The Heart's Desires
"How are you feeling today?"
I hated that question. Everyday, multiple times a day, people would ask me that.
"How are you feeling today?"
"I'm fine," I would respond, the words tasting like ash in my mouth.
"That's good," they smiled, every time without fail. A small, plastic thing that never reached their eyes.
They told me that my lymphoid organs weren't fully developed and I had a heart defect. Something wrong happened while I was in the womb, and because of it I was born with a useless immune system and had a heart two sizes too small.
'Like the Grinch,' I had thought. Only unlike the Grinch, it wasn't metaphorical and a change of character wasn't going to magically fix everything.
"It's a miracle," they would say. I was a miracle.
Every time someone told me that, that I was a miracle and how strong I must be for surviving day by day as I did, I had to choke back the hysteric, mirthless laughter that threatened to escape me.
Because not once have I ever felt strong. Felt miraculous. I was not lucky, not God blessed, not anything that abled people tried to force down my throat.
I was as pale as snow, with a dull brown mop on my head, noodled armed and wouldn't survive a simple jog around the block. My world cut off at the children's Hospital's front doors, and the only people I met were either dressed in white coats and nurse uniforms or to whom I shared genes with.
Is that truly miraculous? What's so special about being bedridden, with having regular blood transfusions because the one organ responsible for circulating blood wasn't big -wasn't strong enough- do it it itself? How could watching the people around you do tasks that would be life-threatening for yourself so effortlessly, to hear them talk about activities and outings such as rock-climbing, travelling, swimming, amusement parks, or even the simple bike ride like they're mundane things when it sounds like a fantastical dream towards yourself be lucky?
It's not. It's not miraculous, nor is it special. And if that's what it means to be "God Blessed," then God can keep His blessings.
Knowing this, it's no wonder why I adored action and adventure movies and books as much as I did. I can still remember when I was six years old, and Mom started reading Harry Potter to me every night. She was a great story teller. Every character had a slightly different voice, and the way she would raise her voice higher and express the narrator's incredulity would send me into fists of laughter.
And then on my tenth birthday my parents bought me the first Percy Jackson book and I fell even harder. I spent hours pouring myself into every page, every line. I wrote many fanfictions on both of the series, horrendous and excellent ones alike.
'I wish I could be like them.'
The deep desire to be in their shoes, to go on a breath-taking adventures and win at the end of the day despite all odds burned within my very soul. To have the bested of friends to stick through thick and thin with, to push past the limitations which people and the world try to stifle me with, and most importantly to escape the white walls of the hospital. It was an itch I couldn't get rid of, a poison that I greedily drank.
"How are you feeling today?"
But at the end of the day, neither Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Lord of the Rings, or any other fairy tale could last forever, and nurses with their false cheer and plastic smiles, the doctors with their white coats and clipboards, and that blasted question was never far enough.
There were days in which I wanted to scream at them. Times where my fingers twitched with the vapid urge to throw something. To wipe the smile off their faces, to spit out the scathing words on the tip of my tongue, to do anything if simply to shut them up.
I was not a miracle, was not strong, and not lucky.
And they knew it too.
They didn't think I knew. Didn't think I heard.
But I did. I heard them whispering, and saw the pitying looks when they didn't think I could.
"Poor thing," they would say.
"It's such a tragedy," they murmured.
"How long will she last?" they asked.
I asked myself that very same question. How long will I spend in these white walls, watching as the world moves on while I'm helpless in my bed?
"How are you feeling today?"
How am I feeling? How am I feeling?
I felt as if I was suffocating. Drowning, with a cold hand squeezing my lungs tight, my skin stretched too taut over my brittle bones.
I felt like knives and needles scraped against me, with their sharp gazes on me. Blood sat at the back of my throat from biting my tongue too hard.
I felt timeless, something other and not right when my parents would come visit me, my perfect, healthy younger sister in tow. Something hot and uncomfortable pressed against my insides, like it wanted to burst me open.
"How are you feeling today?"
"I'm fine," I lied through rotting teeth.
Fine. Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine-
I was fine for fifteen years.
The miracle did not last, my strength failed, and my luck ran out after fifteen years.
The funny thing, though? I truly, genuinely was fine that last night.