I’m Just A Little Tired . . . #3
When he pushed the box of tissues toward me, I looked down at them. I’m not crying. That was when I felt the tear hit the back of my hand. Oh, I guess I am. My eyes dropped to the feeling of Lula Ann’s hand that covered mine. She said nothing as she gazed at me with all her love and support.
I took a deep breath. “Um, so is lupus like something that I take medication for, and it eventually goes away? Or is it something that I will have forever now?”
With a tilted head and warm smile, he answered. “We currently do not have a cure. This is something that you will have to manage from here on out, Miss Phillips.”
My breathing hitched, and my head turned to the only person in the room that I knew would pick me up if I passed out. She was calm and present just like I knew she would be. She was the strongest person that I knew.
“Okay,” she said. “Dr. Metaphor, what are her treatment options? What’s next for us?”
Us, not me. This was not her battle, but she didn’t care. As my best friend, my sister, she would stand in it with me because that was who she was. For the rest of the appointment, she was my voice. She would have to give me all the information after the shock of today wore off.
It felt like I blinked, and we were back in my condo. I didn’t remember the end of the appointment, the walk to her car, the drive to my place, or anything. Now, I sat on my couch while I heard her in the kitchen. Cooking was my best friend’s coping mechanism.
There was no other sound in my place other than her moving around my kitchen. The television was off, and there was no music. The silence was deafening.
She came around the couch with a plate in her hand. After she set it on the coffee table in front of me, she sat next to me. “Eat, Maz.”
I felt the tear fall that time. I glanced at her. “I’m sick, Lula.”
She shook her head and her finger went up. “Nope, that is not what we are going to do.” Her hands cupped my cheeks. “Mazikeen Joy Phillips, you are not sick. The lupus is sick. You are and will always be Mazikeen Joy Phillips.”
Something in her words broke through like a sledgehammer on a brick wall. Every tear that I held back came out in the ugliest of ways. This was the hard breathing, shoulder shaking, snot leaking cry. “I don’t want to die, Lula. I don’t want—”
With her arms wrapped firmly around me, she shushed me. “That’s not what we are going to do either. There is no funeral that you need to plan. You have movies on the lawn in a few weeks at one of your properties. That’s what you’re planning.”
I sniffled before I responded. “You don’t know that, Lula. You can’t know that.”
“No, but I know your stubborn ass. There is no way that you are going to let something like lupus win.” She pulled me out of her arms. “Girl, do you remember when you were, what, thirteen, and Darius Cooker said that he could beat you in a race down the street from your house to his?”
The memories brought forth a chuckle. I nodded, then said, “Like he really could. He tried to cheat and still lost.”
We both laughed. “Right. That nigga tripped you, and you went down. I thought it was over, girl.” We continued to laugh, then hers subsided before she continued. “It wasn’t over, though. You jumped your ass up, scraped knee and all, then took off behind him. He wanted to fight you when you won.
“I know that girl. The one who, even when it looked like it was lost, fought to the end. I know the girl that pours into everyone around her to the point that she sometimes forgets to pour into herself.”
Her hands grabbed mine. “Let me tell you what we are going to do. We are going to take a few days to get all your FMLA paperwork in order to take a mental health leave. Thank God you hired an assistant and an intern,” she said with a wink.
I wanted to fight back on the leave, but God knew I needed it. This time, I wouldn’t fight. Hell, I was too exhausted to fight. “What am I going to do on a mental health leave?”
When the corners of her mouth pointed upward, I knew we were about to be on a plane somewhere. Lula Ann’s other coping mechanism was to travel. It was fitting for her since she was the owner of Passport Society, one of the top travel agencies in the region.
“What we are going to do on your mental health leave is take a few trips. The world is our oyster. Where do you want to start?” she asked.
I thought about all the places I’d been and where I still wanted to go. There was a major perk when you had a best friend who worked in the travel industry. I’d been places that I never dreamed of going. There was one place we recently talked about. “Bali, let’s go there.”
“Bali it is.” She picked up the plate of food from the coffee table. “Now eat.”
I knew that this trip was a temporary moment to get my mind off things. I also knew that we wouldn’t go until the doctor cleared us to go, because I had no idea what I had to do next. Would I be stuck here and not able to travel because of this thing called lupus?
Lula Ann knew me well. She knew that I needed a moment to regroup so that I could start this journey with the right mindset. Bali was a great place to regroup.