Gotta face up to facts!

“She done dipped on you, lil goat!” I said aloud as I shuffled—squirmed—in the fetal position, to behind the dirty-ass kitchen trash can so no one would see me even though I was home alone, leaving a trail of cry-snot behind me.

The minute I started full-on wailing my phone rang.

It was lil sis. Again.

“Hello?” I said all surprised, wiping my face.

She’d known, somehow, that I’d started crying, and had called me right back.

No idea how she knew.

This time I didn’t try to hide it.

•

Went to my Medicaid ‘primary care doctor’ that week.

It was just down the street, three blocks west.

Straight up shitshow in there.

Only white-adjacent person except an ESL, fifty-something Chinese dude.

Just leaking stench out of my soles, through my socks, into my shoes—old scuffed Retro 4’s, the only ones my swollen feet fit into.

After waiting in three lines, got called in to see the nurse.

She—blond, busty, resembling a grown-up version of the ‘hot/popular’ volleyball girls from high school—walked in, stopped short, and went—no joke—OMG!

Are you OK?!

You really don’t look good.

The side of your face is swollen!

I was in shock.

The lack of professionalism.

The guise of medicine having any sort of authority utterly puncturing.

Yea no shit bitch!

Why tf you think I’m here!

Tell me what to do! How to get better.

“We’ll see what the doc says,” she said. “But I think you need to see a specialist.”

The doc said: I needed to see a specialist.

Gave me a list of phone numbers.

I called a half dozen of them, same response across the board.

Yes, we can schedule an intake.

Oh…you have Medicaid?

Yeah, no, you know what? Looking at the schedule here, we’re actually all booked up. What you’re gonna wanna do is, call back in two months.

Two months?!

Bitch I’m dying over here!

I ain’t got two mfkn months.

Just sorta gutted it out that week.

Crashed out all day every day.

Paper towels laid out on my pillow, my sheets, to absorb the ooze leaking outta my face.

Forced myself to get up once a night, in the wee hours, to walk somewhere for snacks.

CVS, Fresh Grocer, or, if feeling ambitious, the Wawa way out on 34th and Chestnut.

Still tryna get fired up once per waking cycle—get lit off coffee, sugar, cigs—to ‘go in’—achieve that level of litness I associated with ‘thinking hard and writing fast’—unable to accept that I was dunzo.

That I done broke.

It wasn’t leading to any fast writing, or for that matter any hard thinking.

To any thinking whatsoever.

Just profuse sweating, followed by shivers/chills, followed by profuse sweating, followed by shivers/chills, followed by fetal-positioned stasis in a sheet-swamp of my own fluids / skin flakes.

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