Eva was coming undone. Her full body ached, and there was little she could do but wait out the pain as the Boeing 737 aircraft bounced over Nevada. She braced herself against the narrow blue and beige walls of the aircraft lavatory and untwisted the cap of her orange plastic pill bottle. Black spots flickered in the corners of her vision. After dry swallowing one of her daily medications, she checked her reflection in the mirror and ran her middle finger along her chapped lips. She was twenty-six, and her skin was awfully wan. In the last few years, her hair had already begun to thin and gray.
She unlocked the metal accordion lavatory door and made her way toward her window seat in the eleventh row. The turbulence shook her, and she gripped the back headrest of each seat she passed, much to her fellow passengers’ displeasure. She held her breath and curled her shoulders inward to feel smaller.
Although Eva flew often when she was younger and in better health, she still grew nervous traveling. She would have preferred to sit in the cockpit where she could keep watch over the aircraft machinery and distract herself from her unease. In this scenario, she imagined she would be a good copilot, equipped with jokes, a waxy paperback of crosswords, and fun, albeit peanut-free snacks to fuel the real pilot who would handle all the technical work. She would let love fly the plane.
When she reached her chosen row, she saw her sole seatmate, an elderly woman with braids and cat-eye glasses had fallen asleep. Eva settled back into her seat and tried not to think of Andrew.
Andrew loved Boulder, and Eva loved Andrew, and after a few years of flying back and forth across the country, they decided it was time to try and make things more permanent. When Andrew asked her to move in with him, she agreed without reservation, but lately, she had begun to wonder if they had gone too fast.
In the dry Boulder mornings, she swore she could feel her joints swell against her skin. What she feared the most were the things at play in the depths of her body. The things she could not see but that she could feel and the parts of her body that she knew were attacking herself. She had lived with Lupus for several years now and managed it with medications and gentle daily movement, but the accompanying chronic pain never lessened.
The worse she felt, the more often she took it out on Andrew. He, unlike her, didn’t sleep very much. He steered clear of most modern medicine, though he sometimes took Advil. He believed he could cure most of his ailments through alternative methods and positive thinking.
One evening, Eva came home tired from work at the library and found him at play. In the bathtub he had filled with cold water and bags of ice from Whole Foods.
“I’m biohacking,” he yelled, his voice barely audible over the rustling sounds of ice cubes colliding.
“What?” Eva said. Her throat was dry, and the word came out thick and uncertain and sounded more like, Wert?
She watched him dunk his head below the water and hold it there. His skin burned a soft pink in the gelid water.
“I’m biohacking,” he repeated after coming up for air. His jaw clicked and popped, reminding Eva of the sound her childhood parrot, Pierre, used to make when he was seeking her affection.
“I’m attempting to induce my mammalian dive response, babe. I’m submerging myself in cold water to slow down my breathing and heart rate.”
When Andrew encouraged her to try out biohacking for herself during a flare-up in her hands, Eva almost lost it. She did not want to try because she did not believe it would work.
Meanwhile, her medicines kept her alive. She was thankful for her doctors but disheartened by how endless her journey to better health was. If her insurance premiums continued rising, she didn’t know what she’d do. She feared her physical limitations were inhibiting Andrew, who Eva suspected, would prefer a partner who could match his speed.
All around her in Boulder, there were athletes who hiked, ran, and cycled all in the same day. Things she could not do without hurting, even on one of her best, healthiest days. She often watched the superhuman figures with envy and wondered how it felt to be the puppeteer in control of one’s own limbs and bodily reactions, how it must be to not worry about the pain.
A few nights before her clinical trials in California began, Eva awoke feeling that her body was on fire. She sat up in bed and tried to stifle her gasps as sharp aches bloomed in her chest. Andrew woke up and sat with her, running his hand up and down her back as she tried to regain control. “Baby, I’m so sorry,” he whispered. He was there for her at her lowest, and for that, she felt she owed him.
When Eva grew frustrated with him for small things, like the time he left behind a meaty mess in their kitchen sink, Andrew admitted fault. But then he said, “I could have cleaned, but I was scratching your back while you were sick.” Her doubt in the longevity of her relationship and her battle with chronic brain fog had become interchangeable. She closed her eyes and waited for the plane to descend. White-knuckled, she held on until she could no longer.
Robin Bissett (she/her) is a writer, editor, teacher, and library worker. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Montana and lives in Burlington, Vermont, where she is working on a novel.
Website: www.robinbissett.com
Twitter: @rtbissett