chapter twenty-eight
The day of my final presentation in Markson’s class, I woke up at six in the morning. Trying to fall back asleep proved futile, so I stole from the bed as not to wake Liam. He shifted in his sleep, and for a moment, I stood and watched him, wondering if when he woke up, he would be as nervous as I was.
The apartment was quiet, the barest hint of dawn peeking through the blinds in the living room as I made coffee. Despite being unable to go back to bed, exhaustion crept through my bones. I dragged my body around the kitchen, contemplating making breakfast for Jess and Liam before I remembered that Pop-Tarts were my idea of haute cuisine. But not doing anything left my brain too much space to think about what lay ahead of me today, so I cleaned instead. I scrubbed the counters and the sink, reorganized the dishes in the cabinets, and swept the tile floor. As I hung a fresh MeMa-made dishtowel, Liam stumbled in and pointed to the coffee pot.
“Why are you up?” he asked me, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “We have hours until class.”
“I couldn’t sleep,” I admitted as I poured him a mug. Settling onto the stool beside him, we both sipped cautiously and didn’t speak again. There was a heavy tension in the air, both of us worried about things outside our immediate control.
“Let me make you breakfast,” Liam said, but I shook my head. It would be impossible to eat right now, because my stomach was already churning.
“I just want it to be over,” I admitted.
Liam draped an arm over my shoulder and pulled me close to him, kissing my forehead. “There’s no reason to be nervous, chicken. Markson won’t be hard on you.”
I refrained from pointing out that asking me to get up in front of twenty of my peers and spill my guts wasn’t exactly the definition of going soft on me. But I couldn’t expect Liam, who was always so at ease in front of others, to understand that.
“Do you want to practice?” he offered.
Even though I knew he was trying to be helpful, my response came out harsh and cold. “No, I don’t want to think about it.”
Liam’s shoulders slumped, and he leaned forward, bracing himself against the counter. He had gone out of his way to set this up for me, and I was being horrible to him.
“I’m going to lie back down,” I told him. If I could fall back asleep, I wouldn’t have to spend the next few hours torturing myself—or Liam.
“Okay,” Liam said. “I have a final in an hour, but I’ll head straight to class after that.”
“Cool,” I said lamely.
As I stood, he grabbed my waist and drew me into him. “You are going to be spectacular, Jillian.”
I managed to nod before I fled back to my room and climbed under the covers, pulling them over my head and willing my body to fall asleep. But my mind was on turned on already, firing questions at me rapidly. What if I had gone to class instead of hiding from it? How would the other students respond to my condition? Was I ready to share something this personal with an entire room of my peers? Would I be “that girl with Parkinson’s” after today?
It was clear that sleep was a lost cause, so I got up and searched for the perfect outfit, momentarily contemplating arriving to class naked to throw attention away from what I had to say. No one would give a damn about my sad story if they were looking at my boobs, but there were probably rules against giving presentations in the nude.
By the time I finished coaxing my hair into a manageable ponytail, Jess was up and moving around the apartment. She tapped lightly on the bathroom door, and I opened it for her to join me. I tried to look calm, but my hands shook as I smeared foundation over my forehead.
“I’m going to come, Jills,” Jess announced as she brushed her teeth. She had finished all of her finals the day before but was waiting to celebrate the end of another semester with me this evening. We were meeting at Garrett’s when it was all over, even though part of me feared it might be my last post-semester happy hour.
“You don’t have to,” I told her, wiggling past her.
“No, I want to.” She turned to me and gave me an encouraging smile. “I’m really proud of you for doing this.”
Pride had nothing to do with this. If I was proud, I wouldn’t air all my dirty laundry to pass this class. I wasn’t above making a fool out of myself to stay at Olympic State, which I guessed was an improvement over the girl I was two years ago. She would have turned tail and ran away from confronting this side of herself. I still wasn’t sure if that meant I had grown as a person or if it just meant I was desperate.
Only half the class was in attendance that afternoon. Everyone else had presented already, and I was surprised to feel relief that I didn’t have to speak solely to Markson. I hadn’t been back to his class since I visited him in his office and that was weeks ago. I wasn’t sure I could face him if it came down to him and me.
Jess was already there, surreptitiously chatting with Markson, and I couldn’t but notice how she angled her body toward him like he was a magnet drawing her closer, proving my suspicions that Jess’s devoted attitude toward him had a lot less to do with the subject and a lot more to do with his slightly geeky sex appeal. I suppose if any of us were going to get hot for teacher, it would be Jess—the studious one.
She saw me and waved, but I hung back by the door, hoping Liam would arrive. A hand came to rest on the small of my back, and I immediately felt calmer. Liam had seen my Parkinson’s at its worst, and he was still here by my side. One more hour and my fate would be decided. It all felt very end of the world at the moment.
“Miss Nichols,” Markson called to me, and Liam gently pushed me toward him.
“Come on, chicken,” he whispered.
“Not a good nickname at the moment,” I said as I made my way to our professor.
“How do you want to do this?” Markson asked when I got closer.
I hesitated, not ready to admit that I’d avoided thinking about this for the last week and a half. My most well-conceived plan was basically to vomit out as much as I could to fill the ten to fifteen minute presentation window.
“Jess and I are going to help here,” Liam spoke up. I stared at him, unsure if he was my white knight or the face of death itself.
“Interesting. Why?” Markson asked.
“Well, this is an Interpersonal Communications class,” Jess said, still leaning in close to Markson. “We thought it would be more interesting to show us communicating about Jillian’s condition. I’ve been around since she was diagnosed, but Liam only found out a few weeks ago, so we both have completely different perspectives about it.”
“And sometimes I get the impression that we don’t know what’s going on inside her head,” Liam added. “We’re all working on communicating our needs and concerns more to each other.”
This caught me off-guard. Although I knew Jess and Liam had spoken about me after my off episode in the apartment, I didn’t know they talked about it in more depth than that. Now it was obvious that they’d spent considerably more time discussing me than I thought. After all, they were planning to be part of my presentation. I was simultaneously relieved to know I didn’t have to do this alone and a little hurt by their secretiveness.
“I like the sound of it,” Markson said, and I felt Liam relax a little behind me. I hadn’t even realized he was stressed out. I’d been too caught up in how I felt.
We arranged a cluster of chairs at the front of the room, talk show style, and took our seats. If I was lucky, this was the closest I’d ever come to appearing on the
Jerry Springer Show
. Although this could still easily devolve into name-calling and screaming, and there would be no one to drag me offstage if that happened.
Markson stood and addressed the class, congratulating them on a great semester before he turned to the subject of my final presentation. “We have two students giving their presentations today. I’m sure we’re all pleased to see Miss Nichols back and healthy. She’s been on excused medical status for the last few weeks and today she’s going to talk about why she’s been absent. I’ll let Jillian and her friends explain what they hope to communicate to you today.”
I took a long, steadying breath as somewhere in the back of my mind a tiny voice said, “Imagine them in their underwear.” If that advice had ever worked, I wanted to see the case study.
“Thank you, Professor Markson, for being so understanding about the last few weeks. It’s been very stressful for me,” I said. It never hurt to butter up the teacher a little.
He nodded and gestured for me to continue. We only had fifteen minutes to prove I deserved to pass the class, and I was already stalling.
“A couple of weeks ago, I had what’s called an off episode. It was brought on by stress and eventually it led to me being hospitalized,” I began. I wasn’t actually sure where to start. This had started much earlier than that, if I was being honest. It had started with waffles in the kitchen after a one-night stand. It started with a mother who wanted to coddle me and push me away at the same time, unsure how to have a relationship with me. It had started with a surprise diagnosis two years ago that had rocked my world and left me unsteady and unsure of my future.
“Why did you have an off episode?” Jess jumped in, helping me out. I shot her a grateful look.
“I was diagnosed with early-onset Parkinson’s Disease two years ago,” I explained. “It’s pretty rare to find out before twenty, but basically I have issues with my nervous system. An off episode is when the condition flares up.”
Liam cleared his throat like he wanted permission to speak, and I looked to him expectantly. “I’ve read a lot about Parkinson’s in the last few weeks, and I feel like I understand what happens, but I don’t know how you feel when you have an episode.”
“I feel like I’m losing control.” Plus one for using an “I” statement. I hoped Markson was taking notes. “It starts out like dizziness or weakness and sometimes that’s all it is, but other times, it takes over my body. I feel embarrassed about it, so I try to hide it and hope I don’t lock up in front of anyone.”
“But you told Jess about it?” Liam prompted, a slight hint of accusation in his words. Markson tutted at him. Apparently, that was a poor interpersonal question. “I noticed that you are open with Jess about it, but you weren’t willing to talk with me about it.”
“I didn’t want you to know,” I answered. “Truthfully, I didn’t want you to see me as broken. I don’t want anyone to see me as broken because that will mean that the disease is in control.”
“Over the last two years…” Jess hesitated, and I braced myself for what she was about to say to me. “I’ve worried that you’d given up a little. I want you to act like Parkinson’s isn’t controlling you life, but sometimes it feels like it is.”
I had to hand it to Jess, she had really internalized what she’d learned from Markson last semester.
“I guess I have. Knowing that you’re living with something that will eventually take over your life is hard,” I admitted.
“Or it could give you perspective,” Liam noted.
“In a lot of ways, I’ve been avoiding it. I’ve hidden it from a lot of people, because I didn’t want it to define me. But the whole time I’ve let it define myself.” I felt raw and vulnerable saying this out loud, as though I was stepping out of the carefully constructed shell I’d built for myself. Seeing things from this perspective made me realize that I’d never considered how Jess had felt for the last two years. I’d thought a lot about how Liam would feel about my disease, but even then it had been in a purely selfish way.
“How did you feel when I was diagnosed?” I asked Jess.
“I felt helpless. You were my best friend. My wild friend,” she added. “I thought you were the strong one, and I didn’t feel like I could do anything for you.”
And yet, Jess had stuck around. She’d learned how to give me shots and handle episodes. She’d run interference with Tara when I felt overwhelmed. “You might have felt that way,” I told her, “but you’ve always known exactly what I needed.”
I looked to Liam, unsure how to ask him what was on my mind. If I had thought talking about my condition in front of the class was difficult, bringing up our fledgling relationship felt too personal. But he was sitting next to me, sharing his thoughts and concerns, and I owed it to him to be honest.
“I feel like you’ve treated me differently since you found out, like I am going to break.” Our recent experiences in the bedroom sprang to mind, but I left that out.
“I think that has a lot more to do with how you reacted when I saw you during that episode. I wanted to talk to you.” He was choosing his words carefully, struggling not to say the wrong thing, so I put a hand on his arm to reassure him. “I don’t know how I would have felt if you had told me from day one. I like to think that it wouldn’t have been a big deal, but I was hurt when you pushed me away after that night. If I hadn’t already been in love with you that might have been the end.”
Our audience murmured to one another at his declaration, clearly impressed by Liam’s honesty, and I felt a swell of pride in my chest. Somehow, we’d made it through this to sit here today. That might have been due to Liam, but I finally understood that it took both of us to get here.
“What do you wish people knew about Parkinson’s?” Jess asked me, and I wondered how much time she and Liam had spent preparing for this. The question sounded well-rehearsed.
“I guess that it doesn’t make me all that different. If people knew that—” I immediately thought of Tara “—I think I would spend less time hiding it.”
“Okay, last question,” Liam said. “Do you really like Chiclets?”
“I can unequivocally say that I love them,” I said with a laugh. It was over. I had gotten through it and come out on the other side.
There was brief applause from our small audience, but no one spoke until Markson stood and addressed everyone. “Thank you to those of you who showed up. I’m sure we can find the rest of the class on Pine Street, and thank you to Miss Nichols for being brave today. I hope that this wasn’t too painful for you.”
I glanced around, momentarily confused. Markson had said there were two finals left today, but he didn’t stop anyone as the other students gathered their things and exited. A few stopped to share their own secrets with me, and one girl threw her arms around me. That had never happened after a final before.