The Red Eye [Open Novella Contest 2023]

Chapter 5

"Donna?"

Donna jolted up with a gasp. Her brain felt like it was swimming in an ocean. Her phone was still in her hand, Caleb's worried face glowing on the screen. She sighed and rubbed her eyes with one hand, then flinched. All that work of trying not to rub her eyes, and there she went and did it without thinking. She tried not to think about all the germs and bacteria on her hands, which then just made her think about all the germs and bacteria on her hands. Her eyes welled up with hot, salty tears and she felt her heart pounding. On the bright side, the tears would maybe disinfect and wash out the germs. Also, her eyes were no longer itching, so that was another plus.

"Donna."

"I'm here," she said.

"What just happened?"

"I think I fell asleep."

"Sitting up? And on the phone?" Caleb sighed. "Jesus, Donna."

"I'm fine."

Caleb yelled, and it made the phone buzz.

"Careful," Donna said. "You'll wake the neighbors. Remember what happened when we binged The Lord of the Rings?"

"You're insane," he said.

"Yeah, apparently so. Except that terminology is a little outdated. If I really crack up and get put in a psych ward, can I still say I'm locked up in a nuthouse?"

"Donna, shut the hell up."

Even sick and bone-fatigued Donna knew when to shut up. "Shutting up," she said. She set the phone on the ground and buried her face into her knees. She imagined the ground swallowing her up, and her falling through the dirt. For some reason, she imagined it would be warm, like a blanket. Sometimes, in the summer when the nights were warm, she liked to put on a cozy sweatshirt or wrap herself in the flannel blanket her grandmother had given her. Sometimes, she would even make a cup of hot chocolate. Her family thought she was insane. But she liked the heat. She liked the warmth on warmth. It wasn't unlike in the winter when she would open the window or stand on the balcony and turn the heat up to maximum. She imagined that's how the dirt would be: a warm blanket surrounding her. She wouldn't be able to breathe, but that was no matter. If she was going, she wouldn't need to breathe. She knew she shouldn't think like that. Donna knew too many people who were desperate for just one more breath, one more gasp, one more tiny sip of air just to stay alive. And there was Donna, ungrateful for how naturally she could breathe. She wished she could just give her lungs to Caleb, and she would have his. She knew she could handle it better than he could. It would hurt, like it did for all of them, but she would adapt. She was strong enough. She had adapted to her other illnesses well enough, at least the ones that didn't impact her brain. No one would ever be able to truly handle those.

Then again, that was the thing about chronic illnesses: you never really handled them. You adapted, because you had to. In fact, for most diseases that weren't genetic, you probably adapted before you even knew you were sick. If you had pain, you had pain relievers and heat packs at the ready. If you had to go to the bathroom every five minutes, you shopped online and made a mental note of the restroom location in every store and restaurant you entered. You adapted, because there wasn't any other option. Crying about it wasn't going to fix anything, and it wasn't going to pay the bills. Movies about chronically ill people loved to pretend like it was okay to focus on your disease and cope with it, but that was all a bunch of fictional bullshit. Unless you had rich parents, you still needed to work. Everyone still needed to eat. Few things in life allowed themselves to be all-consuming, distracting you from everything else, and diseases weren't one of them. Donna couldn't just lay in bed for days until the crushing feeling inside of her disappeared. No, she had meetings to attend and work deadlines to meet and customers to make happy. Even she had to go to the grocery store every once in a while, even if she found odd, alternate ways to get there. She had to pay taxes and get out of bed.