Amy Ferris

Word Count 1,220

I am in Los Angeles for five days. I am here on ‘screenwriting’ business, seeing friends, and it is Valentine’s Day. I am on a date with a guy I met through work - a television Producer.

He takes me to some fancy-schmancy restaurant up in Malibu Canyon, and I’m on my second glass of wine, having just finished my frisee & pear salad with bleu cheese, when the headache starts up again. Pounding, pounding, pounding – it feels as if my head is going to split open & explode. I have been having horrible blinding headaches for about a month, and they keep getting worse, and here I am experiencing a god awful blinding headache, and this time, at this restaurant, on this first date, it comes back in a fury.

I am trying to act normal, until I can’t any longer, and I tell this guy - this guy who I hardly know at all - that I’m awfully sorry, but I think I need to be rushed immediately to a hospital NOW, as in this fucking minute. I stand up and ask him if he would like to take me to Cedars Sinai, or… or, and I would completely understand if, in fact, he didn’t want to, I could have the restaurant call me a cab. He offers to take me but asks if we could just wait a few minutes, so we can get the food we ordered to go. We don’t have the time, I tell him.

At this point, I am convinced that I am dying, and I don’t want to dilly-dally. Although, I don’t tell him that, it feels like too much information to share on a first date. He throws down a wad of cash to pay for a meal that is costing an arm and a leg, not to mention a piece of my brain, and we make a mad rush out of there.

He drives directly to Cedars Sinai in Beverly Hills, and we proceed to push our way up the queue in the Emergency Room line. This being Hollywood, I notice a couple of B slash C movie actors in the waiting room. Now it’s my turn with the emergency room nurse, and she asks me what’s wrong. I tell her that I believe I have a brain tumor. My new friend turns absolutely white, “A brain tumor.” he says/asks. Yes, I say, a brain tumor. I don’t think he wants to see me anymore. I think he wants to leave and go back to the restaurant and try to pick up the cute waitress who was flirting with him, who, by the way, appears to have a very long life in front of her. The nurse gets me a semi-private room within the emergency room area, and my friend tags along. We wait for what feels like hours until the attending Emergency Room physician makes his way to see me. Long story short – they take an X-Ray, there’s a small tiny cluster that appears on the X-Ray, and I am now officially unofficially told that I have what appears to be a brain mass, or what is commonly known as a brain tumor.

I knew it. I knew it. I knew it.

They put me in a private room, where handwritten on a board directly above my head, it reads, “Brain Tumor.” My friend stays with me, and we get to know each other, because, well, clearly I don’t have much time left. We chat. He’s a Pisces, and loves Opera; I’m a Sagittarius, and I love the Rolling Stones. He loves algebra and calculus, anything and everything mathematical. I like none of that. He loves watercolors and ink drawings. I love sculpture and modern art. He loves Betty White - of course, of course, television. Of course. I like romantic comedies, thrillers, and 40’s film noir. He likes sci-fi and musicals and loves, with a capital L, game shows. Game shows - not my favorite. Clearly, this is not a match, not even close. But he stays, and I think he stays because he has nowhere else to go, and for that, I am grateful, but not grateful enough to engage in any sexual favors as a thank-you.

Another attending doctor comes in, a small wisp of a guy, and asks me if there is anyone, a family member or otherwise, I would like to call. The specialist brain tumor doctor will be in first thing in the morning to take a look at the X-Rays, but in the meantime, they’ll give me some pain medication to ease my pain: Percocet, Percodan, and/or codeine.

And again, asks me if there is anyone I would like to call. Yes, I say, I want to call Betty. “Your sister?” “No. My psychic.”

If I wasn’t convinced enough that my new friend’s eyes glazed over with the brain tumor line, this certainly clinched it. I dial Betty’s number. I’m pretty sure she’s asleep - it is three hours later in New York – but she answers the phone.

I tell her I am in a hospital, I’ve just been diagnosed with a brain tumor, and… and…I knew it… I knew it, I just knew these headaches were life-threatening, and she stops me mid-sentence, interrupting me, telling me point blank, “It is not a brain tumor, whatdya fuckin’ kiddin’ me, who the fuck told you it was a brain tumor, they should have their fuckin’ medical license taken away, you wanna know what you have? You wanna know what’s wrong? You have sinusitis.”

Huh, I say. Really?

Yeah. A sinus headache.

But I never had this before, I say.

I never had a weight problem, but I have one now. You don’t have a fuckin’ tumor, Betty says.

Well, she’s not always right.

My new friend asks, “So, uh, what did your psychic say?” with enough cynicism that I knew - it was all in his tone - I knew that he wasn’t a believer. “Doesn’t look good,” I say.

I spend the night. The nurses and attending physicians tiptoe around my room, treating me like the terminally ill patient I am, with kindness and the occasional handholding and the big toe grabbing. And then morning comes. My friend has also spent the night having fallen asleep in the chair. The specialist comes in, a lovely older gentleman with a shock of gray hair and a charming smile. He introduces himself and says, I hope you didn’t call your parents because that little cluster that the attending emergency room physician read on the X-Ray is, in fact, the sinus cavity. It appears that you have what is commonly known as sinusitis.

He then gives me a Claritin, which I can now buy over the counter at any pharmacy or drug store.

My friend asks me if I would mind terribly taking a cab back to my hotel room. Shortly after our date, I was told, he left the television and film business, moved back to Vermont, where he owns and operates a “Welcome to Vermont” tchotchkes store.

And according to another psychic, someday I will run into him, and he will avoid me like the plague.

And yes, I have sinusitis every year, every year, right around Valentine’s Day.

Amy Ferris is an author, editor, screenwriter & playwright. Her memoir, Marrying George Clooney, Confessions from a Midlife Crisis (Seal Press) was adapted into an Off-Broadway play in 2012. As a screenwriter, she was nominated for a Best Screenplay Award (BET, Black Reel Award) for her adaptation of the film Funny Valentines (Director: Julie Dash). As an editor, she curated SHADES OF BLUE: Writers on Depression, Suicide and Feeling Blue (Seal Press), and co-edited the anthology, Dancing at The Shame Prom (Seal Press).