I respond with a nod. I want to ask him a million questions, but it’s too hard to string together a sentence when every inch of my body is covered in a painful rash that makes me feel like I have the bubonic plague. He tells me my temperature is down for the first time since I was admitted, which is good news, but he wants to continue administering a fever reducer. I nod again. I’ll take anything that will make the chills go away and help me sleep. He makes a note on his chart, then exits the room without a “goodbye” or a “nice to meet you” or a “get well soon.”

I had naively assumed the hospital staff would be gentler with me because of my age, but I guess most of their patients right now are teenagers. No one here has made the effort to learn anything about me. They don’t ask about my family or my high school or what I want to be if I grow up. It’s terrifying to be a patient in a hospital when the people who are tasked with keeping me alive are overwhelmed and running on fumes. And that part of the reason they refuse to get to know me is that they don’t want to build an emotional attachment to someone who might die soon. Who can blame them? It’s like they all have post-traumatic stress disorder, except no one knows when they’ll actually be “post” the traumatic stress.

I wish I’d been able to convince my moms to let me recover at home. It would be so much better to leave the world in the comfort of my pullout bed, bathed in soft lighting and surrounded by my paintings. But when Elena and Julia found me collapsed on the bathroom floor, they immediately dialed 911. It took twenty minutes for the paramedics to show up, and when they did, Julia started screaming at them that her daughter could have died waiting for help. The EMTs calmly explained that there are simply more sick people than there are ambulances right now. Supply and demand, I thought, remembering how tormented I was by econ our junior year. Parisa, meanwhile, found every concept fascinating.

“It’s like common sense, but it’s not,” she would say, wide-eyed.

“I think it’s common sense that econ is boring AF,” I’d reply. She was as surprised as I was when I still aced the class.