Side Effects

You're It

After fifteen solid minutes of playing a game of eye contact tag with the brown eyed stranger and his daughter from across the room, Echelle rested her head on one of her hands with her arm propped up on the counter, pondering about where in the world she recognized the pair from. The joint allowing her to position her arm in that manner ached.

She turned around one last time to observe the two sharing a basket of onion rings. The teenage girl's face lit up with the brightness of her iPhone, revealing her naturally flushed cheeks and young complexion. Like the reaction to a new and expecting father discovering his wife's water has broken, Echelle sat up straight suddenly, stumbling out of the barstool she resided in for the last hour. Flattening out her blue dress as she walked quickly in the direction of the two now recognized strangers, her heels clicked quietly under the dull roar of the many conversations occurring in the restaurant.

"Hi."

The seemingly distracted teenage girl looked up momentarily from her phone then resumed to scroll along with a mischievous smile curling on her thin lips, leaving her father to respond to the strange, tall woman towering over their dinner table. The man looked up to observe Echelle's stance, her hands awkwardly clutching onto her purse and her eyes squinting slightly as if she were trying to figure the man out like a tricky riddle.

"Hi to you, too," the stranger responded with an introductory smile, wiping the onion ring residue from his mouth with the paper napkin his silverware came wrapped in.

"You're new at the E Wing, aren't you? At Houston Regional?" Echelle asked, mentally crossing her fingers in hopes that not only her recognition was correct, but that the stranger wasn't completely confused at her assertion.

"Yeah, I just registered today, actually," he replied coolly. "I think I may have seen you there now that I think about it." After glancing across the table to his daughter, he seemed to switch from the suave, bar-esque demeanor to a more formal conduct, attempting to hide his interest in the woman.

"I figured. I hadn't seen you there before," Echelle said admittedly. As easy as it seemed to approach the two, Echelle hadn't branched out to any other patient other than herself before; talking to another fragile yet functioning human being was both enthralling and nerve-wracking. "I'm Echelle, by the way." The frail woman reached her hand out in an invitation to shake hands with a warm smile.

"Beau," the man said, accepting her handshake. The two individuals' nooks of their hands pressed together nicely. "And this is Mel, my daughter." His introduction was a cue for the young girl to look up from her smartphone and offer Echelle a half-smile.

"Can I ask why you're getting transfusions? Why you're in the E wing instead of the other treatment wings?" Beau asked, his eyes trailing from the woman's bony wrists to her seemingly swollen elbows.

"It's a little complicated," Echelle started, looking up as if the answer to his question were written on the ceiling.

Beau looked over to Mel, who seemed to be paying no attention to the adults' conversation.

"Enlighten me." He reached for his glass of water, bringing the cup to his lips.

"It's called Hollingshead Syndrome," Echelle retorted, doubtful that her new acquaintance would know what her illness was. Like a bird landing on a live wire, the man jolted upright, coughing robustly on the last sip of water he had taken.

"You're shitting me," he beamed, looking up in disbelief at Echelle, who wore an alarmed expression upon her face. Mel stared at her shocked father, absorbing the magnitude of his concern. “What are the odds,” he muttered, shaking his head, both relieved and saddened that the living, breathing woman standing in front of him shared the same ailment as he.

“That’s what you have, Dad?” the teenager asked. Her fingers moved quickly across the touch screen to her device, searching up the alleged condition before giving her father enough time to respond. Her reaction to Google’s brutally honest facts and information on the condition was similar to one of a wife finding out she had just became a widow. She covered her mouth as her eyes scanned the words, as if something about them made her father’s whole situation click in her head.

Echelle looked from the young girl to Beau with wide eyes, realizing just how little the girl had known about her father’s health condition.