I haven't slept for an entire night in three days. My tonsils are all inflamed and throbbing, and drinking water has become an excruciating experience. I decided this morning that I would go to the doctor, and then wasted two hours calling and calling with no answer. On a wild goose chase, I called another two doctors -- tried and failed. So I decided to go to a pharmacy, was turned away, and terrified when the woman said to me that a poorly treated throat infection can lead to cardiac problems. Go to the doctor's office just down the street and see if they'll see you; if not, we'll call the SAMU (15, the French equivalent of 911) for the name of the doctor on-call in M.
That's not scary.
So I walked home in my hurting shoes and called, talked to a gruff woman doctor who didn't want to take me, and then cried.
I got an appointment 25 minutes later, slunk my way two streets over, and shoved myself in the far corner of the waiting room that seemed too classy and luminous to be legit. The quick ritual was over rapidly, and I left with a small rectangle of scrawled prescriptions.
As I waited for the pharmacist to fill them, I felt a sudden blast of heat crawling up from my toes, like a swarm of bees trying to swallow me up. I realized what was coming just as it came, and woke up completely disconnected laying on the pharmacy floor. The first words I spoke were English, and then I remembered; they don't understand you. This is not the right code.
They brought me water and concerned middle-age women stared at me, commenting on the lack of color, the level of blood pressure, then asked me who could come get me, who they could call for help. I realized that there was no one; S was at the farm, and the only people whose numbers I had were out of the city at the time. My house was full of semi-strangers, not yet friends enough to have exchanged coordinates, and I was laying flat-out on a dirty floor.
A woman walked me the two blocks home and I decided not to cry until I was back in my bed.
The kindness of strangers can be so overwhelming, the sadness of my profound and lasting sense of loneliness equally so.
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