notes from above ground

xxii

I’m feeling physically ill for the first time since the weird year started.

It’s the kind of sickness that creeps up on you, starting with some emotional instability. Maybe you’re just tired. Maybe you just need to go for a walk. You go for a walk, and the smell of the outside air makes you sick to your stomach.

You get home and eat an orange (your roommate’s) which should give you the boost you need to fight off whatever’s brewing inside you. You do some school work and feel it draining you more than usual.

You feel your forehead like your mom would—it feels a little hot. The practice question begins writing itself: “A 25-year-old man presents with four hours of fever, chills, and nausea...”

You remember you’re scheduled to go to the operating room tomorrow to watch four people get their tubes tied. You know it wouldn't be safe to bring pathogens into someone’s abdominal cavity, but if you call in sick, you’d have to reschedule, and you’ve already sort of made peace with the fact that you’re going, and wouldn’t it suck to have it continue to loom over you?

You get a text from a classmate asking to hang out. The world is making you decide whether you're sick or not before you thought you’d have to. You tell her that you’re running a fever, and she says “Oh no, don’t go to work tomorrow.” You protest, because you’ve already sort of made peace with it, and wouldn’t you be wearing scrubs, gloves, mask, hairnet—layers and layers of plastic between you and the abdominal cavities?

You remember that you never wanted to do this in the first place, any of this, and you realize the pathogens have given you a perfect out. You feel a rush of what feels like dopamine, a reward for getting sick.

You start to feel excited at the opportunity to take a work-sanctioned break. It’s the kind of excuse that no one could deny you. No one could make you feel guilty about getting sick. Shouldn’t you feel guiltier if you swallow your sickness and bring it to four abdominal cavities ripe for infecting?

Having not yet made the decision to stay home, you find yourself wishing to wake up sicker. You wish for suffering, the bodily kind, because you think it’ll be more bearable than the psychological suffering of watching Fallopian tubes get zapped out.

You feel betrayed for rooting against your own wellbeing. You realize that deciding, right now, to stay home tomorrow would be good for your health. If you have to reschedule, it is what it is.

You sit for a moment and don’t think of anything at all. Decisions don’t always need to be made.

You snap out of the brief meditative state and your legs start bouncing, having woken up to reality in tandem with your mind. Will the bouncing of your legs use up precious nutrients and inhibit your immune system from fighting off the pathogens that are probably abounding in you?

You feel your heart threaten to jump out through your esophagus.

You look out the window at the hospital parking lot, which is your backyard, and feel your head throb.

You go to sleep and have weird dreams about babies crawling out of the pipes in your bathroom.

You wake up, still sick. You stay home and email the gynecologist. She tells you to feel better, no need to reschedule. You get out of bed and throw up in the toilet.