A Fragment

A low roll of distant thunder peals, near-continuous in its rumbling, shakes the fixtures all throughout my tiny apartment. I'm hunched over a porcelain sink basin, hands gripping the sides as I gaze at my reflection in the mirror above. The antique tiled floor is illuminated by intermittent flashes of lightning and the sickly orange glow of sodium street lamps which pours in cracked windows.
I'm twenty years old. After a near-hopeless prognosis, unnumbered courses of debilitating medications, and countless blood tests, I have recently been declared what the doctors call “a miracle case.” I am officially HIV negative.
In this moment, I feel myself to be worlds away from a miracle. In addition to, and apart from, the leagues-long tally of permanent side effects resulting from the anti-AIDS prescriptions, my body is experiencing a total systemic breakdown. An exhaustive line of specialists has, as of yet, come up empty-handed while attempting to properly diagnose, treat, or mitigate even a fraction of the encyclopedic catalog of chronic pain, infection, inflammation, and neurological symptoms which I now experience. The complexity, severity, and unrelenting nature of my conditions seem to beggar reason. Despite narrowly escaping contraction of a disease which likely would have equated to a severely shortened lifespan, and a measure of suffering hitherto unknown to me, my medical history now reads like a bad paperback novel. One which appears more contentious and convoluted with each passing day. I feel utterly impotent, irreparably damaged, empty, alone. My inescapable sense is that I’m spiraling into an abyss of unknown profundity.
“I can’t do this.” My voice sounds foreign, hollow. I shake with antipathy as I scrutinize the face in the mirror, and pain surges through this body at mind-numbing levels. This body which now more than ever feels disconnected, broken, poisoned, and polluted, passed any hope of repair. My eyes are that of a helpless victim. My jaw is clenched in a contorted scowl. Hot tears roll down my sunken, colorless cheeks. In a cracked, desperate sigh, I whisper “There has to be a better way.” Lightning flashes, then everything goes black.