Extraordinary Means

ONE THING I’VE realized about new places is that they’re like jeans. Sure, they might fit, but they’re not comfortable. They need time to be broken in. I was thinking about this as I sat in the sterile waiting room of the medical building, trying not to cough from the air-conditioning. The whole place smelled like a hospital, a combination of antiseptic and misery. It was completely different from the boarding-school atmosphere of the cottages and classrooms, a reminder of what was lurking just around the corner. Literally.

The posters on the wall, marked with the Cross of Lorraine—the skull and crossbones of tuberculosis—urged us to “fight the war against contagion” or “crusade for a TB-free America.” I almost would have preferred a cat telling me to hang in there. At least that would have been generically terrible. Instead, I was staring at posters claiming I was the enemy.

I sighed and slouched in my chair, waiting for the nurse to summon me. Up until a few weeks ago, I was a novice at hospitals. Before all this happened, I’d been to the emergency room exactly twice. Once for an ear infection, and once when I’d wiped out on the quarter pipe in Josh Dow’s driveway in seventh grade and broken a bone in my foot. But it’s like they say: third time’s the charm.

A nurse took me back to an exam room, which was even colder than the waiting room. When I sat down on the exam table, the thin paper crackled. I had a theory it was the same paper that covered toilet seats in public restrooms, except on a much larger, much more depressing roll.

Once again, my hands itched for my phone. My mom always complained I was addicted to the thing, but that wasn’t true; I just didn’t like sitting around with nothing to do, wasting time instead of spending it.

It took forever for the doctor to come in, and when he did, he was in a rush.

“Sorry for the wait,” Dr. Barons said, taking a seat on the little metal stool by the computer. “So, Lane. How are we getting on?”

“Fine,” I said automatically.

“Good, good.” He stared at me in this probing, obvious way, and I could tell that despite the friendliness, I was being evaluated. “Tired at all? In any pain?”

“No, I’m okay.”

I mean, I was a little tired, from not getting enough sleep, but I wasn’t, like, medically exhausted.

“On a scale of one to ten,” he prompted, waiting for a number.

“Um, two?”

“That’s what we like to hear,” Dr. Barons said, taking out his phone and tapping the screen. “Let me get a read on your vitals here. . . .”

I stared down at the bracelet on my wrist, black and silicone and bulky. I wasn’t used to the thing, or how it worked to give the doctors and nurses most of the data they needed, so they could spend as little time alone with me as possible. It felt strange, being recorded, having the way my body worked chronicled in some database that they could pull up on their phones and tablets, either across the room, while I was watching, or secretly, from rooms away.

“Excellent,” Dr. Barons said, still looking at his screen. “Now let’s see what’s going on with those lungs of yours. . . .”

And then he pivoted toward the computer and pulled up two side-by-side X-rays of my chest. One from the day in the hospital when I’d been diagnosed, and one from the night I arrived at Latham.

Dr. Barons talked a little, gesturing toward the cavities with the tip of his pen, like some bizarre PowerPoint presentation where I was both subject and viewer.

“This area here is what we need to watch out for, to make sure these two lesions in the right lobe don’t get any bigger,” he said, speaking so slowly and loudly that it was almost insulting. “Can you see what I’m talking about? These black shadows?”

I nodded, waiting for him to continue. I didn’t need Tuberculosis 101. None of this was new to me. Back at St. Luke’s, when I’d spent two weeks going stir-crazy in the infectious disease ward, I’d at least had the internet to keep me company. And even though I knew Googling “total-drug-resistant TB” wasn’t the best idea, I hadn’t been able to help myself.

So I knew how to identify the small, tuberculous lesions on an X-ray. I knew all about how the infection in my lungs affected the red blood cells that passed through them, which was what made this new strain of tuberculosis so much worse than the ones that had come before it. TDR-TB, the news reports called it, since none of the old medications worked on it. But unlike so many other incurable diseases, it was contagious. Whenever I coughed, I put everyone near me at risk. Hence the whole reason for shipping me off to a sanatorium in the middle of the mountains, surrounded by woods and sealed with iron gates. Walling off the infection, literally.

But even though I’d read a lot about what was wrong with me, I’d read even more on how doctors couldn’t do anything to fix it until scientists managed to develop a treatment that actually worked. Essentially, every doctor’s appointment I’d had over the past few weeks had boiled down to this: the only thing to do was wait and see. Sanatoriums like Latham had statistically higher and faster rates of recovery than being quarantined in your bedroom, but they couldn’t promise anything.

“So,” Dr. Barons said, “how are we going to tackle your TB? While you’re here at Latham, the best course of treatment is to follow your schedule.”

“My schedule?”

He couldn’t possibly mean the daily schedule I’d taped over my desk, which began with Breakfast, eight a.m. and ended with Lights-out, nine p.m.

“You’ll find it in the front of your handbook,” he continued. “And I think you’ll discover that having a routine gives you something outward to focus on. Rest periods are for resting quietly in your room, or the common room if you’re feeling up to it. Wellness periods are spent engaging in gentle physical activities, like nature walks, lawn games, and yoga.”

“Yeah, sounds great,” I said, without enthusiasm. Naptime and nature walks, the foolproof Latham Treatment Plan. I’d known that going in, but there hadn’t been a choice. I couldn’t stay at home: my parents were both teachers, and if either of them tested positive for exposure to what I had, the school board would be forced to fire them.

Dr. Barons smiled at me, like he thought I was actually raring to go on a nature walk that very second.

“Of course, you should still listen to your body. If you’re feeling tired, spend your Wellness time resting in bed. If you’re feeling ill, check in at the nurse’s station in your dorm. And of course once a week you’ll check in with me, so we can see how much progress you’ve made.”

“Once a week?” That seemed ridiculously drawn out, like I’d be at Latham forever.

“Your hall nurse is available twenty-four hours a day.” He smiled, misunderstanding.

“No, I mean, how long am I going to be stuck here?”

I didn’t realize what a dangerous question it was until I’d asked it, and Dr. Barons’s smile widened.

“That’s a good question, Lane. First, we have to get your X-rays looking better. Wall off that pesky infection in your right lung. Make sure your hemoglobin levels have stabilized. And how long that takes is really up to you, not me.”

Yeah, no kidding.

“Two months?” I pressed. “Three?”

I couldn’t imagine being away for longer than that. In three months, I’d have missed the entire fall semester. Even with the binders of makeup assignments my teachers had sent over, I still wouldn’t be able to keep up. Not in the Advanced Placement classes. And then I wouldn’t get the scores I needed on the AP exams in the spring, and I wouldn’t get college credit, which meant I’d have to take intro courses instead of skipping ahead to the classes I actually wanted.

“What’s so important that you need to get back for?” Dr. Barons asked.

He had this condescending smile, and in that moment, I knew he wouldn’t understand.