Page 25 of Watch Her Bleed
“It is now. Some people on her blacklist showed up and someone gave them the room number,” Maggie says. The doctor moves to the computer and sighs.
“He’s on the board. That’s how,” he grumbles. “I am Doctor Andrew Williams.”
“Fuck,” I say. “I need to leave.” I go to get up, and the doctor turns to me.
“You’re okay, Aurora. Give me just a second so we can talk and I’ll let you go okay?”
“Okay,” I whisper and let Matt pull me back to him. His comfort is admittedly wonderful. I feel safe in his arms.
“So, you fainted because your blood sugar got too low, yes?”
“Yeah. I haven’t eaten so it crashed,” I say.
“Oh. Here,” Kaia says as she puts a protein bar in my hand. “We can go get something to eat when we leave here.” I try to open the package, but my hands are too shaky. Matt takes it from me to open it.
“Thanks,” I say as he hands it back to me.
“What kind of testing has your primary doctor done for your blood sugar?” The doctor asks.
“They haven’t,” I say. “Anytime I ask them to do any testing they just tell me to lose weight.”
“Of course they do,” he says, rolling his eyes. “I’d like to send off a full blood panel to check for a few things. I was looking through your chart and the notes that have been put in.”
“You can see the notes that my doctor makes?” I ask.
“Yeah. I was hoping that it was incomplete and maybe I was missing some testing but I suppose this is a complete medical chart. I see they have noted that you stated that you tried to lose weight and have but there have been no improvements and how your blood sugar reacts to it.”
“Yeah. He keeps pushing for me to get weight loss surgery, but I don’t like the risks,” I say.
“Hold on. What does weight loss have anything to do with blood sugar?” Matt asks. “Also, I might not be a doctor, but I don’t see how you are overweight.”
“Technically by BMI standards, you are overweight,” the doctor says to me. “But… I don’t think that your weight has anything to do with this. This has been in your chart for most of your life.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Since I hit puberty.”
“Wait,” Kaia says. “How old were you?”
“Ten,” I say. “Oh…”
“What?” the doctor asks.
“So. Let’s say that hypothetically someone started getting assaulted around the same time as they started having medical issues. Could there be a correlation?” Kaia asks.
“Uh. I’d say maybe triggered by stress. Generally, stress causes an increase in blood sugar but with some disorders, stress causes the body to react to it negatively.”
“The last six months you haven’t had as many issues,” Kaia says. “If you did, it was only when you worked.”
“Is someone hurting you?” the doctor asks. Kaia opens her mouth to talk but I cut her off.
“He’s a mandated reporter. Shut up,” I snap.
“Aurora,” the doctor says. “Let’s start here. There’s nothing to report if you don’t give me a name. Right now my concern is your blood sugar. If there’s a correlation, I would like to find it.”
“Fine,” I sigh. “I started getting molested when I was ten. It turned into rape when I was thirteen. The last six months I avoided it… until last night. She is right, I don’t have issues on days that I don’t work or see them. Yesterday I didn’t have any issues until I was around them.”
“So you’re reacting to stress and anxiety,” he says. “Do you have any other symptoms?”
“I get dizzy pretty easily. It’s like heart palpitations,” I say. “It’s just a lot of little symptoms.”
