of feelings

I'm sitting on the examining table, a shivering grey raincloud. The quieter I become, the wider the nurse's smile grows. It looks almost painful, as though it could swallow her whole face. She talks and talks and talks as she moves around the room and takes my vitals. She's cracking jokes that I'm too worn and nervous to smile at. I'm not sure who is more uncomfortable, me or her.

I want to ask her if this is what she wants to be doing. Was her dream as a little girl to work with sad, broken people stuck in a pointless war with themselves?

She sticks gooey patches to my ankles, my wrists, and all across my ribs. I have to pull up four layers in order to bare my stomach. My ribs stick out like triangles, and all I can think is that she's probably surprised at how not skinny I am.

The doctor comes in next and shows me the strange peaks and valleys of lines that is my heartbeat.

My heart keeps all my secrets close.

I am healthy as a horse.

I knew this would happen. I have a terrible immune system, but other than that, my body is resilient. I've never even broken a bone, despite several tumbles down flights of stairs. Maybe it's the Irish and German and Czech blood that runs through my veins. Maybe it's the eight years of ballet as a child and teenager. Maybe it's the clean mountain air I breathed every day growing up.

See? There's nothing wrong with you. You're just being pathetic. You don't need this. You don't need help. 

The doctor asks a lot of questions, many the same as what the therapist asked a week ago. I am not prepared for that.

I'm getting so tired of questions.

I rattle off my answers. She tells me I shouldn't exercise too much. No more than 30 minutes.

I wasn't expecting that, but she is insistent.

They stick a needle in my arm and drain out four vials of blood. I have never been squeamish about my blood being drawn, so I watch impassively as she fills each one, listening to my blood pouring into the plastic containers.

"There's a good chance that your lab results will come back normal." The doctor tells me. "But I'm more concerned about how you feel."

I try to hide it, but I am surprised. She looks at me, and I look at her, and I feel as though she can see straight through my four layers and down to my bones. She is not fooled by my normal EKG reading. She won't be fooled if my blood test comes back with an A+.

How I feel?

How do I feel?

.........

I weighed in at 109.6 lbs this morning.

And I felt happy.