Healing Hurts (Anakin Skywalker)

Chapter 5

Your lab results are perfectly normal.

    There's nothing else we can do.

    Everything looks great on exam.

    Tired.

    Havena was tired. Once again another appointment had gone "well" according to her physician. It seemed to happen every time. Her testing was normal, her physical exam was normal, she was fine. Just like her father, they all told her that she was just experiencing anxiety attacks, and that it was normal for a girl her age.

    But what about nearly passing out was normal? What was so normal about severe pain in her upper legs, or the sudden knee pain that struck suddenly and made it difficult to even walk at times? The chest pain and shortness of breath? The palpitations? The headaches? Lightheadedness? Dizziness? The fatigue? How was that caused by anxiety?

    Short answer: Because Havena did not suffer from anxiety. She suffered from illness.

    Once her mother's car pulled in to their gravel driveway, Havena half-flung herself out of the passenger seat and grabbed her cane from the car before storming her way inside. Her mother exasperatedly followed behind her, begging the girl to slow down and speak to her. Instead, she grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and made her way upstairs to her room. She flung the door shut behind her.

    She rested her cane against the wall and threw herself onto the bed, burying her face in her pillows.

    They failed her again. She hadn't expected much, of course. This was the same physician who she had fought with to give her a simple cardiology referral (the physician refused because Havena was too young for those problems). The same one who told her that her joint pain was likely from weight, even though she had been a normal size and a perfectly healthy weight at the time. But she had at least hoped he would try to help her.

    She'd hoped that he would maybe order more labs, more testing, anything.

    But she was grasping at straws, and she knew it. Evidently she was just destined to be a miserable lump living her life under her bedsheets. Well, that's what it felt like anyway.

    And in the midst of her grieving, she had missed the sound of the door opening. She'd been too far in her own head to realize it. But her mother stood in the doorway, peeking in at her with sad, sympathetic eyes.

    "Havena?" She asked, but the girl did not respond. "Havena, honey... we'll just go elsewhere. We'll travel if we need to. Don't let that one doctor drain all of your hope. We'll get it figured out, I promise."

    Again, Havena did not respond. She hardly moved, in fact. Emily sighed and slowly, reluctantly, closed the door as she turned around and began the walk downstairs again.

    Meanwhile, Havena was getting lost in her own thoughts yet again.

    Maybe she was just imagining the entire thing? Maybe her illness was psychosomatic and she was experiencing these symptoms because she expected to experience them? Maybe her physician had been right after all, and it was just anxiety? If that was the case... then did that make her crazy? A liar? Someone so manipulative that she had even fooled herself into believing she was sick?

    She fooled herself into being weak. It had to have been something that she did, then. Maybe it was some sick karmic joke. Or maybe the doctors were wrong, and she was sick - just like she told them she was.

    God, her head hurt.

    Just as she was about to drift to sleep, Havena felt her phone vibrate. She glanced at the text notification.