Forty-five minutes is not a long time if you are scrolling through social media or waiting for a delivery. But forty-five minutes is an absolute eternity when an organ inside your body is beginning to fail. It is a lifetime when the people who are responsible for you are debating whether your suffering is worth their time.
I watched the clock on the wall with agonizing focus. It was 10:18, then 10:27, and finally 10:36. Every few minutes, I checked my phone for a notification that never arrived.
I imagined my mother in a department store, seeing my messages and sighing with frustration. I could see Rick making a mocking face at his phone. I could hear Chloe rolling her eyes because my pain had interrupted their afternoon.
By the time the final bell rang, I could barely manage to stand on my own feet. I gathered my books with hands that felt completely detached from the rest of my body. Toby appeared at my side in the crowded hallway and looked at me with wide eyes.
He told me that I looked absolutely terrible. I tried to tell him that I was fine, but he didn’t believe me for a second. He asked if he should walk me to the office, but I told him my mom was already on her way.
Toby did not look reassured by that statement because he had known me since our freshman year. He had seen enough missed pickups and heard enough strange comments to understand the reality of my family life. He knew that the sentence “my mom is coming” carried very little weight in my world.
He asked me to text him as soon as I got home. I nodded and began the long walk to the front office by leaning against the walls for support. Mrs. Gable, the school receptionist, looked up from her desk and sat up straighter when she saw me.
She asked if I was sick and if I needed to lie down in the nurse’s station. I repeated the lie that my mother was picking me up and that I was fine. She looked uncertain, but the office phone started ringing, and I used that distraction to sink into a plastic chair by the window.
The chair felt freezing against my skin, but my face was burning with a fever. I folded forward and wrapped my arms around my middle while I waited. At 11:03, my phone finally buzzed with a message from Meredith.