird way. So much of my adult life had been spent figuring out my diagnoses that unfortunately waiting for the phone to ring was my new normal.
The first time I had to deal with the medical world was at sixteen.
Abdominal pain had hit me hard on a weekend.
Like most girls, I assumed it was a warning of my impending period.
As the sharp pain turned into a hot, searing knife, I finally informed my mom.
We agreed to hold off for a few more days before I was completely unable to move.
Somehow, I’d managed to walk into the ER hunched over, in so much pain, tears streamed down my face.
We spent the next few hours waiting to be called back into a room as my stomach pain only grew worse.
Finally, my mom and I were called back only for the doctor to look at me and ask if my period had started or if there was a possibility that I was pregnant.
I was sixteen! I barely knew what sex was at that point.
The rage I felt almost rivaled the pain.
Turned out, a cyst had ruptured and leaked into my cervix.
I was nearly septic. That had been surgery number one.
Surgery number two was two years later at eighteen.
I had just started my first semester of college and felt like the world was my oyster.
There was also a na?ve part of me that believed my body wouldn’t attack me.
Bodies were meant to take care of you, just as you took care of them.
Not mine though, never mine. Just as Thanksgiving break was set to start, lightning pain entered 59 my abdomen.
How could this happen again? Didn’t we solve this two years ago?
Had another cyst ruptured? One ER trip later and a doctor told me I needed emergency surgery for a septic appendix.
Apparently, I should have been in way more pain than I was.
They found cysts on my Fallopian tubes while they were in there and removed those cysts as well.
Not even six months later, I was back under the surgical knife for a massive ovarian cyst.
In two and a half years, I’d had three surgeries.
My belly button was pulled slightly now from all the laparoscopic surgeries I’d had.
Thankfully, all my surgeries had been day ones, and I got to go home right away.
It didn’t mean I liked the surgeries though.
They were expensive and annoying; it made me feel like a financial burden.
My family wasn’t rich, and surgery wasn’t cheap.
Surgery number four came at nineteen, roughly four months after the last one.
This time I couldn’t blame my body’s uncanny ability to produce cysts.
No, I had blown my knee out in an intramural game.
The MRI had shown I tore my ACL, MCL, and meniscus.
The surgeon referred to one ligament as “shredded.”
Of all the surgeries I’d had at that point, knee recovery was the worst.
I had to learn to do everything again: walking, running, stairs, and more.
It never occurred to me how much I used my knee until I couldn’t use it for twelve weeks.
Thankfully that surgery was over summer break.
I’d also never been more thankful toward my mother for being by my side during my painful recovery.
On my twentieth birthday after nearly five months of being surgery free, I managed to shatter my left thumb during an indoor soccer game.
The pain I felt from the break was unbearable.
I thought I knew pain, but this had literally taken my breath away.
Hand surgery was worse than knee surgery.
The therapy I had to go through while still in school was radical, painful, and intense.
It was at this point I became bitter and resentful.
Why did these things keep happening to me? It seemed wildly unfair.
Those weren’t even the extent of my medical trauma, but my ringing phone brought me out of my memories. “Aife Gomez.” I said into the phone.
“Hello, Ms. Gomez, this is Camilla from Dr. Su’s office.”
“Yes ma’am?” Anxiety rolled through my body. “I’ve got the results of your most recent MRI.
Everything looks great. You’ll have another follow-up next year. Any questions?”
“No. Thank you, Camilla.” Relief entered my body,
melting all the tension from my body, practically into the ground. My shoulders and neck felt like the entire world was off my body. As much as I owed Dr. Su and his team my life, his office was still the one I feared the most. He literally saved my life, and I could never repay him.
For some reason, tears welled in my eyes.
Clearly I’d been stressing myself out, and the relief at hearing everything was okay made me cry.
Doctors had caused me so much unwanted and unnecessary trauma.
I really and truly had a love/hate relationship with them.
Anyone that had chronic pain or chronic illnesses understood that.
In my opinion, doctors were a necessary evil.
There had been a point where I literally had crying, panic attacks before appointments.
I never wanted to be at that place again, which was one reason I chose to pursue my PhD.
Sighing, I turned back to my laptop. There were still several articles I needed to read in order to complete the first thirty pages of my dissertation.
My advisor and I were planning on having half my paper completed by Christmas.
We wanted to have the full thing done by May so we could have a number of months to edit and finalize while also planning my defense.
That idea made me extremely nervous—even as someone who spoke for a living.
Thankfully, I had plenty of months to prepare myself for that moment.
The ping of my phone brought me out of my research haze. Shaking my head a bit, I answered the phone. “Yes?”
“What you doing?” Davis asked. He sounded tired. “Research and then plans to write. You?”
“Same. Can I come over? I need an accountability buddy.”
I laughed. “Sure. Bring some hot chocolate and cookies.”
The warm, delicious liquid hit my tongue as I snuggled back into my pile of blankets.
It was only September, and I couldn’t stop shivering.
The first twenty-five years of my life had been in Texas where we had winter for approximately one week.
Meanwhile, Chicago was already getting chilly.
I had no idea how I would handle a full-blown Illinois winter. Granted, I said that every year.
Davis settled into my lounge chair, cookie dangling from his mouth.
Dark circles lined his eyes and deep lines seemed permanent on his forehead.
Grad school had pushed me to my limits, but a PhD program and full-time work drained me like a marathon runner post run.
I wasn’t the biggest caffeine person, but I practically lived on it now.
Thankfully, we only had the one lecture this semester and then just the dissertation next.
We fell into a comfortable silence as we worked on our papers. That was one of my favorite things about Davis—silence was never a problem. The only sounds in my small apartment were the keyboards clacking away.
“Aife?”
“Mmm…” I hummed softly at my friend. “Let’s take a break. My brain can’t fucking function anymore. My eyes burn from staring at a screen for so long.”
I had to agree with that. A small headache was forming behind my eyes. “What do you propose our break entails?”
He quickly grabbed my TV remote and turned on the NHL game. “Gotta watch my brothers.”
“I think Dre dragged Nat there tonight. She almost pulled me in today as well.”
“Really, it’s an uncanny ability of hers. Nice!”
Davis shot out of his chair. “What a fucking save, Zeke! Let’s go!”
My eyes widened at Davis’s antics. I knew he was a sports fan, but I only saw him as a dedicated athlete, not a spectator.
He wasn’t acting like this at the game we went to together.
It was seemingly one of the only times he truly was able to let go.
Normally, he was soft-spoken and rarely cussed.
It was nice to see him actually let loose.
“Come on, Walker! Take the damned shot! What are you doing?”
I turned my attention to the TV to see Walker barely miss scoring a goal. He seemed even bigger on the ice which was hard to fathom because the man was a giant. He dwarfed me more than normal-sized adults did.
The other team started to make a run toward Zeke before Walker stole the puck and passed it quickly to another player.
That’s when shit hit the fan. An opposing player seemingly hooked the stick under the skates of a Hammers player.
The Hammers player hit the ice hard and stilled.
Before I could process what exactly had happened, Walker was fighting the offending player.
“Oh fuck. He has to reel that in, or he won’t be facing just a penalty box.” Davis dropped his head into his hands. “The last thing he needs is a suspension and a fine.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t fighting common in hockey?”
“Yes and no, Aife. TJ is proudly an enforcer, one of the last. He goes after guys who hurt his team. The days of enforcers have started to decline, and a lot of fans think enforcers should face fines and suspensions. Tom Wilson from the Capitols is a great example.
Some of the enforcing he got up to was dangerous. In some cases, fans viewed it as retaliation. TJ tries not to fight much, but he’s a big dude and can be overprotective.”
He dragged his eyes back to the ice as his friend skated to the penalty box.
“If he gets a suspension, he might be off as the face of the franchise. He’s worked far too hard to lose it all for a fight, even if it’s a justified fight.”
I nodded. “So, he shouldn’t fight?”