Magonia(9)

I can’t get rid of the feeling of my skin pinching too close to my bones, snagging on itself. My mouth feels weird too. My cough’s epically worse than it was last night.
So, no school. Instead, doctor, where I put on my own backless white gown, with name embroidered—small perks—and my own slippers.
I’ve been known to pretend things about these events. Usually, it’s the Black and White Ball. Truman Capote. My backless white is a gown constructed of silk and petticoat, and maybe some nice netting made of Audrey Hepburn’s soul. (Audrey was invited, but did not attend.) Except that at that famously glamorous party, I don’t think anyone’s gown was bottomless. No joy like the feeling of frozen upper thighs against an examining table.
This is a children’s hospital, though, so there are other things worse than me. I’ve seen curtains pulled shut suddenly, and on the other side the unmistakable sound of parents sobbing. I’ve seen the Make-A-Wish people roaming the hallways, costumed and ready for action, and sick kids looking like the world has flipped over and given them everything they ever wanted at the last possible moment.
What they want, inevitably, turns out to be things made of trying to be the same as everyone else. Once I saw a certain floppy-haired teenage singing idol in red leather pants shambling his way down the hallway to make someone’s wish come true. A while later, I saw him leave, looking brain-broken.
Classic mistake: he’d shown up convinced he’d make the blind see and the dying live. It doesn’t work that way. Famous people aren’t magic. Despite their thoughts to the contrary.

A kid comes tearing around the corner, hairless and bleating like some kind of very hungry, quite large baby bird. He’s chasing a clown, though, not running from a doctor, so it’s not terrible.
The clown pauses in my exam room doorway and juggles her rainbow pom-poms. The three-year-old patient claps his hands wildly and looks at me with huge, excited eyes. Despite my bad mood, I end up smiling too.
Even though this is blatantly in violation of my rules against befriending fellow victims of the unimaginable, by the time my doctor arrives, I have the kid in my lap, and the clown is alternately blowing soap bubbles, and playing Over the Rainbow on a harmonica. Not a good song choice, in my opinion, but one I’ve regularly been exposed to over the years. Some people think it’s comforting to imagine being flung over a rainbow when you die, grabbed by your ankles by a bluebird, and swung into the void.
I mean, fine. There are obviously more upsetting possibilities. The kid’s humming happily along. Neither of us is the worst thing that could happen. We’re walking, talking, and coughing almost like regular humans.
Dr. Sidhu arrives and the clown carries the kid off into the labyrinth of hospital. My doctor begins her usual procedures of chest knocking and listening, as though she’s a neighbor trying to spy through some locked door.
Except that Dr. Sidhu is the kind of neighbor who can see through the walls. Her face doesn’t change expression. It’s the not changing that tells me something’s wrong.
“Huh,” she says.
“What do you mean, huh?” I ask.
I’ve known Dr. Sidhu my whole life. She never says “huh.” And this is my body we’re talking about. My organs are in strange places.
There’s a theory that things in my chest cavity got shifted during that early period of really, really not being able to breathe. One of my lungs, for example, is tilted far toward the center of my chest. My ribs are more flexible than they should be if I were anyone other than Aza carrying around a disease named Clive.
Clive the Jackass makes me flat-chested, pointy-ribbed, and lung-tilted. Otherwise, I’m totally awesome.
“There’s an unusual sound. Stop talking.”
I don’t want to stop talking, but I do, because Dr. Sidhu looks up at me and makes a dangerous face. She has little patience for the likes of me, yammering on through my appointments. She lassos her stethoscope around, and considers my heart. (Heart. Also misplaced. It’s never had quite enough room. We deal with this shit, we deal, we do, but bless any intrepid doctor who ever tries to listen to my heart, beating where it isn’t. I’ve let some doctors try it, just to watch their faces when they think momentarily that I’m somehow walking and talking, heartless. Entertainment.) She takes me to X-ray, and disappears briefly to peer at the results.
“MRI,” she says.
Great. I can feel my dad, outside the door, dreading.
“I’m okay,” I tell him as I hit the waiting room, wheelchaired (it’s hospital policy). Into the MRI tunnel, where they give you earplugs but you still hear things popping and clicking and hissing and singing out as they ping along your insides.
Sometimes while I’m here, I pretend I’m a whale, deep down, listening to the singing and dinging of my whale family. Today I hear something more along the lines of: Aza, Aza Ray.
It’s like I’m hearing something coming from outside again. Or is it inside? No matter what, I hate it.
“Hold your breath,” says the tech. “Try not to cough.”
I try not to cough. I pretend “giant squid” instead of “whale.” Lights flash. Things whistle and pop and extremely beep and make me feel as though I ought to be listening to something else. I read a thing once about deep ocean creatures and how the noises of earth are messing with their sonar. Whole lot of lost whales beaching themselves in cities—things like that. I read another one about sound-chaos, how nature is supposed to be harmonious, but human noises are screwing everything up and now people are going wacko due to atonal everything. Maybe I’m already wacko.