Plunder

"Actually, we have a theory about your EDS."

The card flicks down onto the table as he says it, and I look up at him, then over to his friends, whom I've just met yesterday but who have received my whole-hearted approval. I was hesitant to meet them, at first. I worried that medical students would see me as lesser - an elementary education major who "plays with kids all day," but I'm happy to have been proven wrong. This declaration, though, throws me for a loop.

"What do you mean by that?" My fingers are running over the jagged plastic of the game piece. Cannons. Ships with guns designed to take down the enemy. "Can you pass me a mast for this ship?"

With no hesitation, Victoria delivers a perfect quip - "You want *more* of those defective Mast Cells?!?"

Laughter around the table. I have to laugh too. It's funny, really. I stick the plastic insert of the mast onto the ship. Mine is army green. Ready to fight or hide, except that instead of existing in the jungle that the shade was designated for, this ship is on a cardboard ocean with nowhere to go and no way to escape notice. I'm trying to focus on what Liam said, though. There's meaning behind it that I can't quite parce out yet.

"So - yeah, wait, what's that mean, what's the theory?"

He exchanges glances with Anu, his housemate. Perhaps it's a silent conversation, a debate on what to say, if anything at all - but it's too late to take it back. He's already started. "Well... we actually have a theory that you don't just have the hypermobile subtype. We think you might have vascular. Or maybe both."

I can't process the possibilities of what this means, so all I say is, "What? Why?"

Blessedly, Victoria and Anu are both silent. Maybe they see that I am not quite understanding yet. More likely, they recognize that it needs to come from him. "Because of the type of pain you have. The way you describe it as someone reaching in and tearing at your veins. And, well, some of the other symptoms too."

I cannot think. I laugh, instead, because the only connection my brain can make is a feeling from way back when I first got diagnosed: the sense of relief I felt when I discovered that my subtype was the least likely to result in major medical emergency. My experience of that relief is pulled to the surface again, but this time it feels as though it's under a microscope. Under questioning. Ready to crack.

"Don't tell me that," I joke. It's light, and I'm laughing, but my eyes are probably begging.

I'm making eye contact as I deliver it. I never look at Liam's eyes, anymore, but they're just how I remember them. Curious, attentive, and a little too excited about figuring out the puzzle of me.

I could try to shake it off, and I would, except for the fact that it's coming from the smartest person I've ever met. You know, the man for whom medical school is the place where he's finally thriving. And, as I look at Victoria, I can see that this isn't just him being cautious or over-zealous. Maybe she can see the fear behind my smile.

This should scare me even more, when the graduate of Johns Hopkins who is already published in Nature (and who Liam tells me is the smartest person that *he* has ever met,) backs it up. "Have you ever had genetic testing?"

I'm looking at my resource cards, now. Two gold. Three iron. One wood. No rum, though. Not quite enough to do what I want. Where's the rum when you need it?

"No."

Anu is speaking now. His tone is more gentle, less matter of fact, a contradiction to my first impression of him as towering far above me. "It's worth getting it done, I don't know if they can order it for you in a different state though. Is Virginia reciprocal?" That last part is directed towards Victoria, who has been knitting at speed between her turns of the game.

The three of them are saying now that the professors they've spoken with agree, and they're throwing out possibilities for treatment and assessment. And I know they've discussed my case with Doctors I do not know before. I know that and I'm fine with it, and have been grateful for it on several occasions. But right now, my certainty that everything will be okay is undermined, despite my easy assurances to the group of students I spoke to earlier of my acceptance about my disability.

Names are tossed back and forth that mean nothing to me, but someone, I think Anu, says finally,

"I wish you lived nearby. So many of our professors would treat you for free."

Liam is nodding, Victoria's knitting needles are clicking, Anu is examining the board. And I am still not quite sure what they're saying. All I can think is that it's a funny joke, for sure. Liam's words are still swirling around in my brain. So I laugh again, this time less convincingly. "You can't tell me that. That's the one where people die."

I finally realize that I do, in fact, have a move. I slap down the three iron and trade them in, courtesy of my ship's being docked at a port, in turn playing the cards I need to buy myself another life.

Wisely, the three of them let it be and move on.