He on the other hand has been blessed with nuclear formatting. His father gardens, and his mother knows how to sew. Each of his siblings was regularly shuttled to music lessons or sports practices, and they share a vocabulary of childhood games, the rules of which only they know. He gets anxious in the fitting room when we go shopping because he’s had very little practice buying his own clothes, and most of the meals he cooks are burnt or mushy because he’s either turned the heat up too high or kept it too low. Of course he would drop a lightbulb on my previously concussed head. Of course when I come into clear skies after months of walking through the fog, finally able to confront a screen without crouching in pain, he drops a lightbulb on my head. But he did not mean to, and ultimately he’s trying. Thankfully it did not shatter, but the bottom is coated in metal, and that is what is causing a ping-pong ball sized lump to surface on my forehead.

Do you think you should go to the hospital? / I don’t know, maybe. / What if you just wait a bit and see if it goes down. / But I’m tired, and if it’s something more serious, I don’t want to fall asleep – that’s how people die.

The hospital’s interior betrays the promises its external facade makes. All the Mount Sinais of the city seem to have the same sense of slow decay – simultaneously a place where things go to perish and the last place you would ever want to spend your final moments. We place our phones and keys in a small bin and pass through a metal detector, a process which only exacerbates the hospital’s dreary demeanor.

Thandiwe Genevieve Scott I write my full name on the forms they hand me at the check-in window. Following suit he writes my first name THANDIWE under “patient” on the visitor sign-in sheet. I appreciate how smoothly his pen makes out my name, as though the hand that guides it were destined to do so. When I began to introduce myself as the French deriving Genevieve, I feared it would appear to give others permission to belittle the Zulu Thandiwe – I still feel it is an act of betrayal, performed in a continued attempt at belonging. He celebrates Thandiwe and the melee of nicknames to which it has given birth. These are the monikers by which I am known to family and long-time friends — a side of me to which only the most privileged gain entrance.

We sit briefly in the waiting area before being trailed to triage where I must go through the motions of explaining that my blood pressure is low by default, disclosing my daily dosages of lithium and Strattera that have not recently changed, that I have an arrhythmia that sometimes keeps me up at night but isn’t anything over which to be concerned, as well as vasovagal syncope episodes since kindergarten, that I am 5’3” and 125 lbs, and that my dermatologist says I am allergic to benzoyl peroxide. Then we are led to a bed. The nurse grabs a chair for my long-term house guest and places it at the end of the bed. He sits. He wants to hold my hand, but I want to lay down – he makes due with my ankle, shaking me every time I appear to be drifting off into another realm.

A different nurse enters soon after. She asks me to confirm my name and date of birth. She thanks me. And you’re her… he says it before she can assume: boyfriend. This is the first I’ve heard this said. Its novelty so true he seems to look for confirmation of its validity in my eyes. Though our feelings are long-established, the word is fresh and strange in the air. No one has ever affiliated themselves with me in this way, and it seems I am in the midst of something I’ll never forget. A thing once coveted as a girlhood dream has actualized itself. I explain to the nurse that I’m here because a lightbulb fell on my head, and because I am in the process of recovering from a prior concussion, I am choosing to err on the side of caution. What caused the previous concussion? / I fainted from pain related to a ruptured ovarian cyst and hit my head on the hardwood when I fell.

The funny thing about ovarian cysts is that even though tissue is exploding inside you, no one really cares – unless of course in its wake the now ruptured cyst has caused a torsion of the ovary that may or may not have killed it and with it, your chances at reproducing. If that's the case then suddenly everyone cares. You never know what exactly is happening in there, so anytime you feel pain in your abdomen you lose anywhere between six to eight hours of your life to the ER. They lube a wand, stick it up your vagina, and poke around as though you’re not in excruciating pain just to tell you everything-is-fine-take-naproxen-for-the-pain-follow-up-with-a-gynecologist-within-the-next-three-weeks. On one of my cyst-related ER visits, I was under the care of a nurse who also experienced cysts ruptures. It’s the worst, but you have to keep coming back. You never know if this time is gonna be the time you have a torsion. I always want to wait it out, but my boyfriend brings me to the ER. While my mother was present during my early cyst-related ER trips, with something like that it often feels like a waste of an hour-long trek into the city, so I tell her to stay home and that I will keep her posted. But it is sad to be in pain alone, when even the doctors are overworked and have little sympathy, much less empathy to give. In a place where being Black and female and queer and young are felt in the form of a worsening pain in my lower left abdomen. But now he is here. He’s the type to never leave the bedside, to go so far as to admit himself if it means never having to let go of my hand. Will things be different with a tall man of Swedish heritage latched onto my gurney? They say Black women with White husbands have a higher chance of surviving childbirth. Maybe now people will care a bit more about my pain. Maybe it will only work if I marry him.

The nurse examines the lump that has now gotten itself situated on my forehead. She tells us the doctor will be in soon and scurries back into her network of scrubs. I sit up now and let him weave his fingers around mine. We are separated from our neighbors by nothing more than a thin curtain. Sound travels. The old woman to our left laments with her nurse over the sadness of growing old and outliving those who were once integral pieces to her quotidien movements. She then segues into discussing a song she is writing about a pencil. A female voice projects out from a few doors down – bellowing throughout the conglomeration of “rooms” Oh God! Oh GOD! OH GOD!

We both find humor in the absurdity of our environment, one that runs contrary to our secluded studio that now seems so far away. We resolve to hold in our laughs knowing they too will travel.

He says he’s never been to a hospital like this.

I on the other hand have exclusively been to hospitals that echo this one, but this is what you get in New York City.

My mind flashes to the woman screaming in the ER the night in May when I first discovered the ovarian cyst rupture. Please stop! I don’t want it! Tortured cries that in their insistence joined the machinery’s exclamations and heavy breathes in our aural habituation.

I see the people pacing in the emergency psychiatric unit in March waiting to leave their cell-adjacent units and be transferred to the highly regarded in-patient center. I hear the man yelling a few doors down I don’t think I need to be here. I want to go home! I arrived at the best possible time and was sent up the morning after my admittance, but some folks were there for a week or more.

And then there is the sound of my own sobs a year and a half earlier when getting jetted off to the emergency psychiatric center after being deemed “high-risk” during a psychological consultation. I refused to contact anyone out of shame over my failed attempt at normalcy and cried myself to sleep so violently I gave myself a migraine. When I got the hospital bill I saw they had charged $60 for two tablets of Tylenol.

Eventually the doctor enters and performs a neurological exam. I can press my index finger to hers and balance on one leg. It’s an ice-the-bump-take-Tylenol-for-any-pain-so-you’re good-to-go-grab-your-discharge-papers-on-the-way-out kind of night. We retrieve the only physical evidence of our visit and hail a cab on the corner. My head pulsates in tune with each measure of potholes. I let him support my body weight and distract me by discussing the saccharine treats we can enjoy at home.