How many surgeons, physiatrists, doctors, have I looked at like this? Only to have them address themselves instead to Paul sitting beside me? Paul would nod along solemnly with the doctor and then look over at me, at a loss. Did you see how he just talked to you again? Did you see?! I’d ask in the car after we left.
I saw, Paul said.
Am I invisible? What the fuck was that about?
I don’t know, Miranda, okay? he sighed. Calm down.
And then after our split, when I went to the doctor alone, they still wouldn’t look at me. They would direct their questions, their diagnoses, to the corners of the room or to the medical table or to the diagram of the skinned body on the wall. As if these objects were somehow more trustworthy, more reasonable.
“I’m here,” Briana says again. “Right here.”
“Of course you are,” the dean says.
“And I’m not stressed, I’m sick! SHE made me sick.”
“No one’s saying your pain isn’t real, sweetheart,” her mother begins. “But remember that video they showed us? About pain and the brain?”
Briana looks at her mother like she could smack her. Then tears fill her eyes again. I recall Mark’s face in the SpineWorks basement. Looking at me like he understood me, like someone finally understood me. I have a video for you to watch, Miranda. I think it would help you. That it would be a great place for us to start. The sense of betrayal that welled up in me later as I stood crookedly in my apartment, watching the anthropomorphic brain wander a sad gray world of its own design.
I wonder where Mark is, if he’s watching that video now. If it’s helping him.
“The brain is so powerful, remember, my love?” Briana’s mother says now. “Sometimes we just get so upset we can literally keep ourselves sick, can’t we?”
“Absolutely,” the dean and her father say at the same time.
“Well, Miranda should know all about this,” Fauve says, looking at me and smiling. Little snake in the grass. Slithering, slithering.
“After all, she was unwell just like Briana here, weren’t you? For a while there, Miranda, I wasn’t sure if you would be fit to continue. I was actually prepared to step up and fill in. Not that I’m a Shakespeare person by any means—I prefer musicals, so much lighter and uplifting and accessible—but anything for the students.”
Slither, slither. All for the sake of her sad career, her sorry survival.
“So noble of you, Fauve,” I say, smiling too, still smiling through all of this. “So selfless.”
“But now look at you, Miranda. You’ve recovered so spectacularly. Just in the past month. Just after Briana came down with this condition, as a matter of fact.”
So here it is at last. Her little accusation. She smiles more widely now. Caftan shimmering with petty triumph. That’s right. I’ve put two and two together, Miranda. Even though it’s an impossible two. An unthinkable two. But it’s not an unthinkable two for someone who burns sage in an abalone shell, puts rocks of amethyst in her bra （according to Grace）， and wears vision oil like perfume.
She’s ready to open her silvery-blue book. To fatten/substantiate this admittedly thin charge with my litany of transgressions: chronic lateness, flagrant substance abuse, tyrannical incompetence. I gaze at the notebook, open now. Fauve’s hand on the first page, dense with her shimmering blue script.
“I really don’t want to take up more of Professor Fitch’s time with this,” the dean cuts in, looking warily from the notebook to his own watch. “What’s your point, Fauve?”
Fauve’s face tightens with anger. She closes the book. For now, her face says, glaring darkly at me before her eyes brighten again with mere innocuous curiosity.
“Just that maybe Miranda has some tips for Briana.”
They all look at me. And it’s right then that it happens. It happened a couple of times the night before too, on my long, lifting walk home, but I thought nothing of it. I thought I was simply high on life. It’s this: I feel my body begin to rise from my chair. Literally rise. Levitate so that I’m hovering in the air, about a half inch above the seat. Impossible, it’s impossible. Defies how many natural laws. Gravity, for one. I grip the armrests. And just like that, I sink back down. It’s over in the blink of an eye. But did they notice? Did they see?
No. They’re all still looking at me, waiting for tips.
I clear my throat.
“Well, the one thing I’d say is to be very, very kind to yourself. Anxiety is a tricky beast. It can manifest in weird ways. Psychosomatic iterations are the worst. Once the sympathetic nervous system is alarmed, it can be very tricky to put it back to bed.”