My Confection by Lisa Kotin

Author:Lisa Kotin [Kotin, Lisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8070-6926-4
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published: 2015-11-09T05:00:00+00:00

I don’t sleep. I eat like crap. I show up for class like an ambitious theatre student, show up for James like a positive, vital young woman, then turn away to self-destruct. Create. Destroy. Create. Destroy. I sense James and I need to slow down, but I can’t say no, so my body says it for me. My tonsils swell so big they look like boxing gloves on either side of my throat. My fever rages. James calls and I tell him I am sick and hope he will bring me flowers and juice. After class he comes to me and crawls into bed and has sex with me. “Are you sure you want to?” I ask, seriously not up to it. “I might be contagious.”

“I don’t care,” he says, kissing me deeper. If he wants me this bad, I’m not going to say no. Even though I can barely swallow.

So much for slowing down.

I get sicker and need medicine, but I am afraid to call home for help. Afraid my mother will hear the sex in my voice. I stay in bed and soothe my blazing throat with ice cream. I have no doctor. I have no insurance. Just a kind older brother who agrees to peer down my throat in the lobby of the nearby hospital where he is doing his medical school residency. We duck behind a pillar and he pulls out a cotton swab and a wooden stick, tells me to open wide, and cultures my throat. He sees my tears but says nothing. Joel is caring and good, but he’s in a rush and also not particularly comfortable with intimacy. I want to tell him getting sick is my fault. I also want to tell him I can’t stop hurting myself. He’s a doctor. He should understand.

Two days later Joel calls to say I have the worst strep culture he’s ever seen and prescribes a fourteen-day round of antibiotics. I choke the horse pills down religiously and feel instantly cured.

The magic of medicine.

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