by Yathusa Krishnamoorthy
For what I believe is the fourth time, I tell yet another doctor at the hospital who looks tired and uninterested, that it feels like my stomach is a washing machine, and there is something sharp in there on a heavy-duty cycle. Thrashing around and hitting the edges. My knowledge of anatomy is no good. Do stomachs have edges? I just hope the doctor understands that I’m in pain. I’m always in pain.
I sit in the waiting room, holding my breath and leaning against my mother. I try hard to breathe into her shoulder, so that I don’t have to smell the hospital. The smell that pricks the inside of my nostrils. I wait for someone to come and take my blood. Every few minutes my mother turns to me and asks if I’m hungry. No, I tell her.
The flesh of my stomach and my hips fold over my pants, and the skin under my chin hangs low. But I am not hungry today. My skin feels sticky and warm, and my appetite is long lost.
I wonder if the doctors know how exhausting it is to always be in pain. Do they know how that theory plays out in real life? Do they know how it feels to sit in a two-hour class and watch every single minute go by, worrying if the dull pain in my stomach will suddenly get worse? How will I explain this to my teacher? How can I leave the classroom fast enough without being noticed when I’ve accidentally sat so far from the door? And it’s not just about being in pain. It’s about all of the terrifying things that come with the pain. It’s about trying to avoid having to explain it to people. It’s about realising you actually can’t avoid explaining yourself to people. It’s about trying to explain it all and then laughing while you explain it so that people know that you’re okay and not in desperate need of a superhero.
When you’re always sick, people have a lot of opinions to share. Everyone suddenly becomes an expert, a specialist. I’ve heard a number of hilarious things. If you just drank the immunity shot that I get from the supermarket, you’d never get sick again. As if my mother hasn’t been force feeding me ginger and turmeric since I was an infant. If you just completely cut out coffee, it’d do the trick, trust me.
Trust you? Do me a favour. Fuck off. Because believe me I’ve tried trust. I trusted my parents. I trusted my doctors. I trusted the specialists who took my money and told me I was lactose intolerant. Yes. I’m sure this insane pain that brings me to my knees, is the result of my lactose intolerance Linda. I am so glad that you’re the expert.
My favourite part of all of this, is when people ask me why I don’t have private health insurance. They’ll ask, aren’t you tired of waiting in a public hospital waiting room?
No, I love it! Look at me! Look at my sunken eye bags! Look at my sweat patches! Look at my oily roots and flecks of dandruff! Look at my grown mother who has to accompany me to the hospital every single time I go! Don’t we look like people who love the public waiting room so much that we’ve intentionally not purchased private health insurance?
I want to tell these people that public is not a dirty word. It is the way by which I am able to see a doctor today, as uninterested, and rude as they may be. It’s free, don’t you get it? It’s enough for me. Until I begin to rot and turn into exactly the thing that everyone fears all women will eventually become, the free healthcare is doing enough. It’s keeping me alive.
And so, my mother and I sit together, side by side, and together we wonder when this fucking nurse will come to take my blood and pretend that that will be the thing that answers all my questions. I wonder how much blood I have already given. I wonder what my arm would look like if all the puncture wounds of this lifetime had never faded.
All of this pain must come from somewhere. So, while I want to turn to my mother and tell her it’s not my own doing, how can I? It doesn’t help that I’ve forgotten to take my happy pills two days in a row. I can’t even ask her to go and grab them for me given that she has no idea I’m even on them.
My phone vibrates in my pocket, and I pull it out.
Bear
Hi!!! just left home!!! see you in 10!!!
I look around me. A woman in front of me is wearing a torn denim skirt and has an IV in her arm. Her badly bleached blond hair looks like straw. The man sitting beside my mum smells like fish and vomit. The head nurse in the emergency department tonight looks homicidal. He hasn’t smiled once in the seven hours that I have been here. I have said sorry and thank you to him so many times, I must seem either Canadian or wildly annoying. How many of them lie to their loved ones? How many of them are here often enough that it feels like a second home?
I look at my mum. She looks at me. We are tired.
Me
Bear, I’m so so sorry, I’ve got a bug ☹ Feel a bit shitty, don’t wanna spread it around, see u tomorrow!!! Love u
My mum asks me who I’m texting. No one, I say. What would it matter? No one knows the truth anyway. Not her, not them. Barely me.
Yathusa Krishnamoorthy is a Sri Lankan Tamil whose stories are grounded in dirty realism. She is a Law/Arts student in Melbourne Australia.
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