The feeling in my gut was funny. Funnier than the dizziness in my head and funnier than I felt after sleeping this afternoon. It was especially funny because it was so full of contradictions. There was anger and disappointment, there was joy and giddiness. The funniest thing about the feeling, though, was that it had no reason to be there in my gut.
I guessed that the only thing one was supposed to feel like about an ultrasound was neutral. It was just this thing that doctors do to you when you're in the hospital, it was part of their job and the only thing that really mattered was whether the doctor saw any illness or not.
The result of the ultrasound was the part of it that interested me the least, though. The doctor had mentioned something about my heart being affected by my cold and there was some liquid next to something in my heart- but most the things she had told me about that were foggy in my head. The memory of what she had said and showed was hazy; the only thing I remembered was watching her lips move so beautifully and her eyes shining so excitedly as she spoke. It was the very same spark of excitement that she had gotten before in my room when she was talking about medicine.
The way I could produce pictures with the ultrasound machine actually had been pretty cool, there was no denying that, but I mostly kept looking interested while she was rambling about medical detail so the spark in her eyes wouldn't go away. Whenever she talked that excitedly about things she was interested in, it was like some invisible weight was lifted off of her shoulders. I wasn't sure whether she was actually aware of that, she probably had dragged around that weight on her shoulders for so long she didn't notice it anymore.
Seeing her act so much more freely and at ease was thrilling to me. Without her weird weight to carry, she looked like the prettiest woman in the world. And by keeping the spark from going away, I could contribute to her staying in that beautiful state - so one could say that I made her pretty. I knew the thought was a bit far-fetched but I liked it a lot. It made me feel like I was a contributor to something really precious and special. And contributing to something special made me feel special. There was a strong urge in me to make the spark stay in the doctor's eye all the time. Although that probably meant that I would have to be near her all the time and I thought that would make her work quite difficult to her.
And maybe her work being difficult was part of the weight on her shoulders. The way she walked, like when she entered the ultrasound room, looked hurried, rushed, maybe even chased. Was there someone or something chasing her? Did her work chase her, her boss maybe? But she had seemed so happy when talking about medicine. The shining in her eyes told me that she loved what she did. How could one love one's job but also feel so burdened by it?
That thought confused me. Although what happened in the ultrasound room had improved my mood, my thinking was still as slow as molasses on a cold day. I blinked to clear my mind a bit.
After I had wandered back to my room, a nurse had brought me some hot tea and told me to lie down and rest. I didn't object because I had thought that was a very good idea. The world around me wasn't really spinning but it just felt all wobbly and blurry. Taking a sip of my tea, I closed my eyes again and tried to think of something nice to distract me from feeling sick.
Oddly enough, the pretty doctor came to my mind. Even more odd was that I didn't think of the ultrasound. I thought of when she first talked to me in my room and how she had put her hand on my leg after she had overcome her first awkwardness. There had been a blanket over my legs so she didn't technically touch me. I also didn't think that the doctor had really meant a whole lot of stuff with that. It was just meant to tell me that I was being cared about. Or at least it felt nice thinking of the gesture like that. I didn't know, I couldn't think straight.
But the image of her dark, slander hand was crisp and clear in my mind. I actually found myself looking down my legs to check whether the doctor had come in while I was thinking to myself and had put her hand back there. After checking twice and very carefully, I concluded that I was still alone in my room. The spot on my leg that she had almost touched felt weird and tingly, though.
Somewhere inside myself I knew that this was a freaky thing to think and feel. She was my doctor, we had barely just met and I didn't even remember her name. Yet I already found myself fantasizing about her. That was freaky, right? It also probably made me sound kind of desperate.
I wasn't desperate, though. Or I didn't think I was. Why would I be? I was really happy with my life right now; there was no reason to be desperate. Apart from being sick maybe, but that would make for a whole other type of desperate.
Imagining pleasant stuff wasn't desperate, anyway. It was nice. Why would one worry over that? That was stupid. So many things that one kept thinking about where actually really stupid. Like, just wasting so much time on thinking about them until your brain hurt was stupid. Nice things were nice, one should enjoy them and not worry about whether it's right to enjoy them.
Why was I thinking about all of this? Now I was thinking too much about thinking too much. Guess that made me sort of a hypocrite.
I sighed. I didn't really like this day. It was just so full of times where my head felt weird, and I didn't understand what my head or my body was doing. A glance on my phone told me that it was just past seven. At least this day wasn't going to be all that much longer. My phone also told me that my parents had called a few times. They probably were worried about me. Maybe my neighbours had told them I was in hospital? I decided I needed to call my mum. Tell her that I was fine and tell her not to worry.
She picked up the phone very quickly. My mum wasn't so good with mobile phones, she usually would search all her stuff in frenzy when her phone rang and still miss the call.
"Brittany, darling! You finally called! Your dad and I were about to search the hospitals of the area for you!"
I told her to calm down, and I told her what happened during the day and how I got into hospital and how I was really fine by myself. The last part was the lie. It was not that I needed my parents around; I was old and independent enough to manage without them. The thought of not being alone in this boring hospital room, of someone distracting me from the weird things this cold did to my head was very comforting, though. Also, I wanted my mum to cook chicken soup for me and bring me some. Trying to get healthy without soup seemed senseless to me. My lie must have been pretty obvious; because my mum announced Dad and her were gonna visit first thing tomorrow.
"Will there be soup?" I asked.
"Soup? What do you mean?"
"I mean the soup that you always make for me when I'm sick."
"So you want some chicken soup? Oh honey, you know I'll bring you all the soup you want."
"That's really nice of you, Mum. I'm really looking forward to your visit tomorrow. But I think I'll go to sleep now. I kinda want this day to be over."
"That's very understandable, dear. You go get yourself some nice sleep! Your dad keeps motioning for me to greet you from him. So, greetings from Dad! We love you! Bye!"
She hung up and I let the phone drop onto the mattress next to me. I was really excited to see my parents tomorrow. We didn't live that far apart but I hadn't visited them very often lately; we were all kind of busy with our own lives. Though I had told them that I wanted to go to sleep now, I wasn't sure whether I'd actually be to fall asleep. I didn't like sleeping in beds that weren't mine. They never smelled the way my bed smelled and that always threw me off. I associated sleeping with the smell of my bed, and anything that didn't smell like my bed I didn't associate with sleep, like this hospital bed for example.
It probably was a silly thought, but it seemed very important to me right now. Ever since I was brought into hospital, I felt like I was living in a very small, sheltered bubble where very few things were important. My resting was certainly among the very few important things. What other things mattered now? I didn't need to worry about things like work, or college, because I could only take care of them after recovering anyway. My parents worrying themselves had mattered, but I had already spoken to them.
I tilted my head a bit when another weird idea came to my mind. There was something that kinda mattered to me but it didn't seem to matter to anyone else. It was the pretty doctor smiling, like really smiling, so that her eyes lit up and looked all sparkly and wonderful. To me that seemed like one of the most important things my stay here was about. If everyone cared about her smiling the way I did, though, she probably wouldn't look so stressed, because then everyone would always try to make her smile.
I was wondering whether my trying to make get smile helped her at all and whether she actually noticed what I tried to do there when the door opened. A nurse entered, carrying what looked like a food tray to me.
"Here's your dinner," he chirped and set the tray down on my night stand. "Would you like something to drink with that? Water, coffee or a tea perhaps?"
"No thank you, I still have some tea left from earlier," I motioned towards the cup sitting near the food tray.
"But you have hardly any tea left," he touched the cup, "and it's gone cold, too! Wait up, I'll get you some new tea. We have this delicious tea made from raspberry with fine hints of vanilla. It's called 'Hot Loving' and it will make you feel wonderfully warm, so you can sweat out that cold! I will get you some, is that alright?"
I nodded, dumfounded and he left my room just as full of energy as he entered it. Had he just tried to sell me tea or something? I thought he was a nurse, not a tea-salesman. Since when did guys become nurses anyway? Not that I minded, he was really nice but I had always imagined nurses to be strict elderly women in white dresses. What would this male nurse look like in a dress, I wondered... I was fairly sure he had told me his name earlier this day but I couldn't remember it. Today, I was being even more horrible with names than I usually was. It still embarrassed me that I had forgotten the name of the pretty doctor. Would be awkward to ask for her name again? I wanted to know her name, I wanted to call her by her name but I also didn't want her to think she was so unimportant to me I hadn't bothered with memorizing her name...
The door opened again and the nurse stepped in with a steaming cup of tea. He sat it down on my food tray and said, "Here's some 'Hot Loving' for you!" His joke obviously amused him a lot and he chuckled at himself. I smiled, too, because I liked him and I wanted to tell him that it was okay to joke around with me. He smiled back at me and then left the room with a "Bon appetite!" sing-songed over his shoulder. There were probably other patients still waiting for their food.
Once the door had shut behind him, I sat up in my bed and started examining the tray in front of me. There were two sandwiches on a plate; some salad and yoghurt with fruit sat in little bowls. The tea with the funny name smelled very sweet and fruity but it looked like it was still too hot to drink. I took the lid off of the biggest bowl on the tray and was very surprised - in a good way - when I found some soup inside it. It looked like some sort of chowder, nothing like the clear broth that my mum made. I picked up the table spoon on the tray and tried some of this foreign soup. The soup was very warm and smooth on tongue, which made me feel like someone was cuddling me to make the cold go away.
Wait, did that mean I was just imaging to be cuddled by soup? That sure was a weird thought... I shook my head a little and laughed at my own goofiness. Then I returned my attention to eating the soup, because it tasted of cream, and potatoes, and butter, and I actually quite liked it. When I had finished half of the bowl, I picked up my cup of tea because the soup had made me thirsty. I stirred it with a little spoon and gently blew onto its surface to make it cooler. The ceramic cup was very warm between my hands, but not so hot that I couldn't hold it. Careful not to burn my tongue, I took a first sip. The temperature was actually okay and tea was really delicious. That nurse had good taste in tea, I thought to myself.
As I kept on drinking my tea, I started to feel all warm and fuzzy inside. That must be why the tea was called 'Hot Loving', I supposed - it was a very fitting name. I wanted to save some tea and not drink it all at once so I could get the warm feeling a second time. I started eating my soup again and just as I had put the spoon in my mouth, there was a knock on my door.
Because I had an inkling who was knocking so very firmly on my door and then not coming in, even though I was still busy swallowing, a little smile curled the corners of my mouth upwards. It had to be the pretty doctor, who was still so very embarrassed about walking in on me shirtless. The way she got all flustered and nervous about it was really adorable. Maybe I should just casually mention shirts during our conversations ... but that would be mean of me. Speaking of mean, I remembered that the doctor was probably still standing outside my door, not daring to come in.
"Come in!" I yelled and the door opened before I was even finished yelling. She probably had waited with her hand on the door handle, which I thought was also adorable. All in all, I thought her to be quite adorable; although I was sure she wouldn't like to be called that. The doctor closed the door behind her and walked towards me and my bed. In a way, she looked tense and not tense at the same time. I guessed that she was less tense in an awkward way, because she wasn't so embarrassed anymore, but also actively trying to keep herself from looking not tense. I saw that she straightened her back with effort and that her jaw was set more firmly and that she raised her eyebrows to make herself look more attentive. Then my eyes feel upon the deep shadows under her eyes, and I remembered that it was almost eight in the evening and concluded that she was probably really, really tired.
When she reached my bed, she bowed her head ever so slightly and gave me a small smile. She didn't say anything, though, so I absentmindedly continued to spoon soup into my mouth. Then I realised that it was rude to eat in front of other people when they didn't have anything to eat, so I basically let my spoon drop to my tray. The doctor almost jumped to the ceiling from the sudden sound and I realised that dropping the spoon had also been rude. Heat rose to my cheeks as I searched for words to explain myself.
"Oh shit, I'm so sorry. I was just eating my soup so I could get healthy but I just suddenly had this thought, you know, that it would be rude to eat in front of you when you had no food. Do you want some of my food? Then again, you're not sick, so you don't need soup. Well you could have one of my sandwiches..."
I didn't really need to see the very confused look in her eyes to know that I was rambling and not making a lot of sense. She took a deep breath and told me to calm down. So I took a deep breath, too. Following your doctor's orders was always good.
"I'm pleased to see that you have been provided with some food. Now, I came here to talk to you about what we're going to do with you in the next few days. My suggestion is that you stay with us over the weekend, to give you some rest and keep a bit of an eye on you. You do seem fairly stable to me, so you can basically do as you please while you're with us - but I recommend that you rest most of the time and I'd also like you to stay wired up for at least another day. On Monday, we'll check up on your heart and if it's doing well, you can go home. How does that sound to you?"
Was I really supposed to give my opinion on this? I wasn't a doctor, I couldn't say whether that was a good way to go about things or not. It sounded reasonable enough but it really didn't sound like anything more than that to me. An uncomfortable silence had settled between us while I was thinking and it made things seem more serious than they were. So I decided to just say something until I had finished forming an opinion.
"That means I'll be here for three nights, yes? Because I'm afraid I might not be able to sleep here."
"What makes you think so?"
"Well I can't sleep in places that don't smell like my bed. And this place doesn't smell like my bed at all, it smells like a hospital. Which is, I guess, because it is a hospital..."
"And what if you made this bed smell more like yours?" The doctor's voice was very calm and gentle, although she had to cut through my mindless rambling again. She was being really patient with me and I liked the way she looked at me with her tired but pretty eyes. I didn't really know what she was talking about, though, so I looked at her with a questioning expression.
"If we put something that usually is in your own bed into this bed, it will smell more like your bed and you'll have an easier time sleeping. Do you have some pillows on your bed, for example?"
"Not really... but I do have plushies on my bed, a lot of them. Sleeping without plushies is not proper sleeping! I'll ask my parents to bring them when they visit me tomorrow."
The pretty doctor smiled but looked away and didn't meet my eyes. "Your parents are visiting and they're bringing plushies for you? Well it seems that you're well cared for this weekend. Is there anything else you'll need tonight?"
I wanted to tell her that she was the one caring well for me tonight. I wanted to tell her that her idea had been really great and really cute. Somehow, I also wanted to tell her that I would somehow manage to go to sleep if it meant that the time until I got to see her again would go by faster. But it somehow felt wrong to say it like this.
Instead I answered, "No, I'm fine. I have some nice soup and I'll be perfectly okay with just a bit more of 'Hot Loving'."
Before I had realised what I had just said there, the doctor was already staring at me with her eyes wide open. I blushed profusely and I kinda wished I didn't have such light skin that would always get as red as a tomato when I blushed. It didn't really matter, though, because the doctor was staring a hole into the floor with her eyes right now and couldn't see my face anyway.
"Sorry, that sounded wrong. 'Hot Loving' is the name of the tea that the nurse gave me... He's a really nice guy, so he gave me this really delicious tea," I stammered.
The doctor cleared her throat and I could actually watch her switch back into professional mode. Escaping into being as professional and doctor-like as possible was her method of escaping uncomfortable situations, that much was obvious. That was an okay escape mechanism, at least to me - I didn't very much like the thought of having made her uncomfortable once again, though.
"I'll probably be seeing you again tomorrow because I'm working the Saturday shift. I won't be in on Sunday but I'll be performing your check-up on Monday. For now, I hope you have a good night despite the smell," she said and her voice sounded all doctor-y. She had two doctor voices: the one where she got all excited and happy; and the one where she got all professional and distant. The latter one was the one she used right now and I didn't like it. I'd much have preferred the other one, or at least her somewhat insecure voice that she used when she was embarrassed. Hopefully without her noticing, I leaned in a bit closer to her and tried to smile my nicest smile for her when I said, "I'm really looking forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Will you be coming here in the morning?"
She probably didn't notice me coming closer because she didn't inch away, which I firmly believed she would do should she register me moving in her general direction. Instead, she just answered my question and said that she had to be here by eight and she'd see me between nine and eleven.
"You have to be in by eight?" I asked, "But that's only twelve hours from now! Why are you still at work if you need to work again so soon? And you look so tired, too. You're not staying longer because of me, are you? I don't want to be a burden!"
I knew the last question had been a shot in the dark and pretty unnecessary, too - but the thought of her staying longer for me was nice and made me feel like the tea had made me feel. The question seemed to have made the doctor a bit nervous again, she kept looking at her weirdly intertwined fingers when she said that no, no, she just had a lot of work today. Part of me believed her because she knew best about her own work; part of me believed she was telling a white lie to make sure I didn't feel like a burden. For several reasons, I liked the latter interpretation better. Because it meant she wanted to make me feel better about being a burden. Because it meant she wanted to make me feel like I was better than a burden. But mostly because it meant that she actually was staying longer to be able to talk to me. Especially that last part was really unrealistic and the sort of thing you shouldn't be thinking about someone you just met.
I didn't care much, though, and just revelled in the thought for a bit. The doctor extended her hand towards me which probably meant this conversation was about to end. Before it was actually over, I already missed her presence in my room. Reluctantly, I took her hand. I didn't want her to shake my hand. I wanted her to put her hand on my legs and stroke them just a little and make me feel like everything was going to be alright, just like she had done earlier today. Maybe I could try and will her into doing that by telling her so with my eyes. But I didn't know how one said "I want your hand on my legs" with one's eyes, at least not how to do that without looking like a prostitute.
And because I couldn't think of any look that would work that way, I just tried to look nice. I tried to look nice and I very softly and slowly shook her hand as I got up from my bed and stood facing her. Even though I was only wearing socks, I still stood taller than her. The doctor slightly tilted her head back and had to look up to meet my eyes. I decided that I liked being taller than her because looking upwards made her eyelashes look even prettier.
Then I realised that I was staring at her eyelashes and that was probably rude - or would have been rude if the doctor didn't stare at me, too. Maybe my failed attempt at influencing her with my eyes had worked after all. Not that she was doing what I had actually wanted her to do but I enjoyed the attention she was giving me right now just as much. It was fairly obvious to me that the attention was not of the medical kind, that she probably wasn't even allowed to give that kind of attention to me and that it might get her into trouble. And if it didn't get her into trouble with her boss, then I was sure she'd beat herself up over it afterwards. She seemed like the type that would think very much about was appropriate and I didn't want her to waste her time on thinking too much because of me.
So I stopped staring at her and let go of her hand. It took the doctor a while to realise that we weren't shaking hands anymore, like she had been a bit lost in her own little world. She gave her little head bow again, wished me a good night and left the room pretty quickly.
I let myself fall back onto my bed. What had that been? More than the doctor thought it should be, probably. Despite telling myself not to overthink things earlier, I couldn't help but feel guilty. The doctor wasn't comfortable with overstepping the borders of professional interaction, I sensed that, and I still couldn't keep myself from flirting with her. Had I been flirting? Actually, I had only been staring at her eyelashes. It wasn't my fault that they were being so beautiful.
But I had also wanted her to put her hand on my legs, so maybe I was kinda interested in her. Maybe I was only interested in the way that she made me feel better. Maybe all of the stuff I was thinking right now didn't actually make sense.
I finished eating my dinner. I felt sort of weird and lost and left alone and giddy, all at the same time. It was very confusing.
Perhaps the worst thing was that I really wanted to know whether I was gonna flirt with the doctor again. Tomorrow, maybe. I really wasn't desperate, but I liked her and she was pretty and flirting was fun. Unfortunately, most people didn't think flirting was that easy. For me, it was just a fun thing to do; for them, it was so complicated and meaningful. And I didn't think that I was a complicated person. Just sick and tired and feeling dizzy in the head. Maybe I should lay down a bit, my thoughts weren't making a lot of sense and everything looked kind of wobbly again. Weird, I thought as I curled up on my bed and closed my eyes, when the doctor had been here, my head had felt pretty clear. I didn't manage to think much more about that because I quickly drifted off into sleep. I didn't even notice what the hospital bed smelled like anymore.