Rot

A true story. Mine.

Flatline

The sound rings out down the hall. It blends in with the fluorescent overhead lighting. Not just audibly. It’s a sound that’s more common than the lights being on. Both familiar buzzes. The only difference is that one stops making sound when it burns out, while the other senses the loss of light and screams in pain for the family waiting outside. Beating hearts met with the sound of cardiac standstill get a taste when their own skips a beat—mirroring the ones that lay cold in front of them. I avoid making eye contact with the IV in my arm or the nurses rushing the laminated floors to the other room that will soon be mine. I tilt my chin up with weak eyes. Scanning the pixels and the blue light that pours down on me. It dawns on me that other children are watching shows like this in their living rooms. Nickelodeon wasn’t created to hold a sick child’s hand to death’s door.

Bell Ring

Broken mechanical lead tips on my desk. Zoning out the memorization of times tables to draw over the medical electrode adhesive stuck to my skin. The mechanical pencil was being used for the tedious task of removing the “stick”, as I called it. The clear color was muddled by small fingertips picking at it since the night before. Feeling the way it catches on the new hairs growing from my arm. Many think the terminal condition of “Senioritis” begins in the last years of schooling; in actuality, symptoms show as early as elementary school when the millions of young synapses and neurotransmitters work together to conjure up the brilliant idea of evading class. The flawless technique that takes first place: Ailments. Others would cry nausea and run to the nurse’s office. The four-by-four office with white walls, faux hospital beds, pungent smell of sterilization. It lacked medical-grade hand sanitizer, the screen above the bed with unlimited channels, the beeping of monitors, and the loss and bringing of life. But, it was close enough to make me choke down rising bile during flu season to avoid the door locking behind me. For others, it was an escape from the dread of learning penmanship and engaging in group activities. For me, it mirrored where I knew I would spend the rest of my life when my body gave up on me. Just like my mother said.

Wind Whistling

​Pressure and temperature differences on Earth’s surface push and flow the air that swallows everything that moves. Inescapable. You can only open your mouth and breathe it in. The leaves sway with the force. No option but to obey and hope to hold onto the branch they’ve grown from. I took the verbal berating. The words that filled my environment and stuck to my own self-worth like mildew. I could only breathe it in. She is where I grew from. The tree I cling to. It’s why my sisters left. It’s why they felt the storms and let it sweep them off the branch. It’s why they chose the mystery of the wind rather than the known horrors of the tree rooted in place. I have to stay. I have to stay. I had to stay. “I’m sick.” No one else could help me. Only my mother could. I couldn’t leave. If I ran, my brittle bones wouldn’t be able to support my weight for more than a few miles before I gave out. My bones sprout roots of their own. Entangling with the polyester sheets of a hospital bed. I have to stay. I’m sick. The words drilled themselves in my head like stripped screws.

Buzz of Fluorescent Lighting

I stare at the 5000 kelvin lights that bore down on me. The ringing of a straight line on a monitor crawls itself out of my memory. I envision my feet walking the path of my own heartbeat until I flatten it.
“An autoimmune disease.” My mother sits me down. Explaining to me what a 504 plan is and how it will accommodate more doctors’ appointments and excused absences. The last thing I wanted. To escape the sickly white rooms I saw more than my own, unlike the other kids my age who wanted to stay home, I would go to school.
“She looks healthy.” The radiologist says, after our 3rd appointment in the last 2 weeks. He scans my chart in exasperation as the two adults argue with their eyes.
“She’s not.” My mother looks disappointed and gives me a pointed look. The doctor gives me an expectant one.
My eyes flick between them. The two words repeat in my head. “I'm sick.”
“I’m not.” I parrot in response. I couldn’t tell if I was replying to the words in my head or agreeing with my mother.
They say a mother’s love is the strongest force in the world. A woman born with the instinct to protect. Three girls. She had three girls. Two of them chose the path that wound as far as it could away from her. Leaving one. The runt. A nameless terminal autoimmune disease wasn’t the only chronic illness I had acquired over the years. It was guilt etched into my soul. The feeling of obligation to stay, ignoring the rot creeping up the branches of the tree. The leaf began to yellow. It began to brown. It was decaying. Dying. Leaves stay on the tree to seek nutrients. They don’t realize abscission is occurring until it is over. Staying is killing them, and leaving would too. The choice was already made for me when I was cursed with an incurable sickness. I had to stay. Not for my mother. For the doctor. She knew I would grow to develop the same resentment for her that ran in my sisterhood. She knew I would need a greater reason to stay rather than familiarity.

Cicadas Singing

I hear them outside the broken window screen of my window. I slowly raise my hand. Careful not to move a joint in my wrist as my palm envelopes the cold metal doorknob of my bedroom. I twist it slowly, biting the inside of my bottom lip to somehow silence the metal hinges of the door as it opens. This was crucial. The apartment had two bedrooms, only separated by a kitchen and a living room. Any sound was eager to find the company of an ear. My steps wound through the maze of mess and hoarded dollar-tree baskets used to organize more hoarded junk my mother couldn’t part with. She never knew how to let go. I ignore the pots and pans and food that have dehydrated on the counter and stare at the holy orange bottles meant to save me. Their white lids mock me. A child can’t open them, but a child can take them. I read the label on the side. Only an adult's body could process them. Heart medication meant for her own 50-year-old body. Not prescribed under my name. Not meant for me. But it doesn’t matter, does it? I'm sick. Tiny capsules, powder-filled ones, vitamins, gummies, big capsules, liquid medications. “Everything but the kitchen sink”, I called it. I stopped praying to get better as the years passed. I stopped worshipping the medication. Begging God to heal me. Even if the buzz of fluorescent lighting and a flatline was the last thing I would see. At least it would be the last time.

Tires Screeching

​The U-Haul arrived in front of the little two-bedroom apartment. Parked in front of the big green electrical box as the cicadas wave goodbye to me and sing their song from the trees. My sisters get out and hug me. I notice the rot on them has started to heal. The decay of their leaves blooming into flowers in the time they’ve been away. My father stays stationed in the front seat of the U-Haul behind the wheel, avoiding the gaze of my mother down the sidewalk. She stays rooted by the big tree in front of our ground-level living room window. 9-month pregnancy. Three times. Three girls. When my mother lost her first two children to her own actions, her fingers clasped onto my shoulders, and her own turmoil grew into my bones. Rotting my own. Keeping me in place. She couldn’t lose me, too. She needed me to need her. The flawless technique that takes first place: Ailments. The virus in me wasn’t in my body. It wasn’t in my immune system. It was in her own brain. The milligrams in my system wore me down until I had no choice but to lean on her insurance. My white blood cells corroded with an artificial sickness caused by prescriptions that weren’t mine. The pulse in the crease of my elbow sore from being pumped with liquidated vitamins every few weeks. My weak eyes look up as my sister's arms are clasped around me. Instead of the blue light of a ceiling TV in a patient’s room, the sun’s rays bathed me in a feeling I had never felt before. Healing.
“I’m not sick.”
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