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the web. She circled a section that explains that RSV is more severe in people with
compromised immune systems. I find a photocopy of the first page of an article on SCID
from a medical journal. Her scrawls in the margins are illegible. After that there’s a single
visit to an allergist and then visits to three different immunologists. Each concludes that
no illness was found.
And that’s it.
I dig through the cabinet again for more files. It doesn’t make sense that this would be
all there is. Where are the test results? There must’ve been a fourth immunologist, right?
Where’s the diagnosis? Where are the consultations and second opinions? There should
be another thick red folder. I scour the files for a third time. And a fourth. I spill other
folders to the ground and rifle through them. I hunt through the papers on her desk. I
thumb through the pages of her medical journals looking for highlighted passages.
I’m breathing too quickly as I run over to her bookshelves. I pull down books, shake
them by their spines willing something to fall out—a forgotten lab result, an official
diagnosis. I find nothing.
But nothing is not evidence.
Maybe the proof is elsewhere. It takes me only one try to guess her password—
Madeline. I spend two hours looking through every document on her computer. I search
her Internet browser history. I look in the trash folder.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Where’s the proof of the life I have lived?
I turn a slow pirouette in the middle of the room. I don’t believe the evidence of my
own eyes. I don’t believe what I’m not seeing. How can there be nothing? It’s like my
sickness was invented out of the much-too-thin air that I’m breathing.
It’s not true. It can’t be.
Is it possible that I’m not sick? My mind flinches away from this line of thought.
Maybe she keeps other records in her bedroom? Why didn’t I think of that before? 5:23
A.M. Can I wait for her to wake up? No.
The door opens just as I’m walking over to it.
“There you are,” she says, relief evident in her voice. “I got worried. You weren’t in your
room.” She comes in farther and her eyes widen as she takes in the chaos surrounding us.
“Did we have an earthquake?” she asks. Eventually she realizes the mess is man-made.
She turns on me, confused. “Sweetheart, what’s going on?”
“Am I sick?” I ask. My blood beats too loudly in my ears.
“What did you say?”
“Am I sick?” I say it louder this time.
Her burgeoning anger dissipates, replaced by concern. “Do you feel sick?”
She reaches out a hand to touch me, but I push it away.
The hurt on her face makes me slightly ill, but I press. “No, that’s not what I mean. Do I