bad blood and weak biceps

“Don’t freak out if tomorrow I call you and tell you to go to the emergency room,” he had told me. And I had nodded.

Nodded. Nodded?!?!

Because what was there to freak out about going to the place that haunted my daydreams and nightmares and sent me into spontaneous crying fits on the subway and tore at my relationships with family and friends and shattered my trust in the entire healthcare system? I asked myself.

There was nothing to freak out about, he answered.

He reached for his computer and turned its face to mine and said he would tell me why. His index finger grazed the screen and gently traced a trail of numbers down a slope. The slope represented hemoglobin levels, he explained.

The number at the top of the slope was a good hemoglobin level, and the numbers that dipped toward the middle were bad hemoglobin levels, he added. The number at the bottom was mine.

Hemoglobin is a protein in our blood. It’s like a bicep, basically, because it carries things. It carries oxygen, specifically, to tissues and organs and internal items that keep us alive. Having low hemoglobin is like having weak biceps. The protein is not strong enough to muscle up enough oxygen for all those places and, as a result, our bodies are not capable of doing things we need or enjoy. Like waking up in time for work, ascending a flight of stairs, or training for a marathon.

What do you mean you were training for a marathon? He asked me with his eyes. What he said out loud was: At your levels, most people aren’t safe to walk around.

I needed to go to the emergency room to get some sort of fusion to raise my hemoglobin levels to be more safe to walk around. That could mean a blood transfusion or an iron infusion, he said, because a lot of times if people have low levels of hemoglobin it is because they have low levels of iron, too, he added. He would double check my levels tonight though, he promised. And call me tomorrow.

Don’t freak out, he repeated. Even though I wasn’t freaking out, I was totally fine.

“I can’t fathom how you were training for a marathon,” she had told me the day before.

She sat in a chair across from me, researching hematologists who took my insurance and day-of appointments. She too had shown me my levels on her computer, but had explained them with fewer details because she was a primary care doctor and not a one-area specialist. It would be a good idea to see a specialist as soon as possible, she said.

As she worked, the nurse handed me a tiny plastic water bottle. How are you feeling? He asked.

I had just collapsed after getting blood drawn. Not a faint exactly, because I was conscious, but a motion in which my legs crumbled under my torso and my torso folded over my legs and my hands rocketed between my head and the office tiles to break my fall. I clambered up even more chaotically, pawing at the air and sides of the exam table to prove that I could stand on my own, that I was ok, and healthy, and fine.

Just in case they decided I wasn’t, I thought. And told me to go to the emergency room.

I’m ok. I told the nurse, because I wanted to be.

There was nothing to freak out about the emergency room, I decided. So long as I didn’t go.

By the time he called me the next morning, I had already decided not to go. I answered the phone on my walk to the office and hung it up when I reached its door. I opened the door and entered the lobby and rode the escalator and elevator to the 7th floor and lugged my body and baggage to a chair by the windows where I plopped them both and pulled my laptop out to read my emails.

Most emails were from PR agents who thought my reporting centered on lip filler and not heart failure and others were reminders about my tasks for the day. I had an interview to conduct at 1 and a story to file by 5 and a product testing thing where I would receive free running shoes if I jogged on a treadmill sometime in between.

A new email appeared on the screen with the words show this to the ER doc when you get in stamped under a PDF attachment.

I thought about email and the interview and the story and the treadmill. I thought about blue lights and cold memories and non-slip socks and the vow I had made with myself not to go. I sent a slack message to my boss and another to the treadmill person and my boss said ok and the treadmill person said ok too, just know you can’t come back.

So I packed my laptop in my bag and stood up from the chair and moonwalked down to the elevator and down to the escalator and down to the lobby and through to the door and out to an Uber which I had requested with my own thumbs, even though they felt like someone else’s.

“I plead guilty,” I told the security guard at the emergency room, in my head.

I’m checking myself in, I told him out loud. He motioned for me to sit down in a gray chair across from a man who had cut off all his fingers with a metal sheet.

The emergency room doctor said he wanted to give me both a blood transfusion and an iron infusion and was that okay with me, he asked, because it would take a long time. I said fine so long as I don't have to stay overnight and he replied ok chief, minus the chief, and decided to give me the iron infusion first.

After I was all ironed-up they told me that my blood was ready to go, and I told myself that sounded rather gory. The whole process of a blood transfusion sounded gory, actually. Because it kind of is.

A blood transfusion involves puncturing someone’s (my) vein with a needle, fitting that needle to an IV chord, attaching that IV chord to a big bag of someone else’s blood and then injecting that big bag of someone’s blood into the other someone’s (my) vein. It can be dangerous, too. Not all bodies like the idea of new blood flooding inside them so will protest in hives or by seizing up and struggling to breathe. Because of these risks, the nurse makes you (me) sign a consent form promising not to sue if the other blood fucks up your own.

I didn’t really care about getting blood-fucked so long as I didn’t have to watch it happen, I decided. And so long as I didn’t have to stay overnight.

So I signed her form and she accepted my signature and set up her tools and squirted the blood into my body and ran out of the room to check on a gunshot victim while I turned my head to the other side and read my book.

You’re making progress! She said a few hours later when she burst back into the curtain-bound enclave that served as my room. She was talking about my page-turning. Still a few more hours until you’re out of this zoo, she added.

She considered me a calm, collected patient, I realized, and I felt a twinge of guilt. An almost-there urge to tell her I used to be a zoo animal, too.

When they finally discharged me it was cold and dark and conditional.

I’ll discharge you, as long as you don’t run, the emergency room doctor told me, eventually. I nodded.

Nodded. Nodded?!?!

Because what else could I do when my hemoglobin levels were still low and my biceps were still weak and I was still incapable of doing the things I needed and enjoyed. Like answering my emails and conducting my interviews and taking my treadmill test and training for my marathon.

You don’t need to run a marathon to be strong and capable, my dad had told me when I called him from my first doctor's appointment, the one where I collapsed after they drew my blood so they referred me to the specialist who told me to go to the emergency room.

But I had wanted to.