"Well, you'll have to investigate and report back." I glanced at the clock display in the corner of my screen. "We should wrap up for today. Same time Thursday?"
After our goodbyes, I closed the video chat program and stretched, wincing at the stiffness in my joints. The desk chair wasn’t comfortable, no cushioning fabric. Just easy-to-clean molded, powder blue plastic. It took me a ridiculously long time to stand up, my feet tingled terribly. Walking was going to feel like the floor was made of glass shards.
A few days ago, everything in my room had been sterilized to within an inch of its life—a metaphor I typically shied away from, given my own tenuous existence. When Brightfield did one of their facility-wide deep cleans, I ended up in a safe little, ten-by-ten bubble until my room was deemed habitable for me again. The only silver lining was I got to crack ‘bubble girl’ jokes literally.
Closing the laptop and picking it up to tuck under my right arm, I shuffled back to bed, each step a careful negotiation with my increasingly uncooperative body. Three years ago, I could pace this room for hours without getting winded. Now, the ten steps from desk to bed left me breathless. Though Doctor Emerson hadn’t told me flat-out I was worsening beyond help, the truth seemed to be screaming at me every waking hour.
I sank onto the mattress and against the stack of pillows—they crinkled slightly as I settled against them thanks to the plastic-like allergen cases—and opened the laptop again, this time perched against my thighs instead of the barebones desk across the room. After initiating a browser, it took a quick bookmark click to open the blog I'd started when I turned twenty-one. "Life in the Bubble: Chronicles of a Professional Sick Person." The title had seemed ironically funny at the time, a way to reclaim my identity beyond medical charts and treatment protocols. Two years and over a hundred posts later, it had become my connection to a world that existed only as pixels on a screen.
Today's half-written draft stared back at me:
I think I’m tired. Tired of trying to take one breath after another. Tired of these four walls. Tired of endless tests. Broken promises. I’m tired. Is it okay to quit? Is that allowed? Being an Omega, right to die laws don’t apply. But if I have no right to live, what’s the point?
I stared at what I’d written this morning and then thought about Milo’s smile when he’d understood the math problem. I was hurting all over, yet I’d found a way to help someone despite being stuck in this damn room. I deleted the entire paragraph with a swipe of my finger. Too whiny, too fatalistic. Too… truthful. My readers didn't come to my blog for existential despair—they wanted the sanitized version of chronic illness, the inspirational journey of a girl who found meaning despite her limitations. The truth was messier, darker, and should stay in the shadows.
I started typing again.
Today I tutored a ten-year-old math prodigy trapped in his own bubble across the country. It helps to connect with other people like me. We're members of an exclusive club nobody actually wants to join. Not sure why. All you healthy weirdos are missing out. Sometimes I think the kids I help online are the only ones who truly get my sense of humor about tasteless food, relentlessly bitter medicine, and why hospitals always seem to think yellow is the best wall call. Yellow isn’t cheery. Yellow is waste containers filled with used needles. Yellow is how dark my pee is when I’m horribly dehydrated and dizzy. Yellow is?—
I stopped typing abruptly, realizing that apparently today I wasn’t going to be able to write a decent blog entry. My brain was too full of muck and mire.
Tightness suddenly sprouted in my chest and I lifted a hand, pressing my palm firmly over the area that seemed to be constricting. I closed my eyes as pain began to spiderweb outward from the discomfort.
Tighter.
Ever tighter.
Like someone was turning the tuning pegs of a guitar far past the reasonable point.
And strings were threatening to snap.
7
LUCY
{Two months ago}
The News.
I’d been staringat the blog post from yesterday, the one I couldn’t manage to finish. Today wasn’t looking much better. I was still too down in the mouth. I read it over for the hundredth time, debating if I should delete it and start over.
Day… why even count anymore?Frowning, I deleted the smiley emoticon I’d originally typed. I think kept punching delete until the question mark and anymore also disappeared. I paused, frown deepening, then added back the question mark.
Day… why even count?
Today I tutored a ten-year-old math prodigy trapped in his own bubble across the country. It helps to connect with other people like me. We're members of an exclusive club nobody actually wants to join. Not sure why. All you healthy weirdos are missing out. Sometimes I think the kids I help online are the only ones who truly get my sense of humor about tasteless food,relentlessly bitter medicine, and why hospitals always seem to think yellow is the best wall call. Yellow isn’t cheery. Yellow is waste containers filled with used needles. Yellow is how dark my pee is when I’m horribly dehydrated and dizzy. Yellow is?—
I probably would have sat frozen in front of the laptop all day if the airlock hadn’t whooshed, announcing a visitor.
Doctor Emerson's arrival was different this time. I noticed it immediately—the slight hesitation as he entered through the airlock, the way he clutched my medical file against his chest like a shield, the unusual stiffness in his normally relaxed posture. After seven years in isolation, I'd become fluent in the language of bad news. Medical staff had distinct tells when they were preparing to deliver something unpleasant, and Doctor Emerson's averted gaze behind his protective visor practically screamed catastrophe.
"Afternoon, Lucy," he said, his voice muffled by the respirator. He moved to the visitor's chair but didn't sit, hovering instead like he couldn't quite commit to staying. "How are you feeling today?"
I studied him, cataloging the differences from his usual demeanor. Doctor Emerson typically entered my room with a relaxed confidence, often carrying a new book or some small contraband treat that had made it through sterilization. Today, his hands remained empty except for my file—ominously thick after years of failed treatments and downward-trending lab results.
"I'm feeling like someone who's about to receive terrible news," I replied, forcing my voice to remain steady. "Your bedside manner needs work, Doc. You look like you're attending my funeral."
A flicker of something—guilt or maybe fear, I thought—crossed over what little I could see of his face. "I wanted to checkin after hearing about your breathing difficulties earlier. You look well.”
