Episode 1 - The Diagnosis
GC5 showed up on the display. It was my turn.
I held the ticket in my hand and walked confidently towards room B42 - I expected it to be over quickly, “Porque nos están haciendo perder nuestro tiempo, señor?” the doctor would say.
My non-binary ass would tick at being referred to as a señor but she was a neurosurgeon and I needed her to like me - even if it meant being a señor. I read somewhere that it’s called minority stress: how you have to continuously hide your queerness, change your pronouns to the acceptable sex so that you may not be discriminated against in your time of need, and how you definitely shouldn’t be showing up in a full skirt with your nails done. Today I’ll be a señor - my themness would just have to take it on the chin.
The neurosurgeon asked me to sit down. I sat down. There were no hellos, no how-are-yous, no nice-to-meet-you. I braced for a bollocking, for the dreaded, “Porque nos están haciendo perder nuestro tiempo, señor?” but that 's not what she said.
She looked at me with a seriousness I had never experienced before, “Unfortunately, the scans are telling us everything we need to know, the tumour…” I stopped listening. I knew about a shadow. I had gone through five MRIs (they strap you up, lock your head into a plastic cage and roll you into a coffin, panic attack ensues but you have to stay there, still, while the world is spinning around you, while all you wanna do is rip your face out). I did countless blood tests and other varied appointments to people as confused as me as to why I was there. And every single person along the way said the exact same thing, “It’s nothing, just a shadow. We’re trying to get a better look at it. Nothing to worry about.”
She said tumour; the neurosurgeon said tumour.
I should give the tumour a name… give it a name? Him a name? Her a name? It feels like a he. Javier the tumour? Graham the tumour? Zohran the tumour? It should start with a B, a B like brain; that’s where he lives after all. Benedict? Bartholomew? Bruno? As the song goes we don’t talk about Bruno… Bruno will do. That was my uncle’s name. He died shooting himself in the head - It’s fitting.
It took a year to get to Bruno. Almost 12 months to the day. A simple check up to look at some gland in my head - the doctor wanted to look at something and behind the ordinary, nothing-to-see-here something, there was another something: a baby Bruno. It didn’t have a name yet. He was just a shadow. A shadow that wasn’t supposed to be there and that had lodged itself deep inside my head.
Baby Bruno isn’t, per se, a brain tumour. Bruno is an underachiever. Bruno is hiding right beneath the brain, loved up on a bit of bone called Clivus.
Bruno and Clivus up on a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G!
Even my tumour is a a faggot.
The neurosurgeon’s face seemed to be paralysed mid-frown, she was expecting me to say something. I wasn’t there. I had no idea what she had said.
“So I’ll see you next week,” I acquiesced with a nod. It’s only when I stood up that I realised I was crying. I closed the door behind me and looked at a room full of strangers holding on to their little tickets like I had been, waiting to be called in, waiting to find out if they too had a tumour, if they too had to go on a slab and be opened up. I stood motionless in front of her door until the next patient pushed me out of the way to get to B42.
Outside, the sun was shining only a winter sun knew how to, the city was buzzing and people were rushing to and fro, nothing had changed, the world was turning. I found a quiet spot and collapsed. I had never felt so intensely alone before. I didn’t know who to call because the only person I wanted to hug was my husband and he had left me and taken the dog with him. That’s when I burst out laughing. Who the fuck was in charge of writing my life? That scriptwriter up in the sky had a twisted sense of humour…and I didn’t know it yet but he was far from being done.
