Page 71 of You're So Vine
Debra waits a moment before answering. “Did Lee not tell you?”
“Uh, no. We … haven’t caught up.”
Another longish pause. Can’t read her at all. Mostly because there’s not a lot of her face to be seen between hat and scarf.
“I’m dying,” she says.
Fuck, that’s…
Fuck.
“Yes, the ultimate conversation-stopper,” Debra says, with a small smile. “But it isn’t as if I have a lot of time to beat around the bush.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
All she does is nod. I’m embarrassed. Cliché Cam.
But before I can come out with something even clumsier, Debra says, “Why areyouhere?”
“Came with Ava,” I reply. “She’s having an MRI. She’s … the girlfriend I told you about.”
The recollection of spilling my guts to Debra makes my insides curl up, but luckily, she keeps the conversation right on track.
“Are they looking for anything specific?”
Strange that, despite us veering into medical territory, I’m not feeling queasy anymore. Maybe Lee was right, and I felt bad because I bottled things up. Now I’ve got someone to talk to, who probably knows a lot about medical procedures, I feel steadier.
“Ava’s doctor says it’s a precaution. She’s been exhausted for a while, and the bloodwork didn’t pick up anything.”
“Well, let’s hope the MRI doesn’t either,” says Debra.
I should be asking Debra more about what’s going on with her, but now the worries I’ve been holding back are shoving questions out of me.
“But what could it be if the scan doesn’t show anything? Is it normal to be so tired?”
“Is she a driven person?” Debra asks. “Competitive?”
“If those qualities have dials,” I reply, “Ava goes up to eleven.”
“Then it could be burnout,” she says. “None of us have endless reserves of energy. If we don’t replenish, we’ll soon have nothing left.”
“But she told me she loved her job,” I say. “She loved riding, loved the high-pressure environment.”
“Burnout isn’t necessarily about overdoing things you find hard or stressful,” says Debra. “In fact, it happens most often when we do too much of the things we excel at.”
I think back to my early days making barrels. When I finally got good at it, I went for broke. Made barrels from dawn to dark until both Billy and Lee told me to stop being so fucking stupid. I finished off the barrel I had on the go and then slept for two days. I think Debra’s onto something.
“Are you some kind of therapist?” I ask her.
She lets out an unexpectedly loud shout of laughter. People turn to look at us, some not so kindly. Debra ignores them all. Guess when you’re dying, it’s a waste of time caring what other people think.
“I’m a person who left no stone unturned in the quest to find out what was wrong with me,” she says. “But before that, if you’re in any way interested, I used to be a high school English teacher.”
She sees me screw up my face and smiles wryly.
“School not your favorite place, either?”
“I stuck it out.”
