“I’m not giving up,” Blake added.
My gaze snapped to his, anger flaring. Again, not directed at him.
“Blake, I really appreciate everything you’ve done for me. But you’ve probably run more tests in the last few hours than have been run in the last year combined, and none of them have told us anything.”
“Tessa, I know this is frustrating?—”
“Respectfully, you don’t know.” I pushed myself straighter in the bed. “You’re a good doctor, and I know there are tons of great doctors out there, but you don’t know what this feels like as a patient. You don’t understand the catch-22 of enduring a medical mystery.” I pressed my palm against my forehead, fighting back tears. “You want answers so desperately, but at the same time, you pray each test comes back negative. You don’twantLyme disease or some horrible heart condition. You don’t want lymphoma or stomach cancer. But with each negative result, you’re another step further from explaining why your body is betraying you, until finally …” My voice cracked. “You can’t decide which is worse: getting a diagnosis that could change the rest of your life or never getting one at all.”
Blake moved closer, his expression softening. “Tessa?—”
“No, you need to listen to me.” My voice trembled, a year of pent-up emotions unexpectedly deciding now was the perfect time to finally explode. “You don’t see how many nights I’vecried myself to sleep, wondering if maybe I’m imagining things. If maybe this is all in my head. If maybe this is just me getting older.” I twisted the blanket between my fingers. “And then having to find the strength to get up and keep advocating for myself, keep insisting something is wrong, only to be told repeatedly they can’t find anything.”
Blake’s eyes intensified. “But one thing has changed, Tessa. Your heart stopped this time.” His voice dropped lower. “And the fact that we don’t know why should terrify the hell out of you.”
“So, you want me to feel afraid? Is that it?”
“I want you to find that fire in you,” he said gently. “I want you to get to the bottom of this.”
“You don’t know what it feels like to have your life completely disrupted by some physical ailment that no one can seem to pinpoint.”
“Pinpointing something going on in the human body is much harder than people realize.”
“Clearly,” I said.
“Tessa, there are thousands of possible explanations, and you have to hear me when I say this: ruling stuff out gets us that much closer to the truth.”
“Really? Because from where I’m sitting, none of these tests have ever even pointed my doctors in the right direction. In fact, it feels all compartmentalized. If I have a problem with my skin, they send me to a dermatologist. If I have a symptom with my heart, I see a cardiologist. But no one can seem to put these puzzle pieces together to figure out what the source is, and you know what? After a year of going through this, I have finally accepted that the human body is complex, and mine just doesn’t function properly.”
“You need to find out why.”
“Do I? You have no idea what this has cost me, Blake. Not just the physical pain or emotional toll. Do you know how hard it is to launch a small business when you can’t even promise people you’ll show up? I have lost clients over this, Blake. I had to spend money on marketing to capture those clients, and then they understandably fired me because I kept missing appointments. As if that weren’t financially hard enough, do you know how expensive health care is? My premiums are absurdly high, and so is my deductible. Money I don’t have to be spending on this. But more than all of that right now is, I just want to move on with my life.”
Freedom—true freedom—was learning to live with this condition. Moving on, even if it didn’t have a name.
“And if your heart stops again?” His voice was sharp with barely contained anger, the kind that came from fear. “Damn it, Tessa, you’re talking about risking your life!”
“I’m risking my life? I tried everything in my power to get to the bottom of this, Blake. I ran the ball down the field for a year through twists and turns and hailstorms and rocks being thrown in my face, and you’re asking me to go all the way back to the beginning. I don’t have that in me. And maybe that makes me sound weak. Hell, maybe I am weak. There are warriors who charge on with medical mysteries for years, but I don’t have that in me anymore. And that is my choice. If you want to judge me for deciding that I want to move on with my life, go ahead.”
“I’m not judging you, Tessa. I’m scared.”
“I was, too, for a while. But fear has a short shelf life with me. If there was something dangerously wrong with me, they would’ve figured it out by now.”
“Dangerous? You went into cardiac arrest.”
“The cardiologist said I was probably dehydrated and extremely low on electrolytes, which they have supplemented.”
Blake’s jaw clenched, and he stood up. Started pacing.
“He’s coming up with the best hypothesis he can because the truth is, he doesn’t know, Tessa! It is not normal for a thirty-three-year-old woman’s heart to stop beating.”
“I will follow up with the cardiologist. I will wear that remote monitoring thing that he wants me to wear. And if, by some chance, those heart results finally answer the question? Great. But otherwise, I’m done.”
“How can you be this reckless?”
Reckless. Was he not listening to a word I said?
“You want to know what happened at my last appointment? I met another patient in the waiting room. She’d been chasinghermedical mystery for three and a half years. Her cousin? Twelve years.” I stopped, hoping that would sink in for him. “For some people, that might be inspiring, seeing and hearing about people with such a strong will that they’d stop at nothing to get answers. But for me? I saw the next twelve years flash before my eyes: spent in doctors’ waiting rooms, explaining my symptoms over and over. Going literally bankrupt, just to be told I’m getting older, or hormonal, or depressed. That everything is fine. In that moment, I made a decision. No more. I chose to reclaim my life. I chose to learn to live with the symptoms, just like a lot of people do with medical conditions.”
