The barista flashed a smile and thanked her when she picked up her coffee. Being one of the first customers of the day, the whole transaction had been quicker than usual, for which she was grateful. She took a large gulp of the heavy caffeine, willing it to seep into the pores and power her forward. She asked when the attached book store would open, to learn that it wouldn’t be for a few hours yet, so she resigned herself to making do with the book she already had.

She took another hot gulp a few minutes later as she left her car in the hospital parking lot and stepped into the icy wind. Ignoring the information desk inside, she walked directly to the GI department. She’d been here before.

Claiming a chair in the waiting room that offered a table beside, she set the paper cup down and took a cursory look around as she fumbled with her purse, coat, and book. A woman three chairs over typed on a laptop. Dammit, she thought, I should have brought mine after all. She had debated earlier that morning, blurry-eyed, exhausted, and rushed, whether to slip the light-weight digital anchor into its carry case and bring it, but she’d spent so much time on it lately, and her mood was becoming increasingly blacker each day, so she had chosen to use this as an excuse and force the distance, testing to see if it helped.

She kind of doubted that it would. Then she berated herself for undermining the whole attempt with that cynical thought.

Opening the novel that she had started reading twice through the Fall and Winter, only to abandon it before the end of the first chapter both times, she ignored the bookmark and returned to the start, willing herself to pay attention to the words. Speed-reading through the first few pages of Zadie Smith’s “On Beauty”, she started to remember the gist of the story, and wondered, again, why she was having so much difficulty staying with it. It was beautifully written and engaging from page one.

Other than when the nurses called out names of patients and waiting family members, she eventually managed to ignore the room long enough to rediscover why she liked the book, a lot. At least, so far.

On page 18, she slowed to give attention to the brilliantly crafted physical description of a protagonist, something she normally skims over in books:

“His teeth – uniquely in his family – are straight and of similar size to each other; his bottom lip’s fullness goes some way towards compensating for the absence of the upper; and his ears are not noticeable, which is all one can ask of ears.”

She smiled at this, just as much as she’d smiled the first two times she’d read it.

More delightful phrasings helped her along, keeping her brain from skipping out. Much.

She had been trying hard to avoid looking at the other people any more than she had to. This was contrary to her normal pastime of people-watching but, today, she felt too raw and tender. She didn’t want to have to see others worried, like she was. Nor did she want to see others not-worried, like she was trying to be. She just wanted to turn her head off and get through the next few hours as quickly as possible.

She was distracted once when, mid-paragraph in her book, her eyes stopped focusing and her brain landed a sucker punch. He’s the same age as his mother was when you met her, it plopped into her conscience, for no fucking good reason at all. And two years later she was dead.

She closed her eyes against the intrusion, and against the weight of tears pushing at the backs of them and making her head feel tight and heavy. She reached for her coffee, now lukewarm, and took a long pull. A strangled gurgling sound interrupted the quiet in the room and she felt her warm face get even warmer. Fumbling in her purse, she found a pen and used it to make the vent hole in the plastic lid the fraction bigger that it needed to be.

She was distracted a second time when a man she guessed to be in his 70s was called in, and his wife ran after him, laughing, handing him the coat that he had forgotten on his chair. Not two minutes later a different nurse came out looking for the wife, who had left as soon as her husband was admitted. “Are you Mrs. Chambers?” the nurse asked all of the women. “Do you know where she went?” The nurse chuckled. “These men, they don’t know their own medical history. ‘Ask the wife – she’ll know,’ they always say,” she explained with another tolerant grin.

The staff here were cheerful and pleasant – a stark contrast to the medical staff she had barely managed to stomach in a different medical centre just 12 hours earlier.

Her son had come bounding up the stairs the night before, rushing into the washroom. “Oh, moth-er,” he had chanted, “could you come here, please?”

Seeing his hand gushing blood that was dripping down his arm and filling the sink hadn’t really been a surprise. No teenage male calls his mother to look at something in the bathroom, unless he absolutely has to.

“I’m so glad you’re not one of those moms who panic and get freaked out by blood,” he told her.

“Yeah, yeah, let’s see it. Oh, good one. That’ll need stitches for sure.”

Parking in that medical centre parking lot, she’d asked her fiercely independent son if he wanted her to come in with him.

“Yes, please,” he said in a soft voice. “Unless you don’t want to.”

Six stitches later, and a couple of sharp and sarcastic retorts to the arrogant jackass of a young doctor (which, surprisingly, seemed to knock him off his cocky game and make him treat them like people), and she was back home. Only to be sitting in another waiting room feeling bitchy and helpless all over again – this time half asleep, she thought to herself, staring at her book, waiting for the words to come back into focus.

She managed to push through another ten minutes, and get a wee bit further in the story than she had the other times, before she closed the book in defeat and set it aside. If she could just lose whatever this fugly funk was that was tripping her up more each day, she may actually start reading again and get through the book this time.

She was rubbing the tightness in her neck and wondering what to do next when her husband walked out of the Outpatient department a few minutes later, looking a little pale and weak, but otherwise normal. She searched his face and didn’t see any signs of stress or fear. She felt her whole body ratchet down a notch. Just one notch, though. It waited impatiently until they were out of public earshot and it heard the actual words from him.

“All clear,” he said simply, as they walked to the car.

“Oh, Doc, ” she said, and grabbed his arm and hugged it, unwilling to let go as they walked even though it was awkward to match their strides. The bright sun was making her eyes water. And her throat choke up. She unlocked the car and got in the driver’s side – something extremely rare for them as a couple. He wasn’t supposed to drive for 24 hours, because of the anesthetic. They sat for a minute, then grinned at each other and kissed softly.

“Did he say when you had to come back?” she asked.

“Two years, same as last time. It’ll be every two years, for ever, unless they manage to identify the gene and rule it out for sure.”

On the way home, he told her a bit more of what his doctor had said, including the recommendation that their children get checked soon, too. It had been brought up last time, since a cousin had been diagnosed at the stunning age of only 22, but the genetic specialist had been hoping to find the gene in the two years that had passed, and make that unnecessary. No luck yet, but there was comfort in the fact that they were working on it.

Home by mid-morning, all was back to normal in their world. Pretty much. She looked at her computer, checked emails, did a couple of quick tasks, but the pressure behind her eyes and in her head was stubbornly and annoyingly taunting her. Not willing to step forward and let her cry, but refusing to back away and leave her alone. Denied both avenues of release, she considered purposely thinking about something that might force the issue and bring on tears, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to do that either, for some reason. She felt tense and unpleasantly agitated… uncomfortable with the physical and emotional tugging and squeezing of her nerves, and yet unmotivated to try to fight her way out of it.

Like waking up on a Sunday feeling restless and lazy, both at the same time. Like wanting to lose weight, then eating a plate of nachos for supper.

Only worse.

Her ever helpful brain reminded her that a good chunk of the day (and week, and almost the whole month) was already gone, then it starting flinging item after item at her from the list of work waiting for her to do. You should, it nagged, before it offered another To Do. You really ought to… it went on. And on. People waiting for her attention. Responsibilities and expectations she had willingly chosen, waiting for her to get her shit together and get back in the game.

She wanted to. She truly did. But she felt so surprisingly heavy. So wrung out.

She sat at the keyboard, trying to summon up enough interest to try. Too tired to even manage a decent anger at herself, she gave her fingers free rein and let them blog instead.