What's Been Happening

I turned 20 on monday, so that means the blog gets an update.

I was going to write a post about how my Cambodian roommate's Brazilian fiance always pees on our toilet seat and doesn't wipe it up, but then something way more interesting occurred.

Although I might have fabricated some dialogue, the following events really happened.



Tuesday Night, 9:00 pm.  Provo, Utah.

Mary and Rachel are sitting on a couch in their dingy apartment.  A Mary Kay representative sits opposite them, attempting to hawk her wares.

"Don't be afraid to really rub it in, ladies.  This exfoliant is military grade.  It's what the Marines use!" she chirps.

"Yes, I can feel the freedom seeping through my pores!" enthuses Rachel.  The women laugh heartily.  Just then, their happy gathering is interrupted by the sound of violent coughing from the other room.  The coughing is followed by a voice.

"Mary, can you come here?"  Mary obeys the voice.  She rounds the corner to find Litha standing over a blood spattered sink looking confused.

"Huh." Mary says.  "I think we need to go to the emergency room."

Mary summons Rachel to come and assist her.  Litha runs to the toilet and vomits bloody mucus.  Mary takes a sample.  Rachel attempts to help Litha put her coat on.  Renee emerges from her bedroom looking confused.  The Mary Kay representative hurriedly gathers up her things and leaves in a panic.  Mary, cursing The Fates as she does so, grabs her good mixing bowl and holds it in front of Litha's face.

"Let's roll."

Cut to black.

Two Hours Later...


Drew stumbles into the apartment.  It's strangely quiet.  She adjusts her glasses and hikes up her pants.

"Hey! Where is everybody?!"

Renee, sitting cross legged on the floor while watching Treasure Planet, whips her head around violently.

"Did you hear what happened to Litha?!"

Renee relates the nights happenings to Drew.  Drew immediately calls Mary.  Mary answers.  Drew asks her what the hell.  Mary, sniffing in disdain at Drew's foul language, tells her not to worry, that the doctor thinks it's just bronchitis or something, says that she will call back when they know more.  She hangs up.  Drew and Renee converse.

'Bronchitis,' they say, 'You don't cough up blood when you have bronchitis, do you?' 'I'm not a doctor.' 'I'm aware of that.'

 Renee goes back to Treasure Planet while Drew logs onto her trusty medical diagnosis sites.  At one point, she makes her way to bathroom, where she finds a glass of what looks like Kool-Aid on the counter.

"What's in this glass?" she asks.

"Oh," says Renee, "That's Litha's water."

"It's red."

"Yeah."

Drew throws the glass and its contents in the dumpster.

One Hour Later (12:00)...


Mary calls Drew.

"So," she says. "The doctors were pretty sure it was Bronchitis until they took a chest x-ray.  I guess the x-ray wasn't normal, because they came back and said they wanted a CT scan.  They took one and found a cavity in her lung."

"What does that mean?"

"Like a hole."

"Oh."

"Anyway, that wasn't good, so they drained her lungs and ran some tests on her blood and stuff.  At this point, they had taken out all the other patients in the room and closed the doors.  The nurses were wearing full on body suits.  Rachel and I were breathing through our shirts because we didn't know what was going on and they didn't give us masks.  Then a lung specialist came in and told us that they had narrowed it down to three things; fungal infection, tuberculosis, or lung cancer.  Since Litha's Cambodian, they think tuberculosis is the most likely.  Now we're waiting for them to take her to her own room because she has to be quarantined for three days.  Litha's crying and freaking out because she doesn't have insurance and I had to throw away my mixing bowl because it was full of lung blood."

Drew gets off the phone.  She relays the information to Renee.  They begin to laugh nervously.

"Why are you laughing?" asks Renee.

"I don't know, this isn't funny"

"Well, what should we do?"

"I have no idea."

"Do you know any doctors?"

"Yeah, but I don't think that's going to do us any good.  Also, it's almost 1:00."

"Yeah, but what do we DO?"

"Clean?"

So, Renee and Drew turn on The White Album, break out the bleach and the latex gloves, and begin scrubbing.  They scrub the blood off the sinks.  They fill the toilet with Comet.  They throw away Litha's toothbrush.  They eat a whole chocolate cake.  They clean into the wee hours of the morning, getting high off cleaner fumes while feeling more and more panicky, a feeling that is not exactly eased by the less than soothing sounds of Revolution 9.

Mary and Rachel arrive back at the apartment at 3:00.  The four girls go to bed soon after, resigned to the fact that they will probably be dead in a few weeks.



So, that's what happened.  Litha is still in the hospital.  The tests are still inconclusive, so we don't know if we're slowly dying or not.  We'll see.  Stay tuned.  The good new is that the Brazilian fiance won't be by to pee on our toilet for three days.