In the other room, Will was setting the table on the steamer trunk. I joined him, cracking open the windows to let in a little air. It had started snowing outside, and a few lazy flakes drifted into the apartment. Will joined me at the window and hooked his arms around my waist, pulling me to him. “Tomorrow, I’ll start looking for work,” he said, burying his face into my hair. “I should also find a language school, somewhere I can take lessons, at least until I learn enough French to say ‘I’ll have three baguettes and an Orangina, please.’ ”
The muscles of Will’s torso were taut and warm against my shoulder blades. I closed my eyes, softening into him, and tried to remember when I’d last felt this happy. Couldn’t. “Stay right there,” Will said, backing away. From the bookshelf, he grabbed his camera and snapped a photograph of me in front of the window, silhouetted against the winter sky. When he showed me the photograph, I was alarmed by my appearance. My skin looked so pale it was nearly translucent. My eyelids were a robin’s-egg blue, as if all of the veins had floated to the surface. Even my lips looked drained of life force.
“The color of pearls,” Will said generously, planting a kiss on them.
* * *
—
Two weeks later, Will turned twenty-seven years old. To celebrate his recent move and his birthday I took a few days off work and surprised him with an envelope containing two train tickets to Amsterdam. It was January 2011 and as we stepped out of the station our breath plumed in the bright morning air. We were hoping to explore the city by foot. On the itinerary: a visit to the Anne Frank House, a pit stop at the market to sample pickled herring, and a boat tour through the canals. But we didn’t get far. Every block or so, I halted to a stop, a deep cough racking my body, leaving me light-headed and dizzy, my temples throbbing like tuning forks.
I felt so run-down that we ended up spending most of the weekend at our seedy, two-star hotel in the red-light district. The hotel’s sheets were pocked with burn marks, a grimy window overlooked a canal, and the clackety-bang of a misfiring radiator echoed down the dreary halls. But the thing about being in love is that you can be anywhere and it feels like an adventure. In fact, when we’d first arrived, I’d turned to him and said excitedly, “This is my favorite hotel ever!”
Though I wasn’t feeling well, I was determined that our first trip together be a memorable one. This is how, on the afternoon of Will’s birthday, I found myself in a basement coffee shop, buying a tin of psychedelic mushrooms from a gangly white boy with dreadlocks. “Come on, don’t be a square,” I said to Will, who had never tried them before and seemed apprehensive. “Okay fine,” he eventually agreed. “If the Mayans were on point, this is the last year for humankind. Let’s do it right.” We walked a few blocks to an Ethiopian restaurant for dinner, and when the waiter wasn’t looking, I sprinkled a handful of the shrooms over a thick stew of spiced lentils. “You’re a nut, you know that?” Will laughed, shaking his head at me as he skeptically scooped up the laced lentils with a piece of injera.
The fog hung low over the city as we headed back to the hotel after dinner. Trudging through the slushy streets and over icy bridges, we dodged cyclists who rang their bells as they flew past. As we wandered the red-light district, silhouettes glowed behind curtained windows. A traffic light turned orange, red, green, then burst into a rainbow. I could see our hotel from where we stood, its neon sign flickering like an ember. We quickened our pace, trying to reach our room before the drugs hit full force. By the time we got inside, the pores of my skin had turned into tiny torches emitting flames. I tore off all of my clothes and sprawled onto the mattress, attempting to cool off. Meanwhile, Will began building a fort from sheets and pillows, forming a tent over the bed. “Get in here, it’s very gezellig,” I said, patting the empty space next to me. Gezellig, the untranslatable Dutch expression, which roughly means “cozy,” had become our new favorite word. Will slid under the canopy of sheets and lay down beside me.
“Jesus, you’re burning up,” he said, placing a palm onto my forehead.
In the moment, I thought it just meant the drugs were working, and working well. But over the next few hours, my fever crept up and up until my body felt like it might combust. I started shivering. Rivulets of sweat pooled in the hollows of my collarbones, and I remember feeling fragile for the first time in my life. “It’s like I’m made of eggshells,” I told him again and again. “Let’s stay here forever, okay?”
Will grew concerned and suggested we go to the emergency room. “Let me take care of you,” he said.
“Non merci, I am tough,” I said, showing him my bicep.
“We can take a taxi straight there and we’ll be back before you know it.”
I refused, shaking my head no until he gave up. I didn’t want to be one of those blundering tourists who traveled to Amsterdam, did a bunch of shrooms, and ended up in the hospital.
The next afternoon, we boarded a train back to Paris. The fever and the hallucinations had dissipated, but that feeling of fragility remained. With each passing day, I felt weaker, less vibrant. It was as if someone were taking an eraser to my core. The silhouette of my old self was still perceptible, but my insides were muting into a ghostly palimpsest.
4
SPACE TRAVELING AND GAINING MOMENTUM
BACK IN PARIS, I went to see a doctor for the usual reason twenty-two-year-old girls do: birth control. The clinic was a dingy labyrinth of paint-chipped walls, crowded waiting rooms, and flickering overhead bulbs. The other patients, most of whom appeared to be immigrants, also of North African descent, spoke among themselves in a mix of Arabic and French as they wrangled squirmy toddlers or flipped through magazines. As I looked around, I felt a pang of homesickness. The transition from my lollipop-pocketed pediatrician who had known me most of my life to this cold, run-down clinic was a jarring reminder that I was now on my own. I wasn’t a kid anymore, but I felt ill-equipped for the fluorescent, bureaucratic world of adulthood.
Eventually, my name was called. A phlebotomist cuffed the sleeve of my blouse and examined my arm for a usable vein. For as long as I could remember, I had been terrified of needles. Turning my face away, I glued my gaze to the ground and held my breath as the syringe pierced skin. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the spurt of crimson. No biggie, I told myself. I exhaled as the tube filled. Almost done.
An hour or so later, I was ushered into the doctor’s office, where a mustachioed man in a lab coat sat on the other side of a large wooden desk. I took a seat. “What brings you here today?” he asked me in French.
“I’d like to go on the pill,” I said.
“That shouldn’t be a problem.” He glanced down at a piece of paper, reviewing the results of my blood test, and paused, his brow furrowing slightly. “Before we discuss the different options, I’m wondering if you’ve been feeling tired?”
I nodded vigorously.
“Your blood work shows you’re anemic—that your red blood cell count is low.” I must have looked troubled. “Don’t worry,” he added, “anemia is quite common in young women. Do you have a heavy menstrual period?”
I shrugged, unsure of what “heavy” constituted. “I guess.” After a decade of cramps, any menstruation was too much menstruation in my book.
“That might be it, then,” the doctor said. “I’ll prescribe you the birth control and a daily iron supplement. That should give you more energy soon.”
* * *
—
On the métro ride home, I counted down the stops to rue Dupetit-Thouars, still giddy at the novelty of coming home to a man and an apartment that were mine. Bursting through the door, cheeks ruddy from the cold, I gave Will a hug, then as I uncorked a bottle of wine, I told him about the anemia and the iron supplements. “That’s why I’ve been feeling so freaking fatiguée.” I felt hopeful and smiled at him. “How was your day?”
“Mila scraped her elbow
on the merry-go-round at Champ de Mars and cried, but I was able to calm her down and everything was fine. So I would say it was a pretty bonne journée.” Will was taking French classes and had started working as a manny—a male nanny—something I was expressly forbidden from calling him, but did anyway, as often as possible. Every afternoon, while I was at the law firm, he picked up four-year-old Mila from preschool and took her to various extracurriculars. She had chubby cheeks and a frizzy cloud of brown curls. Her favorite activity was sitting on Will’s shoulders, where she had an aerial view of the street action, while munching on a croissant and shouting to anyone who would listen, “I’m the tallest girl in all of Paris!” As Will recounted their latest adventure, I picked flaky pastry crumbs out of his hair.
The manny gig was temporary, just until Will found his footing in Paris, and though he was hardly putting his diploma to good use, he didn’t seem to mind. It was steady, under-the-table cash that didn’t require him to have a work visa, and there were worse ways to spend your afternoons than discovering a foreign city with a four-year-old guide. I, on the other hand, was less optimistic about my job. I had been finding it difficult to get through the workday. The itch had lessened since I’d moved to Paris, but the exhaustion was so all-consuming that I was drinking up to eight espressos a day. I started to worry that my deep weariness might be something else. Maybe I just can’t cut it in the real world, I’d written in my journal. But the doctor at the clinic had offered an alternative explanation: anemia, which meant my fatigue was of me, not about me, a distinction for which I was grateful.
It grew late, and the wine bottle now sat empty on the trunk. I swayed to my feet and declared we were long overdue for our resolutions, which we’d planned to make on New Year’s Eve a few weeks earlier. I loved the annual ritual of drafting resolutions: I was always filling journals with to-do lists and dreams. The semblance of a plan, no matter how tenuous, balanced out the uncertainty and confusion I felt about the future. Though Will wasn’t much of a planner, he humored me. Come spring, he said, he would apply to graduate school, maybe at Sciences Po, the Paris Institute of Political Studies. I vowed to find a new job, one that didn’t leave me devoid of energy at the end of each day, something other than making photocopies or hiding my feet from my boss.
* * *
—
Over the next two months, I tried to make good on my resolution: I spruced up my résumé, sent out job applications, and reached out to former professors and mentors for advice. But mostly, I found myself back in the clinic’s dreary waiting room, where I returned half a dozen times to be treated for various colds, bouts of bronchitis, and urinary tract infections. Each time, I was assigned to a different doctor. Each time, I gave my medical history anew, the list of recent ailments growing longer by the visit. I was taking the iron supplements as instructed, but instead of feeling revitalized, I felt more and more depleted. The rotating cast of doctors at the clinic made me wonder who was keeping track of all the details—who, if anyone, had my back.
One afternoon, as I was getting yet another “routine” blood test, I felt tears fill my eyes. “What’s wrong?” the phlebotomist asked.
I wasn’t sure anymore.
The thing about being tired all day, every day, for many months is that you don’t notice yourself getting sicker. By the time I got a referral to see a doctor at the American Hospital of Paris, I had grown so weak that it was a struggle to climb up and down the ladder of the loft bed. On an unseasonably warm Friday afternoon in late March I left home for the appointment. What should have been a thirty-minute métro ride took hours, and I ended up in a neighborhood of Paris I didn’t recognize. I wandered in circles, searching for the hospital only to realize I had gotten off at the wrong stop. As I waited for a bus that would take me to Neuilly-sur-Seine, a western suburb of Paris where the hospital was located, I felt dazed. All around me, grand homes and expensive cars shimmered in the sun. Birds fluttered through the heart-shaped leaves of a linden tree. A mother walked hand in hand with her two blond children down the shady side of the street. My head began to spin. Starbursts dotted my vision and suddenly the houses, the cars, the birds, the mother dwindled to flecks of gold against pitch black. One minute I was standing; the next, I’d fallen sideways, my head slamming the sidewalk.
“Ça va, mademoiselle?” an elderly lady asked when I came to, her papery lips pinched in concern.
“Non,” I answered, as I began to cry again. I couldn’t reach Will, who was with Mila at her weekly swimming lesson, and my parents were four thousand miles away. I was space traveling and gaining momentum, spinning farther and farther away from Earth. I had never felt so alone.
When I finally arrived at the hospital, it was dusk. A man who introduced himself as Dr. K took a quick look at me on the examining room table and decided to admit me to the hospital to run further tests. “Vous n’avez vraiment pas bonne mine,” he told me. (Translation: You look like crap.) An orderly pushed me upstairs in a wheelchair to a white room with a large window. The sun was setting and I watched as dark purple clouds rolled across the horizon, threatening rain. The last time I’d spent the night in a hospital had been when I was born.
* * *
—
The American Hospital of Paris looked unlike any stateside hospital I had ever seen. My room was luxurious, bigger than my studio, and the walls were whitewashed in sunlight. I looked forward to the breakfast trays that arrived at my bedside each morning unbidden, the aromas of a buttery croissant and a café au lait stirring me from sleep. With breakfast came a daily dose of prednisone, a garden-variety steroid, prescribed to me for reasons that remained unclear, but within seventy-two hours, it had me feeling chipper enough to walk downstairs to the hospital courtyard, where I spent the afternoons writing in my journal, bumming cigarettes off the other cotton-robe-clad patients, and gazing, glassy-eyed, out onto the flower beds. In the evenings, after tucking Mila into bed, Will joined me at the hospital. He brought Scrabble, and we stayed up late talking and playing game after game. A nurse had offered him a visitor’s cot so he could stay over.
“Thank you for being here,” I murmured groggily, as we fell asleep in our separate beds.
“It makes me the happiest person to be with you, it’s been the happiest few months of my life,” Will said, reaching for my hand. “There’s no one quite like you. No one who urges me to live more than you do—who makes me want to be me more than you do. Your appetite for knowing more, and knowing yourself better, makes me want to be better. What we’re building together is big. And soon you’ll be out of here, and we can get back to our life.”
During my weeklong stay in the hospital, the doctors ran every test they could conceive of, from HIV to lupus to cat scratch fever. All negative. I answered countless questions: Nope, no prior surgeries or hospitalizations; no medical conditions; one grandfather died of prostate cancer, the other one from a heart attack, but otherwise no known family history of illness; if you count dancing in nightclubs, then yes, I exercise regularly. When Dr. K looked at my red blood cells under a microscope, he found that they were enlarged and mentioned something about my possibly needing a bone marrow biopsy. “How much alcohol do you drink?” he asked me one afternoon, standing over my bed. “Too much,” I piped back. “I did recently graduate from college.” I watched him jot down notes on a pad of paper as he walked out of the room. In the end, he decided that a biopsy was unnecessary for someone my age. I trusted him. After all, youth and health are supposed to go hand in hand.
“You need rest,” Dr. K concluded. “I’m still puzzled by your red blood cells, but I don’t see any reason for alarm. I’m going on vacation but let’s follow up when I get back in a couple of weeks and see how you feel.” With that, he discharged me with a diagnosis of something called “burnout syndrome” and granted me a one-month medical leave from work.
On the métro ride home from the hospital, I wr
ote in my journal:
Important Medical Details to Remember:
Dr. K wears Prada glasses.
Will and I almost got caught having sex in the bathroom of my hospital room by a nurse.
You can order crème brûlée and champagne directly to your room from the hospital cafeteria.
I’m pretty sure this place is a country club disguised as a hospital.
WTF is “burnout syndrome”?
Admittedly, I was psyched about the monthlong leave from my job, but the rest wasn’t fully adding up. Without the daily dose of prednisone, my energy was already waning. Slumped against the cold plastic métro seat, fighting to stay awake, it dawned on me that Dr. K might have thought that hard work and heavy play were the only culprits here. I didn’t feel he, or any of the other doctors I’d seen, were taking me seriously. But I can’t say I was either. I didn’t speak up. Instead, I dismissed the doubts ping-ponging inside my head. They were the ones with the medical degrees, not me.
* * *
—
A few days after returning home from the hospital I awoke to the good news that I had a job interview. I’d spent the last few weeks sending out inquiries to various newspapers and magazines with little success. Unlike other careers, where there were clear-cut paths to follow, corporate ladders to climb, or necessary degrees to obtain, the world of journalism was as mystifying to me as it was inaccessible. I had no idea how to get my foot in the door. “Just start writing and pitching stories to editors,” someone had told me, but my day job didn’t leave much time for that. Even if it had, I didn’t know any editors and even if I did, I likely wouldn’t have had the confidence to put myself out there. So instead I had written to my old journalism professor, who suggested I reach out to the International Herald Tribune, which was headquartered in Paris, about potential entry-level positions. To my surprise, they responded, saying they had an opening for a “stringer,” a kind of low-level information gatherer who would help their more senior reporters cover the revolution that had just broken out in Tunisia—later known as the Arab Spring. They wanted me to come in for an interview right away.
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