Saving Meghan(27)

“Do you drink?” she asked.

Should I answer that truthfully? Should I tell her what I had a few swigs of not long before I got sick? Should I tell her why I started?

The first time I got drunk was two years ago at a ninth-grade dance, a few months before I started my great decline. Lily Beauport had brought straight vodka in a water bottle that had passed visual inspection, and Cecilia Montgomery supplied the Gatorade that passed the smell test. The mixing took place in the girl’s bathroom on the second floor, and the drinking happened in pretty much every dark corner of the gymnasium.

I was super nervous because I knew if I got caught, I would have been kicked off the soccer team, not knowing then that I’d end up quitting a year later as my sickness progressed. My parents (my mom more than dad) were super-strict about drinking, and I knew they would have grounded me or worse if they ever found out, but I didn’t care. I wanted to do what my friends were doing. Besides, I was curious to know how it would taste; how it would make me feel.

I knew I shouldn’t be drinking at all, and I didn’t do it much. I had to be careful how much I sneaked. I’d definitely watered down more than one bottle of vodka and tequila. And when that extra bottle of wine Mom thought she had in the liquor cabinet went missing, she was kind enough to blame herself instead of asking me. Mom had never found my hiding place in my bedroom where I kept a fifth of vodka. I liked the buzz I got from the booze. It helped me cope with things that I wished I didn’t have to cope with. Were my covert trips to the Gerard liquor cabinet what made my stomach sick and my vision go all blurry? I didn’t think so, but I did have a couple swigs from my secret stash before I got sick and ended up in the ER. Either way, I wasn’t about to find out if it was a possibility.

“No. I don’t drink,” I said.

Dr. Nash wrote something on her paper. I couldn’t tell if she believed me. Not sure I cared.

“Do you go to the bathroom regularly?”

“Yes,” I said, stammering, feeling a bit caught off guard.

What does that have to do with anything?

“What about your bowel movements?” She tossed out the question nonchalantly, like it couldn’t possibly be an embarrassing topic.

“Um, yeah, sure.” I gripped the edge of the table, crinkling the paper underneath the palm of my hand.

“Are your bowel movements firm?”

God, lady! “Um, yeah, I guess. I don’t always look.”

And that was the truth.

Her pencil scratched something out on her paper. “And are your periods regular?”

Clearly, this doc was not into boundaries. My face went hot and I knew I turned red with embarrassment. I didn’t know why that happened. I shouldn’t have been embarrassed to talk about my periods with another woman. She had them, too, but I had only a few bits of privacy left, and I wasn’t prepared to let another piece go. But away it went.

“Yeah, my periods are regular.”

I resisted the urge to add: Just like my poops.

“Do you ever have cramping?” she asked.

I nodded slightly.

“Do the cramps happen at school or home more?”

“School, I guess,” I said. “When I go.” I heard my voice getting softer.

“What about when you’re out with friends?”

“Maybe … sometimes … but I don’t go out much these days.”

“That must be hard on you.” Dr. Nash gave me a genuinely sympathetic look, and I relaxed a little. I reminded myself that she was just doing her job.

“It’s not fun.”

That wasn’t much of an answer, but I couldn’t think what else to say. When in doubt, I usually went with as few syllables as possible. Adults seemed to expect it, or at least they accepted it.

“Have you done any traveling lately? Gone anywhere exotic?”

Maybe she thought I’d just come back from the Caribbean and picked up some bug while I was there. Didn’t she see how pale I looked? I had the coloring of an envelope. Didn’t I just tell her that I barely left home? I could see the tablet that stored my medical chart on a desk in the exam room. There were probably reports from a hundred doctor visits (and I’m not exaggerating the number) in there. There must be some report about how much school I’d missed, or how I didn’t play sports anymore, or how I hardly did anything that didn’t involve my phone.

I again explained to Dr. Nash how boring my days had become since I got really sick, and she seemed genuinely sorry to hear that, but still, I was surprised she didn’t know. Then again, those charts told only part of my story—the part that could be explained in numbers and test results, but they didn’t tell the whole story of me.

In a way, it was a relief to share the more personal details with Dr. Nash. It made me feel like a whole person and not just the sum of my lab results. I liked this new doctor. I really did. I felt like she might be onto something, that she was going to have some big breakthrough because she was taking a different approach.

I didn’t get into the whole mitochondrial disease thing with her. I didn’t really understand what it meant anyway. Conceptually, I got it. My cells sucked at making energy. But that was all kind of abstract. This conversation felt more real. For no reason at all, I was overcome with this rush of joy, an uplifting feeling of pure elation. I had a premonition that Dr. Nash, this Wonder Woman, was going to unravel the mystery of Meghan in ways that nobody was expecting.