A Great Big Love

by Alona Jarden

  "So you're still suffering from—"

  "Hey! What about the doctor-patient confidentiality privilege I'm supposed to enjoy?" Don interrupted Dr. Reingold in the middle of his remark and continued. "Aren't you supposed to keep our conversation private?"

  For a few seconds, the silence in the room was very awkward.

  Don and Dr. Reingold exchanged glances between them. I shifted my head from one to the other in an attempt to catch some hint of the conversation I’d missed, and it seemed that no one wanted to be the first to reveal its essence out loud.

  "Do any of you want to give me your health insurance card?" Dr. Reingold grew tired of staring and shook his head in frustration.

  "Go on, Michelle," Don was quicker than me to respond. "Give the nice doctor your card."

  "So, what's wrong with you?" Dr. Reingold asked me.

  "My back hurts. More than usual." Those tormenting backstabs had forced me to try my luck and check if Dr. Reingold could see beyond my excess body weight and really want to help me, and he did! I couldn’t believe it, but he really did see me!

  About five minutes later, he was in the midst of a comprehensive series of tests. His hands pressed in various places on my back, and I confirmed to him that his pressure didn’t cause any distinct pain. He asked a lot of questions, tried to figure out if I got physically hurt or sat in a specific angle for longer than usual, and the word 'obesity' never even came out of his lips. I explained to him that I wasn’t exercising excessively and that I didn’t remember anything unusual that occurred before the pain began, but my answers didn’t help him to understand the source of my pain.

  "Would you rather Don waited outside?" Dr. Reingold asked sensitively as I hesitated to answer his embarrassing question.

  "No... Um... He can stay…" I stammered.

  "You have nothing to be ashamed of, Michelle," Don replied with a smugged smile, but his forehead wrinkled suspiciously. "Now is the time for you to take full responsibility for your unreasonable decisions. Answer the doctors' question."

  "Do you want me to force him out?" Dr. Reingold repeated his offer and made me laugh.

  "No." I took a deep breath and continued. "He can stay. The answer is no. We are not sexually active."

  "My point exactly!" Don slammed his hand on the table. "Now tell her, Doc. Tell her there's a chance that's the source of her problem! I trust you. Find a creative way to claim that that's the source of her back pain. Go on. Justify that big salary of yours." He sighed, but the words he said didn't allow me to understand why.

  "Are you sure you don't want him waiting outside?" Dr. Reingold quietly whispered. "Do you want privacy to answer these questions?"

  "No need, Doctor. We're really not sexually active." I whispered back, smiling, and suddenly felt very confident in my answer.

  "In that case, please lay on your back." He supported me until I fulfilled his request and then continued to whisper quietly in my ear. "Is there any chance you are sexually active with anyone else?"

  "What? What do you mean?"

  "I'm trying to figure out if you might have been with someone other than Don."

  "I'm barely sexually active with myself." I laughed just as a horrible cry of pain came from Don's direction.

  Dr. Reingold was quick to approach him, but as soon as he stood by him, Don changed his painful expression to another, more restrained, and unreliable one.

  "Is it that same stab again?" Dr. Reingold asked him as if he knew exactly what was happening.

  "Yes. Worst this time." He answered, confirming that I was the only clueless person in that room.

  "And it's always on the right side of your stomach? Show me exactly where it hurts."

  "What hurts?" I turned to lie on my side and then pushed myself to sit up. "So you weren’t lying? Are you really sick? I thought we were here because you tricked me with an urgent doctor's appointment."

  "Are you able to stand up?" Dr. Reingold asked him, completely ignoring my confusion.

  "Yes, I can." Don got to his feet. "The pain is coming in waves. Now it's actually gone. I'm fine, right now, Doc."

  "You don't look fine at all. Did you notice you're standing bent over?"

  "It hurts less when I'm folded in half." Don turned his eyes to me and struggled to smile. "Now doc, can you please explain to her that blue balls are not a myth and that this pain won't go away until she helps me relieve the pressure accumulated on my prostate?"

  "Stand up straight, Don." Dr. Reingold clung to the serious tone that matched his facial expression, and Don straightened his posture. "Okay, what now? Are you still sore?"

  "Yes, but it's like a dull pain deep inside."

  "Please stamp your right foot on the floor," Dr. Reingold instructed him.

  "I'd rather not do that." It was strange that he refused such a non-challenging request.

  "Would it hurt if you did?"

  "Like hell! Every step I take causes a painful shock in my stomach."

  "Don, I'm referring you to the ER."

  "Bullshit!" Don waved his palm at him and returned to sit in his chair.

  "He needs to get to the hospital, and it's your responsibility to get him there, Michelle," He looked at me and continued. "Am I being clear?"

  "Why does he need to go to the ER? What's wrong with him? What the hell is going on?" I got nervous, and Don completed the blanks for me while Dr. Reingold returned to his computer and began printing stacks and stacks of medical forms for us.

  Don told me that he started feeling a dull pain in his stomach on the way to dinner last night. He explained that he called Dr. Reingold while I was giggling with his parents with the intention of him seeing both of us and chose not to tell me about his pain intensifying for fear that I would react just as I did when I found out about his condition.

  "You're a moron!" I slammed my fist into his shoulder.

  "And you're so beautiful when you're angry." He smiled and leaned back in his chair, releasing another sigh of pain. "You're just so hot, woman."

  "Does he have a fever?" Dr. Reingold asked me.

  "No, he's talking about me being—"

  "I know what your horny boyfriend is talking about, I'm asking you to put your hand on his forehead and tell me if he has a fever." I was embarrassed that I didn't understand his request in the first place.

  "Oh, yes!" My eyes widened in panic. "Wow, Don. You're burning up!" I screamed, and just like that, the tables had turned.

  My back pain disappeared at once, or at least disappeared from my consciousness. Although I was complaining and whining about it every spare moment in the last few days, at that second, I felt no pain. Don, on the other hand, began to sigh and squirm as if outing the fact that he was in pain made it possible for him to feel free to show that he was suffering.

  "So you're all ready to leave." Dr. Reingold straightened the stack of pages he held after stamping and signing each one individually. "How are you feeling, Michelle?" he asked me.

  "Me?"

  "Yes, you. Your back hurts, remember? I couldn't finish your examination."

  "Ah, my back is just fine. Everything is fine with me. Just tell me what the plan is?"

  "You're going directly to the ER from here. I'm worried that Don has an infection in his appendix. If my hypothesis is correct, he'll need surgery immediately."

  "And if not?" Don raised his head and wondered.

  "If not, then I’m wrong, and you can come back here and blame me for a no-cause trip to the ER."

  "That's not what I meant." An expression I haven’t seen before wrapped around Don's pretty face. "I'm asking what will happen if I don't agree to do the surgery."

  "If it is indeed appendicitis, and I believe that it is, you will probably undergo surgery."

  "And what if I don’t? Can this be solved by administering antibiotics through an IV or something?"

  "Unfortunately, no. Appendicitis requires very urgent surgery."

  "You said it was an infection, didn’t yo
u? Maybe I can take some steroids? Anything besides surgery?"

  "Everything will be fine, Don." I stroked his hair and looked into his worried eyes. "I think they'll have to operate, but everything will be just fine. I promise you."

  "Don’t make promises you can't keep, Michelle. You're forgetting that I know all about their urgent surgeries. Nothing is really that urgent, and you don't always have to intervene surgically."

  "That's not the case, Don." Dr. Reingold gave it a shot, yet failed.

  "Sometimes, the symptoms of pain disappear on their own. Look at you, for example!" Don gestured at me. "Your back pain worked itself out." He stood up demonstratively, flipping the chair he was sitting on to the floor and then immediately folded in pain again as he leaned against Dr. Reingold's desk for support.

  I think that even Don realized the urgency of his condition after seeing the receptionist's response in the emergency room. She read the referral letter from Dr. Reingold and rushed to get him in the system.

  "Sir, you can go in there." She gestured to the emergency room glass doors and turned to look at me "And you need to go to the nurse's station and get his file open."

  "Okay." I collected the documents she gave me.

  "Ma'am?" She lowered her chin and glared at me. "Don't let anyone tell you to wait in line, you hear me? Do what you need to do and get them to see what's written in the reference letter."

  "Um... okay." I got into a fighting mood and steadfastly demanded our much-needed attention from the nurses.

  "Feel better!" The woman shouted as I started toward the glass doors and noticed that my back pain re-presented itself.

  I sat Don down in the first vacant chair I found and was terrified to see that he no longer had the ability to pretend he was fine. From the second we entered the hospital, his expressions showed that he was in agony, and it was clear that the memory of that evening with Sarah was tormenting him, but I wasn’t willing to let his fear cost him his life.

  I rushed to resolutely submit his file to the first nurse I found, as the receptionist advised me to do.

  "And who might you be for him?" She looked up from the papers.

  "We're together." I cleared my throat and narrowed my eyes at her.

  During the last few months, Don definitely entered the definition of 'What the hell is he doing with that huge woman?' and I was tired of finding myself in front of such puzzled looks.

  His body responded to the rigorous training and nutrition regime that I forced upon us while I only lost a few pounds, and my overall appearance roughly stayed the same. Granted, I occasionally gobbled a burger or two in my car, but I refused to believe that my solitary confinement to the carbohydrate world was the cause for me not losing as much weight as he did.

  "Is there anyone in his family here with him?"

  "Why?" I got frightened as I feared he might have suffered from a special medical condition I wasn’t aware of, given the fact that I didn’t even glance at Dr. Reingold's referral papers.

  "According to what's written here, he'll probably be rushed to the operating room. I thought it would be right for someone close to him to be by his side."

  "Well… I'm close to him. As I said, I'm his girlfriend. We're together."

  "Ohhh… Together as in you're his girlfriend?" She raised an eyebrow. "I thought you just came in together as friends, you know?"

  "Yes. Unfortunately, I do know." I exhaled in anger. "I'm his girlfriend if that's what you're asking."

  "Oh, so that's fine." Her cheeks were painted by an embarrassed blushed. "I'm so sorry, I was just... never mind. If so, you can accompany him." This time, she was the one to clear her throat. "Let's take his measures."

  The nurse, who didn’t wear a name tag on her shirt, brought Don into one of the stalls of the emergency room. She pulled the curtain around us and began to examine him. He groaned, yet managed to reply when she asked him about the nature of his pain. She took note of his blood pressure and body temperature, indicated all his complaints on the forms she was holding, then said she would urgently call one of the doctors and went away.

  "What's up with you?" Don gasped heavily. "You're awfully quiet."

  "I'm a little stunned at how fast all this shit is hitting the fan. Maybe if you had shared you were in pain last night, I might have been able to react a little more—"

  "Good God, woman. You really never do stop complaining, do you?"

  "I don’t." I smiled and changed the angle of my sitting posture, trying to find another one that would ease my pain, but for some reason, it only grew stronger. "And what have we learned about my complaints yesterday, Don?"

  "That it's your innate birthright as a woman." He closed his eyes and shrank from a wave of pain that attacked him. "Ouch!" He murmured and didn’t notice that I, too, was in pain.

  The curtain we stood behind was pulled open just as we were both crouching in pain and passing through it, like a gale of wind, came two vigorous doctors in white robes.

  "What do we have here?" The older one of them, a doctor with the name tag 'Garrison,' turned to me.

  "Um... His stomach hurts a lot, he has a fever, and his GP said that..."

  "I meant what's going on with you, sweetie." He smiled at me. "How are you doing?"

  "Isn't she beautiful?" Don, recovering from the last wave of pain, came back to his charming self and went on. "But she's all mine, Dr. Garrison. You haven’t killed me yet, and for as long as I'm still breathing, she's mine."

  "Okay." The doctor didn't look away from me and asked, "Other than the fact that you belong to this nice suffering guy, are you okay?"

  "Yeah, yeah," I lied my ass off. "I just hurt my back a bit, that's all." I choked out a scream that demanded to be released, while a lot more than just a little bit was hurting me.

  "In that case, what brings you here, Sir?" He turned to Don.

  "I came to ask if I really have to undergo surgery."

  "That's what I'm here to find out, aren’t I?" Dr. Garrison laughed, read what was written in Don's medical record, pressed a little on his stomach in various places, asked specific questions, and then declared, "I must say that in my professional opinion, yes. You will need to undergo surgery."

  "Would that change if I ask for a second opinion?" Don tried to bargain.

  "Look." Dr. Garrison took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. "We can do a CT scan to confirm that this is actually appendicitis, but I think it will be a waste of time and in case of appendicitis, time is just what we don't have to waste."

  "You're wrong! Take your time. I'm not in any hurry. Do the CT scan." Don's voice trembled with pain, and again, he crawled into a ball, moaning in intense pain. "I'd rather be sure this is the diagnosis than—"

  "Die?" Dr. Garrison completed his sentence and paused dramatically.

  "Die?" I asked.

  "I'm sorry to have to say it so bluntly, but what's happening to your body is a classic case of appendicitis. Now the ball is in your court, Don. Do you want us to do a series of tests that will put you at risk, or are you willing to accept my professional opinion and be sent to the operating room right now?"

  "Are you saying there's a ball?" Don gasped. "I'm not bad at ball games."

  "Excellent, Don. I’ve said all that I have to say, now the ball is in your court." Dr. Garrison repeated his conclusion and left the stall we were in, pulling the curtain behind him.

  Don avoided looking at me, and it was clear that he knew he was acting stupid.

  I waited for him to say something or ask for my opinion, but the pain I endured brought my patience to its limits and caused me to burst out loud, "You're going into surgery!" I shouted suddenly and then continued with a tender look into his aching eyes. "This is not a ball, Don. This is not a game, it's your life, and unfortunately, it’s bound to mine."

  "Okay, I know it sounds delusional, and don't ask me why, but I know for sure that if I go into that operating room, I won't come out of it."

  "I wasn’t going to as
k 'why.' It's obvious that your previous visit here has left you full of fears, but I will say that you are talking shit. You'll come out healthy and almost complete, and I will wait for you right here." I couldn't stifle the pain anymore and moaned uncontrollably in front of him without restraint.

  "I knew it! Something's wrong with you!" Don's eyes began to tear, and he turned to look in the direction the doctors had gone just moments before. "Excuse me! Dr. Garrison!" he called out loud.

  "Well, what did we decide?" Dr. Garrison asked immediately as he returned to stand next to Don's bed.

  "We have decided that she is a big fat liar and that she's not feeling well. Check her out. I insist that you check what going on with her. She's writhing in pain."

  "Is that true?" he asked me.

  "I'm fine. Really, I am," I choked out.

  "Don, you're probably right. She seems to be in a lot of pain, and I promise we'll check her out, but first, I want to get you into the operating room."

  "I'm not going anywhere before you tell me that Michelle is okay."

  "Fine," The doctor gave him a fake smile and said, "She's okay." He then turned to me, smiled, and even added a gentle wink.

  "He's right, Don. You see? I'm not in pain anymore. It passed."

  "And soon it will come back, right? Then what?"

  "Then I'll check and make sure she's alright. I give you my word." Dr. Garrison leaned over and stared at him so that he had no other option but to listen to his words. "You'll go to the operating room right now, and you'll come out of the operating room directly into this lovely woman's arms. You have my word for it."

  "But I—"

  "Brother, I'm telling you I'm looking out for her." Dr. Garrison adopted a very hip style of speech that didn't suit him, and I knew Don would respond accordingly.

  "I'm not your brother." His expected reaction made me laugh. "I hate being called that, and I don't need false promises out of you. I know these words of yours by heart." He folded his angry arms over his chest.

  "Don, I'll be just fine."

  "I don't want to hear any more from you, Michelle." He refused to look at me.

  "Babe, I love you." I tilted my head to its side and tried to soften his anger, unsuccessfully.