The entire room seemed to turn their heads to look at me at once. I forced myself to sit upright, though the movement made my head spin. I told him that I was fine, but my voice sounded thin and brittle even to my own ears.
He frowned and asked if I needed to go see the school nurse. Every instinct I had developed over eighteen years screamed at me to say no. I told him I was okay, and he eventually turned back to his lesson.
Forty-five minutes is not a long time if you are scrolling through social media or waiting for a delivery. But forty-five minutes is an absolute eternity when an organ inside your body is beginning to fail. It is a lifetime when the people who are responsible for you are debating whether your suffering is worth their time.
I watched the clock on the wall with agonizing focus. It was 10:18, then 10:27, and finally 10:36. Every few minutes, I checked my phone for a notification that never arrived.
I imagined my mother in a department store, seeing my messages and sighing with frustration. I could see Rick making a mocking face at his phone. I could hear Chloe rolling her eyes because my pain had interrupted their afternoon.