The weight of silence

Golden sunlight brightened the trees as Clara’s eyes lingered on the park through the window in the afternoon. Her favourite time of the day, enjoying the view, feeling the sun’s last warmth on her face. Nature was so peaceful, so breathtakingly beautiful, and she needed that peace more than ever. She drew a slow breath, easing the knot in her stomach, then turned away from the sight. A good time to make some tea, she decided. The ritual always reduced the tension in her body.

As she reached into the cupboard for the kettle, the latest doctor’s visit flashed into her thoughts. The hundredth conversation had been filled with uncertainty. They had kept trying to make sense of this mysterious autoimmune disease that left no traces, only damage. The memory weighed on her, and her body tensed up again.

“A short-lived relief,” she whispered to herself.

She filled the kettle with water, her slightly shaking hands moving through the well-practiced motions. Her mind, as usual, seemed to live a separate life. It was ruminating on whether the notes she had prepared covered everything relevant for the last meeting. With four doctors involved, tracking their advice, the tests they requested, and linking it all together while relaying the correct information to each physician had become challenging. Every detail mattered and a forgotten lab test, a left-out symptom, an overlooked suggestion could have its own consequences. One inaccurate piece of data could mean the wrong decision being made, causing irreversible harm to her husband. It felt like a part-time job, its responsibility pressing against her chest as she navigated through life.

She moved from the sink toward the stove to put the kettle on, and the image of the inflamed, itchy rashes she had shown to the doctor on her phone popped into her mind. They had hoped this dose of prednisolone would have finally suppressed the symptoms, even if it had been a little high.

“High doses can cause serious complications over time,” the doctor had warned them.

And yet, there was no other option. Lowering it would mean certain flare-up and further scarring leading to death within a year or so. She tried to reconcile with the fact that the medication keeping her husband alive could also harm him. Consciously, she understood that at least with the treatment he would live longer. But beneath that, in her unconscious, panic tore through her… she was going to lose him either way.

She felt lightheaded from the realisation, her breath short and laboured. She had to lean on the countertop for support till the dizziness passed, then forced herself to take the next step.

She relied on her practiced moves to continue. She took the tea bag from its holder, setting it on the counter. While she went through the routine, the doctor’s reactions to the current setbacks and the suggested tests by other specialists replayed in her brain. He had agreed to involve a haematologist regarding an elevated protein, something that might indicate blood cancer, or explain the kidney damage. But stopping steroids for a month for a PET scan?

“Too risky”, he had said.

Waiting for the water to reach its boiling point, her thoughts turned to the struggle of her husband to answer questions and provide basic information about his disease during the consultation. Even a simple “How are you?” had seemed like a challenge then. She had seen his back hunched and his eyes frightened, withdrawing to a place where he couldn’t be reached. He had had to lean on Clara to communicate, even after she had walked him through her carefully prepared clinical summary at home. He still hadn’t use it; he had placed the paper on the doctor’s desk at the beginning of the visit and never reached for it.

Managing years of illness had changed them, Clara thought. She had watched her husband posture morph, his shoulders slumped, hollowing out more with each passing month. His retreat from this unsafe world, where his health was slowly declining, became the norm. The grief of lost control over his body and their life had pulled them in opposite directions. He had grown quieter as the days went by, while she had been hyper-functioning, planning and researching, trying to create some normalcy in the middle of the chaos. In spite of all that, their life had narrowed into survival.

The whistle of the boiling kettle drew Clara back from her thoughts. She put the tea bag into the water to steep. Her husband’s favourite: rooibos. She let her mind wander to the car ride after the appointment. They had walked in silence down the hospital’s winding corridors, passing other patients. The car doors opened and closed in synchrony. The only sounds were the engine starting and the screech of the tires as they pulled out of their parking space. Her husband focused on the road ahead all along; no words spoken. She wanted to say something to ease his tension, but he stubbornly kept his gaze on the asphalt as the city passed by.

Inside, she found his bear mug in the drawer, her brain now circling the information she had spent hours researching to mitigate the current health issues. After finishing gathering the data, she had been considering the best way to present it to him, running through different scenarios in her head. In the end, she had decided that tea would be part of her plan to soften the difficult conversation.

She called him into the kitchen.

“Tea is ready,” she announced.

He appeared in the doorway a minute later, eyes tired and wary.

She first just asked him: “Are you interested in some options that might help with the symptoms?”

“Yes,” he answered.

As she started talking about balanced dosing, bland meals, and vitamin D, she poured the tea into the mug, adding a hint of honey. Exactly the way he liked it. She held it out to him.

He did not reach for the cup, only stood there listening. Then he began shifting uncomfortably and mid-sentence, around the part about weight-bearing exercises, he walked out, without even glancing back.

Alone in the kitchen, Clara let her last words fade into the silence, the tea still steaming in her hand.