Pretirement

It’s 2:30 in the morning. I’m in a hospital waiting room with my mom curled up next to me. Dad’s down the hall getting a cat scan. He’s having abdominal pain. They said they think it’s gastritis, whatever that is. Sounds like an easy sort of sickness you get from bad tacos, and the doctor gives you antibiotics and you go home. Fingers crossed. I spent the night in the hospital two months ago. I’d hate for Dad to have to do that.

That was, how long, two months ago now. Living in London, trying to get a job so I could stay there for a while with Roxanne. I’d been searching for jobs for two months, and that’s when I got malaria. It felt pretty bad. I had to go to the hospital twice. They didn’t diagnose it the first time because, really, malaria?

Dad’s back from the cat scan. Nothing wrong with his pancreas or his appendix. They’re giving him something called a GI cocktail and then I don’t know what.

The second trip to the hospital was traumatic I guess. The fever comes and your body shuts down. You take all your clothes off and soak the sheets in sweat, but the fever keeps going up. Roxanne called a cab and we went to the hospital. They gave me the royal treatment that day, they ran all sorts of tests, and they had me sitting outside the spinal tap room and someone came out. “They know what you have. Go back downstairs.” Downstairs the doctors were all smiles. Malaria.

God, then I got kicked out. It only took a few days to get over the malaria once I was on the drugs. And the NHS was great for treating me and not charging me a dime. If I’d needed all that hospital care in the US I’d have been screwed because I didn’t have insurance. But I left for a week to visit friends in Europe and renew my visa stamp and when I came back to England they wouldn’t let me in. First plane back to Switzerland. The Swiss police met me at the airport and held me there until I bought a ticket to the US. I got on the first flight in the morning back to NYC.

I’ve been here ever since, in Springfield. Two months. Roxanne and I don’t know what to do. You know, about us. She had some time off coming and visited me for two weeks. We talk on the phone.

I have an apartment for the summer in Chicago. After that I don’t know. If you’re in Chicago come visit.

Dad just drank his cocktail. He said it was gross. They figured out the problem is a drug he’s taking for something else, and we can go home now 🙂

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