Divorced and dying;now watch me rise

Chapter 5

He had warned me.

On the first day of treatment he had sat across from me, not behind his desk, across from me, and walked through the entire process in language I could understand and at the end he had said: weeks two and three will be the hardest. Your body will mount a resistance before it surrenders to the process. It is not failure. It is the medicine working.

I had nodded. I had thought: fine. I know how to do hard.

I had not understood what he meant.

I woke on a Tuesday at five in the morning and could not open my hands.

Both of them. Fingers locked, swollen, the joints so inflamed that even attempting to straighten them made me make a sound into my pillow that I was glad Audrey did not hear.

My back was worse than it had been in months. My knees ached when I tried to swing them off the bed. The fatigue was not behind my eyes anymore, it was in my bones, the specific deep tiredness that meant my body had been doing enormous work through the night and had nothing left for the morning.

I lay there staring at the tree outside the window.

Three years of this disease and I knew its vocabulary fluently. I knew the difference between a bad day and a flare, between manageable pain and the kind that told you to stop. This was the second kind. This was my body saying something significant is happening whether you agreed to it or not.

I called the clinic.

Steven answered on the second ring, which surprised me. It was five forty three.

"Ms. Green."

"I can't move my hands," I said. My voice was completely flat, every ounce of energy going toward the words themselves and none left over for emotion. "Both of them. And my back is probably a nine."

A brief silence. Not a startled one. The silence of someone thinking.

"Describe the hands more specifically."

"Swollen at every knuckle. Can't straighten the fingers. The wrists are involved too."

"Any fever?"

"I don't know. I can't hold a thermometer."

"Fair. Have Audrey check." He paused. "This is what I told you about. The correction crisis. Your inflammatory response is peaking before it drops. It means the treatment is doing exactly what it should be."

"That is genuinely not comforting right now."

"I know it isn't." His voice stayed even. Not dismissive. Not falsely soothing. Just honest. "Take your morning medication. Heat on the hands and back. Call me if a fever spikes above a hundred and two. Otherwise I'll see you Thursday and we'll assess."

"And if I can't get out of bed Thursday?"

"Then I'll come to you."

I paused.

"Doctors don't do that," I said.

"Some do." He paused. "Call if it worsens."

He hung up.

I lay there for a moment looking at my locked hands and I thought about what he had said. The correction crisis. My body mounting its biggest resistance right before it learned to surrender to something that was trying to help it.

I understood that metaphor in more than one way.

Audrey took one look at me when she opened my door and went to get my medication, a heating pad, and a bowl of something hot that she set on the nightstand without a word.

"You don't have to," I started.

"Don't," she said. "You would do it for me."

She was right. I would.

I spent that day in bed, drifting in and out of a heavy medicated sleep, and in the windows when I was awake I reached over and pulled the blue notebook from my bag and held it against my chest.

The Veridex investigation.

Eight months of sourcing before I had to set it down. Three contacts inside the company. Documents showing the gap between their internal safety studies and the data they had submitted for approval. A timeline that had enough holes in it to tell a story if you knew how to read a timeline.

I had set it down because Damien had said it was not worth making powerful enemies when I was already dealing with my health.

He had been protecting his own interests, not mine. He had built his second business on investor connections that overlapped with pharmaceutical money and I had not known enough to see the conflict.

I knew now.

I opened the notebook.

Even with my stiff fingers, I made notes.

Thursday I walked into the clinic on my own two feet.

Steven looked up from his desk when I came in and I saw him do the thing he always did, that quiet inventory of how I was moving, where I was favoring weight, what my hands looked like.

"Better," he said.

"Marginally."

"The labs from Tuesday's blood draw." He held up a paper. "Your inflammation markers dropped eighteen percent from last week."

I stared at him.

"Eighteen."

"The crisis was doing its job." He didn't say I told you so. He didn't need to. He just looked at me with something that was not quite a smile but occupied the same territory.

I sat down in the recliner and he began the setup and after a moment I said, "Dr. Nakamura."

"Mm."

"First treatment, when I mentioned the Veridex investigation. You reacted."

He didn't respond immediately. His hands continued what they were doing, placing the line with the same practiced focus he always had.

"You noticed that," he said. It was not a question.

"I'm a journalist. I notice things."

Another pause. Longer this time.

"My mother's original diagnosis was delayed by two years," he said finally. "In that time she lost significant function in one kidney. Part of the delay was because a medication she had been prescribed was suppressing the specific antibody markers that would have identified the lupus earlier." He checked the line. "That medication was manufactured by Veridex. I've looked at their approval timeline myself."

"The safety data," I said.

"Has gaps," he finished.

We looked at each other.

"You never reported it," I said.

"I'm a doctor." Something moved through his expression. "I'm not a journalist."

I looked at the line running from my arm. At the treatment that was beginning to work when nothing else had. At the man who had come back to his hometown to look after his mother and had chosen to take on patients like me who paid him in fundraiser money.

"When I'm better," I said.

"When," he said, firmly, like he was correcting a grammatical error.

"When I'm better, I'm going to finish that story."

He was quiet for a moment.

Then: "I know."

Not I believe you or I hope so. Just: I know. Like it was already settled.

My phone buzzed on the tray.

Damien. Three messages in the past week, each one shifting in tone. The first something close to an apology. The second a reminder about the settlement. The third just: Nora. Call me back.

I turned the phone face down.

Steven glanced at it. Then at me.

"Old news," I said. "Delivered on a delay."

He looked back at the equipment. But the corner of his mouth moved. Just slightly.

"Rest today," he said.

"You say that every time."

"And one day you'll do it."