Scheisse.

At my synagogue, scheisse was the word to use. It, and other Yiddish and German words, allowed us kids to swear as loudly and as often as we liked without any of the adults ever knowing what we were saying.

You cut your finger? Scheisse! That hurt!

Someone just died? Scheisse, man, that sucks.

That day, walking home from downtown, I was beginning to feel woozy and sluggish. I felt like I was sleepwalking. I sleepiness washed over me. I had just made it through another long haul at the office, and had once again been so caught up in my job that I’d completely forgotten to grab something to eat in the staff kitchen. More problematically, I hadn’t eaten the day before either and was coming down with something on top of that. I tried to shrug off my wooziness as part of the bug I’d caught, though I knew better.

Habitually, I reached my hand up to run my fingers down the long chain of my medical dog tag hidden beneath my black T-shirt. My friends had ordered me to get it for when they weren’t there, like if there was a problem they’d actually know what to do. What a joke. I had gotten, though, to appease them, and after a while it became like my security blanket. The world was a whole lot less scary with that chain around my neck.

And the world terrified me--all the traffic, and the crime, the noise and the pollution. I was a small town girl, and Los Angeles was quite honestly the last place I wanted to be in the world. I was afraid to drive, to go clubbing, to do nearly everything. I watched too much of the news, when I should have just changed it to Family Guy and rotted by brain with the rest of the world.

I began to run, worried that I was going to miss my bus, as the dizziness came closer and I thought, Scheisse, I need to sit down and find some water. My ammonia levels were probably through the roof, with my lack of water and food, and I began to worry that I wouldn’t make it. I slowed down, and leaned against a wall, sliding down the bricks to rest on the pavement.

As I began to black out, quietly resting my head on the pavement, too out of it to care where I was passing out, I heard footsteps approach and felt a male presence hovering over me. “Are you okay?” asked the man, who sounded much more like a boy.

I pulled out my dog tags and said, “Take me to the hospital” before blacking out entirely.

Scheisse.

"The horror of that moment," the King went on, "I shall never, never forget!"  "You will, though," the Queen said, "if you don't make a memorandum of it.  ~Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass, 1872 

Two

I woke up, for a moment, in the man-boy’s vehicle, I couldn’t decide which he was, he seemed somehow stuck in-between. His vehicle had the fake new car scent, mixed with the comforting smell of Starbucks. This boy seemed nice, normal, maybe a bit rich, and I let my foggy brain relax and watch him, desperately trying to remember his face. I knew from experience that if I didn’t, I’d come to full consciousness days later and not remember a thing.

He was on his cell phone, nearly shouting in it, as he raced down the freeway. “Yes, ma’am. Yes, ma’am,” he told the bit of animated plastic, “I just found her there. No, she didn’t look physically hurt. No, ma’am. Yes, you can call this number. Yes, Good Samaritan Hospital. All right. Yes, ma’am. All right, goodbye.”

He hung up and looked over at me, smiling. “Hey, how you doing?”

I smiled back and slipped away again. 

                      ____

I woke up next, and more fully, to the quiet melodies of the new Eisley CD. The one I had been coveting for ages at the local Sam’s Club, but was too frugal to spend the money to buy. I felt groggy in the way you do when you’ve slept too long. I didn’t want to wake up, I wanted to go back to sleep, curled into warm sheets and Eisley music.

After a while, the crispness of the sheet became too evident, as someone had really starched the bejeezus out of them. The iodine, Pine Sol and brassy smell became too strong and I realized where I was.

Scheisse. The hospital.

I opened my eyes to see a CD player sitting next to me, lit up and playing. I looked around the room at all the flowers, cards and teddy bears that had accumulated in the time I’d been out, with a few drawings from the kids at the synagogue taped crookedly to the windows. They were quiet evidence of the people I knew, left behind to remind me of their affection for me.

I looked down to do a quick once-over of myself. An IV was placed under the skin on the back of my hand (my second least favorite place for needles to be) and a catheter was jammed into my femoral artery (my least favorite place for a needle to be). I also discovered a Foley catheter and my first conscious words were, “That’s gotta come out.”

A shuffle of movement drew my attention to the other side of my bed, where a curly-haired boy, who was in his late teens at least, stood up. I vaguely recognized him as the boy who’d picked me up off the sidewalk.

”You’re awake,” he said. “Are you awake for reals this time?”

”I’m sorry?”

”You woke up before, but you were out of it,” he told me, “Your mom said you wouldn’t remember. She’s gone back home to change and things. Your mom, I mean.”

I laughed. He seemed so unsure, and so caring. I wasn’t the least bit afraid of this complete stranger, standing in my hospital room. ”Astrid Stockburger,” I said, weakly offering up my hand that didn’t have the IV in it.

”Kevin Jonas. Nice to meet you, Astrid.”

”Nice to meet you,” I said, and it really was.

Aw, thanks. 
Don't worry, more is coming. Very soon.
Thankfully, there's no way I can logically run out of ideas for this fic. 
Though...this is me we're talking about. 
I really appreciate that you're enjoying something that is so personal for me. 

When you start lookin' around for something good to take the place of the bad, as a general rule you can find it.  ~From the movie Old Yeller

Three

Kevin informed that I had been “out of it” for a day. That I said a lot of wonky things and tried to stop the doctors from putting the IV in the back of my hand. I nodded. This sounded like me.

After shouting at a few nurses, I finally was able to get the Foley catheter removed. A doctor came in to tell me that my ammonia levels had been dangerously high and then gave me a lecture on my “condition” that I could have probably given myself. I wanted to smack that arrogant look right off his face, because you just knew he hadn’t even heard of my “condition” before I came in here. By the way he kept looking down at his clipboard, I began to wonder if he hadn’t taken notes right off Google and wrote them down to read off to me. I hated doctors like this, just once I would love to have someone walk in and admit, “I never heard of this before, so I used eMedicine.”

Kevin sat on the edge on my bed, listening intently to Dr. Know-It-All. I rolled my eyes.

Finally, when he doctor was done with his patronizing lecture, I politely asked if I could attempt a walk. To be honest, I knew from experience that I would be probably too wobbly and weak to really go far, but being me, I wanted to try.

After procuring a pair of jeans, I turned to Kevin. “I’m going to need your help.”

”With what?” he asked.

”Walking.”

He gave me his hand and put his arm around my waist to steady me. My knees buckled as I stepped out of bed, and I clung to my IV pole for support, as he held onto my waist. “Maybe this isn’t such a—“ I silenced him with a glare, and he helped me stand again. “Just to the Teen Center and back, okay, Astrid?” I nodded and we stepped out into the hallway, beginning our shaky stroll through the hospital. The tile was cold on my bare feet, but I was too focused to really notice. I probably had my tongue poking out in concentration; Ma hated it when I did that.

“So, how’d you learn about this?” he asked, nonchalantly.

”Walking?” I grinned, “Oh, me and walking go way back. Talent I picked up around one or so.”

”You know what I mean,” he said.

”Well,” I began, my knees buckling again, as he steadied me. I had told this story so many times, but he was the first in a long time to see genuinely interested. “I was always sickly, skinny. My folks tried everything to get me healthy, but nothing worked. So, when I’m about seven or eight, this one doctor gets it into his head that I’m not getting enough protein and tells my folks to stick protein powder in my grits—“

”Grits?”

”Hot cereal.”

”Oh.”

”Anyways, so Ma starts putting in the powder and I get sicker and sicker and end up in the hospital in almost-coma and they found out about my OTCD. The end.” I told him. “Not that exciting.”

”Can this kill you?” he asked.

”Yes,” I answered him honestly.

”Were you dying when I found you?” he asked again.

I shrugged. I really couldn’t theorize on the outcome of that one. I don’t know what would have happened if he hadn’t come along. I knew, somehow, that I definitely owed him one. “Thank you for that, by the way,” I said, nervously.

”No problem,” he said. “Look, we made it! You did it!”

I looked up to find myself standing once again outside the door to my hospital room. I smiled, slightly proud, because I had done it. It was a nice accomplishment for the day.

She is a friend of mind.  She gather me, man.  The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.  It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.  ~Toni Morrison, Beloved

Four

We were sitting on my bed, Kevin and I, watching The Parallax View and eating the grapes from lunch, which was really the most edible part of the lunch they served. Kevin was trying to tell me about how Carly Simon supposedly wrote “You’re So Vain” about the man in the film, but I was slowly falling asleep and wasn’t at all hearing what he was saying.

I was tired from the walk and from sleeping so much before, because for some odd reason, sleeping a lot always made me sleepier. As I was drifiting off, Kevin poked me in the arm, and said, “Astrid, wake up.” I shoved his hand away. “She won’t get up,” he said to someone else.

”It’s all right. I can come back.”

I knew that voice. I sat up and cried, “Cathleen!”

”Astrid!” Cathleen replied, slightly mockingly, and carefully hugged me. Her hug was appreciated since she wasn’t usually a touchy-feely kind of person. “I brought you a present.” She held out the thin gift, wrapped in brightly-colored paper.

I took it from her, and felt the package’s flexibility, instantly recognizing it as a book. I tore at the paper, and began laughing. Cathleen joined in, always unable to resist laughing if someone else was. “I thought it was perfect. I never could find that stupid copy,” she said, gasping for air.

”I’m missing something,” Kevin said.

”This is my best friend, Cathleen,” I said, gathering myself. “Cathleen, this is Kevin Jonas.”

”Oh, that Kevin Jonas?” she asks, a bit awed.

Kevin and I laugh. “It only just clicked for me a moment ago,” I told her before turning to Kevin with the thin paperback copy of Very Far Away From Anyplace Else in my hands. “About six years ago, I leant this book to Cathleen and she never read it and she lost it.”

”I don’t get why it’s funny,” he replied.

”It just is,” I told him, because it wasn't one of those things you could explain to a person.

Cathleen sat down beside me and looked at the TV before she quietly asked, “What is this junk?”

”70s conspiracy film,” Kevin replied.

She turned it off, and snuggled in beside me, resting her head on my shoulder uncharacteristically. Looking up, she whispered in my ear, “Scared, were you?” I didn’t even have to answer; I just let her wrap her arms around my shoulders as I cried into her blouse. It was what she was there for, to innately know, after thirteen years of friendship, exactly what I needed.

Right then, I needed my best friend, to hold me and know that I wasn’t always good at going it alone. Sometimes I was lonesome in my illness, and I just wished there was someone who knew exactly what it felt like to wake up some mornings and be angry that it was you who got dealt the rotten hand and there wasn’t another person in a miles who knew how it felt.