“I’ve heard that one before. I’m sorry. I wish this process were a bit speedier.”
My smile turns into something more like a grimace, a hard line across my face. I wonder what it was like when Aba sat in a room like this with Ima. If it was a tragedy right away, or a relief to finally be able to name her symptoms.
“Do you want us to cut right to the chase?” Dr. Simon asks.
“Yes. Please.” My heart hammers in my throat. I have my two plans. Whatever happens, I can deal with it.
I hope.
The moments before the doctor’s next sentence span eons. Glaciers melt and entire species go extinct. I’m certain she’ll tell me what I’ve only let myself obsess about through research and in my nightmares.
“You will not develop Huntington’s disease. You tested negative.”
Seven
Adina
“ADINA, I’M SO SORRY. . . . YOU tested positive.”
The room tilts. Sunsets and mountaintops burst from their frames and slide off the walls. Computers crash to the floor and lightbulbs explode and everything lands in a heap of broken pieces.
I blink, and the room repairs itself.
“Adina?”
My mother begins to sob, pianissimo at first. Her arms wrap around me, but I cannot get mine to do anything. Positive. The word has turned me to cement.
A masochistic laugh bubbles out of me. It’s a quick noise, a ha! t
hat almost sounds like I’m choking. Because it is funny, almost, that “positive” usually means something good.
“Adina,” Dr. Simon says again, “do you understand what that means?”
Slowly I nod. Somehow I find my voice. “I—I have HD.”
“You don’t have it yet,” Dr. Simon is quick to correct. “You won’t have symptoms for a long, long time. You’re only eighteen. You can still have a long, full, normal life ahead of you.”
Only eighteen. I am as young as I often fear I am. I shake that thought away.
“Not exactly normal.” The laugh returns. This time it sounds like a bark.
“We’ll do all we can for you to make it as normal as possible,” Maureen says.
Ima hugs me tighter. “Adi, I am so sorry.”
It takes several more minutes for me to attach any real meaning to the words spilling out of the doctor’s mouth. The room is thick with those words, consonants and vowels stacked to the ceiling. Entire sentences collapse on top of me.
You can still live a normal life.
Many people do.
You’re so young.
Machala arura—the damn disease belongs to me now, too.
“We’ll give you some time to process this as a family,” Dr. Simon says.
As a family—oh God, how is Tovah handling this? My frustrations toward my sister vanish for a moment. If she tested positive too, she will surely develop some coping mechanism so it won’t wreck her own meticulously planned future, and she’ll share it with me and we’ll get through it together the way she promised all those years ago. She broke that promise, but she can still make it up to me.