“So you want me to explain it to you even though you don’t care?”
Her glare could kill.“I haven’t got all day.”
I sigh, but common sense wins out.If things ever do get complicated, it probably wouldn’t be a bad idea for someone to know what to do.
“OK,” I say coolly, pushing myself away from the wall.“It’s basically very simple.It’s about sugar—i.e., carbs—and insulin.When I eat, I need insulin so that the sugar reaches my cells and can be turned into energy.Your body can produce its own insulin and does that automatically.Mine can’t anymore.”
She gives a controlled nod.“So you have to inject it?”
“I have a pump,” I say, but I can tell she has no idea what I’m talking about.So I lift my T-shirt to show her the round pod above my left hip that combines my pump and a measuring system.I’m surprised she hadn’t spotted it on Sunday night by the display cases, but hey, it was dark.Now I can’t help noticing the way Olive’s gaze flits over the waistband of my jeans and my belly.I suppress a grin.Oh, Olive Garden, are you really that easily impressed?
Then she seems to remind herself of who she is, because she looks away from my belly and back up to my face.“That’s it?”she asks calmly.
I nod.
“I always thought...”She stops.“No, doesn’t matter.Forget it.”
“That it would be more noticeable?”I ask.She stares at the ground, like she’s been caught out.“It used to be, until a coupleof years ago.Back then, I had a tethered pump with a tube and a separate sensor for the glucose meter.The technology’s improving all the time.So are the meters.Now everything works through this pod, and I can control it on an app.”
“But how does it work?That’s only a plaster.”
“The pump system’s in there, with a needle to supply the insulin and measure my blood sugar.”
“A needle?”She’s taken aback.“You mean, it’s in there?The whole time?”
“It’s really small and fine,” I explain.“But yeah, the whole time.Of course I have to change it regularly.About every three days.”
Great, she’s got a phobia of needles.Her face has gone even paler—I can see that even in the dim light out here.
“It doesn’t hurt or anything.”No idea why I say that.She’d probably be glad if it did.Most of the time she looks at me as if she isn’t exactly averse to the idea of hurting me.But now she’s looking at me differently.With that fucking worry in her face.Suddenly I wish we hadn’t had this conversation.
“OK...How do you know how much insulin you need?”
My smile is tired.“I’ve had diabetes since I was eleven.After a while, you can just kind of tell.”
Such a long time now.I can see from her eyes that she’s thinking the same thing.
“The pump releases small amounts of insulin all the time, which covers what I need for the day,” I continue.“At mealtimes I can give myself a bolus dose.So that’s fast-acting insulin for when I eat.I don’t really think about it anymore—after a while, it’s just routine.”
Olive nods but doesn’t speak.
“I used to have to actively check on my levels, but now I can look at my daily profile in the app at any time, which also shows me if there’s a trend up or down.But most of the time, I can tell anyway if I’m having a hypo or a hyper.So then, depending which it is, I either eat something or adjust my blood-sugar level with insulin.”
“How do you feel it?”she asks.
“I just do,” I say.“The important thing is to be around one hundred most of the time.That’s the baseline.”
“So your blood-sugar level has to be a hundred?”she repeats.
“Yes, wait.”I pull out my phone and open the app.When I hold it out to her, her eyes widen slightly.
“Colin, that’s too low.”She lifts her head.“Isn’t it?”
Colin...Not Fantino.I think it’s the first time she’s ever called me that.
I turn the screen back toward me, and oh, she’s right.I don’t actually feel that low.I remember what Dr.Calder, my doctor in New York, said before I left, when we were talking about my levels over the last few months, which get sent directly to her by the app.Too many hypos that I didn’t notice, or didn’t notice in time, and were reflected in my HbA1c level being too low—that’s the long-term blood-sugar level that she calculates at every checkup.In the long run, that tends to be better than being permanently too high, which can damage your blood vessels and lead to problems with your eyes or kidneys, or pretty much any other organ.
But all the hypos are more annoying because they sometimes catch me by surprise and they can get serious pretty quickly.They call it impaired awareness of hypoglycemia, which means that my body’s gotten used to the warning signals and doesn’t bother sounding the alarm until things are critically low.So low that I don’t have much time to act.Dr.Calder wanted to sign me up for a special class that would teach me to be better at paying attention to the warnings, but then I was suddenly in Scotland, not New York, so I never had the chance.
