"I thought you were gone."
I feel like a ghost walking the halls of Umbrella. My department had moved buildings in the 8 months I was gone, so at first I considered pretending I had been on a training rotation and then moved back with the group when they changed buildings, but eventually, as usual, just telling the truth was easier.
"I was on medical leave."
Nobody ever really knows how to respond to that.
My body is covered in bruises. Nobody ever knows exactly how to respond to that either. At first I made an effort to wear long sleeves and hide them, but then I got questions about if I was being abused when they peaked from the hems of my jeans or the edges of my sleeves. That was fun to joke about for a while, but now I just wear them openly everywhere but Torii, where they never knew I went on leave at all.
Nobody at Umbrella dares to ask me any questions about my physical appearance. I had a few days where I tried to see what I could get away with, and eventually borrowed and wore a pair of bondage leg restraints under my jeans for a day just to prove to myself that my coworkers were genuinely just afraid to ask.
Slap. Slap. Slap. Slap. I feel like I run like a child, that I somehow never caught up with the grace of other adults in movements other than fighting. The striking noises of my bare feet on the pavement cause my coworkers to turn, "Are you sure you should be running outside with bare feet? You could make yourself sick again."
This is the crux of the issue: nobody wants to believe another person deserves this to happen to them, and at the same time, admitting that an otherwise healthy active 24-year-old was knocked on her ass for the better part of a year completely by chance is frightening because it reminds my coworkers, many of whom are closer to being 40 than 20, that it could happen to anybody, and that we don't have control over these things.
They color-code beef as unhealthy in the cafeteria, but I pile it on my plate with spinach. I can see my coworker looking at my plate. I feel like they watch me a lot.
"I'm suppose to eat iron."
"They prescribe you iron too?"
"Yeah, but I am also suppose to eat it."
"Ah."
"It's part of the deal about winning the genetic lottery."
"That's why you were out?"
"Yeah."
He seems comforted. I suppose now in his mind this can not be my fault, and yet also not scary or some grim reminder of human fragility.
"[That] Sucks."
"Yeah."
He and another coworker invite me to play pool that night, which they've never done before.
It's a few days before the topic comes up again.
"I won the genetic lottery too."
"Oh?"
He points to his glasses, "They say the odds of my eyes being like this is 1 in 10,000."
I nod.
Slowly we begin drawing the personal boundaries: how much I'm comfortable talking about and how much other people are comfortable hearing. As a rule people seem to either be completely uncomfortable with admitting I was gone or want to hear everything.
Slowly but surely the need to talk about this is less, because it isn't such a big deal anymore, and eventually it seems to not matter at all. I think people can get use to almost anything with time.
At the very least, it's a relief to not have to hide being sick anymore.
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