[35] TOURNELLE DU SOLEIL • HOSPITAL • May 23, AFTERNOON (Patreon)

Well, I’m fucked now. ‘Demanding’. I’m going to be here for hours.

There’s a loud rushing in my ears. My eyes feel hot. An iron band grips my chest. It’s hard to breathe. I know if anyone else comes over to me I’m not going to be able to speak to them.

I think about the last time I was in this emergency room. Just a few months ago. Waking up with Bell’s palsy and thinking I was having a stroke. My older sister had joined me in the waiting room of emergency. Sat with me in the triage interview, and the meeting with the first nurse, and the meeting with the final nurse hours later. Just in case they give you a hard time with autism shit, she’d say to me at the time. I’d felt relief and uncertainty in equal measure. But everything went so smoothly. The nurses and doctors liked it better when she spoke for me. I was grateful for it by the end.

I wish someone had been able to come with me. Tears bubble over and drip down into the paper of my mask. I pull my baseball hat down lower and try to take even breaths.

Everything is okay. You are okay. You are not in danger. You are going to be okay.

I sit for two more hours. I alternate between crying and dissociating.

A new doctor comes up to me. She’s young. Her facility cards and ID badge are hung on a rainbow lanyard. Dr. Heslop, one of them reads.

She sits down next to me and asks me a few questions. I try to explain as best I can. I’m scared to say the wrong thing now. To say too much. To say too little.

She listens carefully, nodding, attentive. Tests the stability of my knee and its range of motion. Pokes and prods it. She seems familiar. She feels safer than anyone else I’ve spoken to today. I tell her I’m a circus artist. I tell her I’m supposed to work for Cirque du Soleil for the first time ever next week. I tell her I need this to be okay.

Looks up at me over her mask. Says gently, “Well, firstly, I’m really sorry this happened to you.”

“Thank you.” It comes out a bit more wobbly than I’d like. The iron band around my chest loosens a tick.

“I’m going to text my colleague at Toronto Western who is in sports medicine; they have a clinic there and will have the expertise you need.”

“Wow, thank you.”

“Do you want some painkillers?”

I shake my head no. “I want to be able to track my pain levels and inflammation without anything on board. If it’s bad I’ll take something. But I’m trying not to until tomorrow at least.”

“Is there anything else you need that I can get you?”

“Could I have some ice, please?”

She returns in moments with a biohazard bag packed full of that special pellet ice you only find at hospitals. Hands me a printed requisition for the sports clinic at the other hospital. Wishes me luck. Heads to the next patient.

I realize after she’s gone that she’s the same doctor who evaluated my Bell’s palsy a few months ago.

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Your next instalment of Tournelle du Soleil arrives tomorrow at 7am EST / 1pm CEST!

Until then, stay strange and wonderful - XO, ess