Disrupting a crowd of parents and children who were hit by the first wave of the flu, I walk into an urgent care clinic by Union Square on a Monday night. “I just want to make sure I am not having a heart attack,” I silently tell the medical assistant at the counter. She writes down my complaint with a straight face and gestures at the ill-colored chairs. I sit down and make eye contact with a father, his exhausted looks, and a pale boy on his lap, squirming to claim his freedom. Not now.
“What brings you today?” a young man with glasses asks me. He slouches in front of a PC and starts jotting down notes for the doctor, the part I’d rather skip to. “I feel like my heart is in my mouth or something,” I try to explain. “I was watching Grey’s Anatomy, and a woman almost died because no one was able to diagnose her heart attack. I want to make sure I’m not dying today.”
He hums and huh-huh’s and leaves the sterile room. I sit on the bed and watch whatever is on the tiny screen by the door — another medical drama. The female lead, dressed as Cleopatra, collapses to the floor at a house party. A friend tries to console her; we find out she is having a panic attack. I zone out.
Four days before I stepped foot inside a clinic inquiring whether I’m having a heart attack, I received a long-awaited email. I finally won a work visa to stay in America for three more years. The official procedure itself took about 10 months but it truly was a three-year struggle, a steeplechase where hurdles entered my life one after the other. From an enigmatic immigration process to job interviews that ended quickly once I revealed my status to relationships that failed for that same reason, I jumped over the ditches and the hedges, treating myself like nothing but a race horse.
I burst out into tears once I read my visa notification. I cried out the three years; for all that I lost and for the one thing I finally won. “It is over now,” everybody repeatedly told me that day. I, too, had thought it was over until I woke up in the morning to go back to work, and my body was different. It didn’t feel right. My heart traveled all around my body and each gulp that I had taken for granted for 26 years felt like I was forcing a piece of stone down my skinny throat.
At the clinic, I don’t feel the show anymore so I lay down on the bed naked with a robe and watch the bare ceiling. I let the fluorescent light hypnotize me. A nurse places the cold EKG platters on my chest and my ankles one by one. “It’ll just take a minute or two,” she says. I shut my eyes and for once, I really wish I was not solo. My face must have revealed too much because she tells me there is nothing to worry. “It doesn’t hurt,” she smiles. And she is right. The seemingly archaic device spits out two pieces of paper, the nurse picks them up, nods, and leaves the room. I put everything back on — except for my bra. For a moment, I blame my bra for all my complaints. This time I’m wrong.
Minutes later, I walk out of the clinic with more questions than answers: an ENT follow up and a visit to the cardiologist. My heart intervals were off. “It must be the stress,” the doctor tells me as I wipe away my tears. “But I still want you to see a cardiologist.” I take a deep breath and put everything into perspective: It is a little after 8 pm, my belly is still full of spicy Thai food, and I am not having a heart attack. It is just that my past is catching up with my body.
This morning, I woke up and finally got myself to see a cardiologist. I laid down again for an EKG, this time with my mother in the room. The heart does change its patterns, the doctor said, after times of immense stress. “I will prescribe you one main thing,” he told me. “Pick up the phone and surround yourself with people who love and support you.”
I started 2018 with no resolutions but 2019 won’t get the same treatment.
December 2018, Istanbul
