Page 13 of None Of Your Business

There isn’t much paint to wash off, which somehow makes the whole effort feel even more depressing. I scrub the blue pigment out of my cuticles anyway and wash my hair as fast as my wrists allow. By the time I finish, the water is warm, and I no longer want to die.

Physically, at least.

∞∞∞

I arrive eleven minutes late for my appointment. It’s a personal best. Anatomical diagrams of cross-sectioned joints line Dr. Mercer’s walls, alongside shelves of heavily used reference books. I’ve been seeing her for eight months—my third specialist. The first treated me like a collection of malfunctioning symptoms attached to an inconvenient person. The second retired. Mercer is brisk and precise, and she doesn’t waste time on empty reassurance. I appreciate that about her.

“So.” She sits at her desk and opens my file. “How have you been feeling since our last appointment?”

“Fine.”

She stops typing. I hate when she does that.

“Fine, how?”

“Fine-fine. Alive. Functioning. Vertical.”

Her mouth twitches, but she keeps her voice level. “Rowan.”

“Mostly vertical.”

“Let’s start there. How has the pain been?”

“Manageable. A five, sometimes a six.”

“How often is sometimes?”

I look up at the ceiling tile. Why can’t doctors accept a vague answer? “Four, maybe five.”

She types.

“You’re very difficult to lie to.”

“I’d hope so.”

“Part of medical school?”

“Natural talent.”

I pause, giving up. “I’ve had flares. Mostly the left hip. My wrists have been worse, too.”

“Dislocations?”

“Partial.” I hesitate, and her fingers freeze over the keyboard. “My shoulder, but it went back on its own.”

“When?”

“Last Tuesday, while I was sleeping.” Which is a joke if you ask me.

She makes a note before we work through the rest of the checklist: compression garments for my POTS, which I admit I wear when I remember, and the beta-blocker to keep my heart rate from spiking every time I stand up. It’s finally at the right dose after three months of adjustments that left me so sedated I had to stop driving for a while. I told my family I was simply in a “walking-for-mindfulness” phase. Why they believed that, coming from a woman who once drove two blocks to avoid walking in the rain, remains a mystery.

“Anti-inflammatories?” she asks.

I make a face. “They wreck my stomach.”

Mercer takes off her glasses and rubs the bridge of her nose. “Because you need to take them with food.”

She stands and gestures toward the exam table. We run through the physical checks. She checks the hypermobility in my thumbs and knees before pressing carefully around my left hip joint.