Gabrielle #27 – X-Ray

A short story about chest pain.

“How did this happen?” the nurse asks softly. It’s not a real question but I know the code. Every woman does. It means: do you need to talk to someone. Do you want to alert the authorities. Are you safe. Injury like this, they're trained to see it as a potential red flag. They lead you into a quiet corner, paper gown under your winter coat, clutching your belongings in a messy ball against your stomach, so you don't have to announce to the entire waiting room that you’ve been assaulted.

“Thai boxing,” I tell her. “Fighting.” True, in a sense. Bashed my ribs somehow, somewhere, clearly – but it feels like more of a metaphorical injury at this point. The end of a week of uphill battles. All kinds of pain meeting at one centralised location in the body that, broken or not, has come to represent a break of another kind. One unlikely to be identified by a radiologist.

“Hit pretty hard then?”

“I guess.”