“Oh,” I embraced a wave of relief. “There’s no need for that, I already explained to Karisha that I don’t get a period.”
I thought that would be enough explanation for him. I had never met a man in my life to take an interest in a woman’s parts, apart from the obvious activities, so when Dahr started to enquire about this and asked if everything was alright, I was taken aback.
It was the last thing I wanted.
The last thing I needed.
I had been the one who wanted to cut all connection with him just the day before, but I hadn’t expected the situation to change so drastically in such a short time. I wanted to spend more time with him, I wanted to get to know him better. To learn about his customs and maybe even be given an opportunity to plead my case. But I could not be a hypocrite either. I couldn’t ask to know his truth without sharing mine.
I just wished I was given a few more days.
“I suffer from a medical condition that has no cure,” I confessed. I straightened my back as Dahr moved abruptly from the bed to shift himself closer to me, rising to better face me.
I had done this more times than I could count, every time I got close to someone since I was diagnosed. And I knew how to navigate through this conversation. Step one: make sure that they knew from the very beginning that there was no way of saving my life. Yes, I had investigated it. Yes, I had been to other doctors. Yes, I looked into every single medical trial.
“What do you mean?” Dahr’s relaxation abandoned him in a split second, his night-sky dark eyes pinned on me, wide with terror.
I sighed then, a silent apology for breaking his joyful moment. “If we’re going to do this, I need you to make a promise.”
“Anything.” I barely had time to finish my words that his answer already came.
“I will tell you the entire story, but you need to promise not to interrupt. Not to ask questions, not to tell me your feelings, not to sigh, push, curse, offer a solution, anything that might come to your mind. I have a practised way of doing this and if you let me follow it, it will be the most effective and will cause the least amount of pain for the both of us.”
Dahr must have already taken it upon himself to follow directions because he didn’t even nod.
This should be easy enough then.
“It started when I was thirteen. Funnily enough, because all the other girls my age had gotten their periods, and I was still waiting for mine. Miss Linda, one of the nurses there, thought it curious and sent me to a doctor’s appointment. For a few years I was given different opinions. That I may have a hormone deficiency, that I was developing slower, and I should patiently wait for my body to fully grow, that I should change my diet, andexercise more.” Come to think of it now, those had been the least stressful doctor’s appointments I had ever been to.
“When I got accepted at university and moved into the campus, I had to be checked up by the faculty nurses. It was supposed to be a routine appointment where they took a blood sample, checked our blood pressure, did some breathing tests and so on. The results were sent to the faculty of medicinal sciences, for year four students to practise on real samples before they got out into the world and became doctors.”
I looked over at Dahr for the first time since I had started speaking, to see that he was absorbing my every word. My heart pumped faster then. I was so proud of him. So proud that he had trained control over his reactions. So grateful that, maybe for the first ever time in my life, I had the real possibility of telling my story without interruption. Without putting my listener’s feelings over my own.
“It turned out that my blood sample was marked as a false positive. The student even got in trouble for labelling it like that, because she said that the quality of the blood was insufficient. She kept insisting that she was correct in her analysis and went to the faculty dean to demand a fresh blood sample to dispute the low mark she had received on her lab analysis. A few days later I received a letter inviting me to give a fresh sample, only if I wished to. My identity was concealed to the student, but the letter had a short addendum explaining the situation and confirming that I was free to refuse. Fortunately for both me and that girl, I decided to be kind that day and went for another test.”
I stopped for a few seconds to take a breath. My mouth was dry from speaking so much and I realised that I never strolled through this part so quickly. This was normally the time when people started questioning and opening their mouths to prove they knew better, but Dahr simply looked at me and waited.
“Turns out the blood sample was labelled correctly, since the quality of my blood was not up to standard. I inquired later and found out that the student received summa cum laude on her assessment and went on to have a brilliant end of the year. I, however, had to be put through study after study. I almost failed my first year because I had to go to so many doctor’s appointments and be hospitalised over and over. I’m telling you, I do not envy lab rats,” I giggled, but Dahr did not show any reaction.
“Anyway, I graduated, summa cum laude as well,” I smiled to myself. It was probably the biggest achievement of my life. “And got diagnosed. They don’t have a name for the disease yet and they asked to put my name on it, but I blatantly refused. Imagine someone being diagnosed with Milenora Cortez or The Cortez disease. Nope. Not something I want to be remembered for, thank you very much,” I shook my head, imagining a poor twenty-year old carrying my burden and my name alongside it. They could put their mark on it for all I cared.
I could see that Dahr was almost exploding with the need to know and decided to reward him for making this journey easy for me.
“It’s similar to thromboangilitis, basically my blood vessels become blocked and blood flow is reduced in certain areas. Over time, the tissue gets destroyed. What’s interesting in my condition, apparently, is that this form of the disease doesn’t attack the extremities, as it would generally, but it likes to go to the vital organs. Lungs, liver, kidneys, heart, brain. My blood is basically rotting inside my body until it becomes useless, and I die. And yes, before you ask, they did offer medication to prevent this from accelerating.”
I was getting to the very end, to the part where people started judging me for my choices. Everything that had happened until this point was out of my control, but everything that happenedpast it, suddenly turned me into the bad guy. I always received different reactions to this. Some people started becoming religious and told me that what I was doing was a sin. Others told me that I should at least try to keep myself alive and hope they find a cure. And others told me that I was giving up. I was actually pretty curious to see which category Dahr fell under.
“I could get three blood transfusions a week and pump myself full of medicine, maybe even be lucky enough to get an organ transplant or two. That would get me about fifteen to twenty years. Or, I could simply decide to live my life and do the best I can with the time that I have left, which, before you ask, is somewhere around three to five years.”
There, I let new air into my lungs.
There it was.
My entire life story and the thing that defined me as soon as I said anything about it. I won’t be anything more to Dahr than the dying girl, the one who doesn’t fight for her own life, the one that doesn’t value the gift of life. The one that always has to be coddled and protected.
“You can speak now,” I pressed a small smile to Dahr, but it probably looked as fake as it felt.
“As drakes, we don’t have tomorrow guaranteed, so we are used to death breathing down our shoulders. As a human, I suppose you have different battles to fight.”
