Probably one of my biggest vices is that I let people assume what they want about me. It seems easier that way, even if they usually assume wrong.

And I realize that even if Blaze thought I was the craziest person in the world, he'd still back me up. Because that's what family does for each other. And I hoped someday we would be family.

"Open it."

He gives me any more surprise gifts and I'll have to start asking about the possibility in advance.

"Oh, it's nothing special. Just open it." He looks excited.

I look up at him suspiciously before carefully unwrapping the small package. I stare down at them.

"Slippers." They were cute, too.

"Now you don't have to wear your shoes inside."

I make a weird face at him. "I hate texture feelings on my feet."

"Despite numerous insistences that I have both vacuumed, swept, and mopped, you've told me." He laughs. Not in a mocking way. But in a good way.

He lives in his brother's old trailer and it's exciting in a way, dating a guy who can live on his own without combining paychecks.

I slip them on. "Okay."

Blaze and I visit each other's places so often, it's almost as though we're already living together. But I feel it's wise I at least finish high school first.

I think about this as I wait in the ER waiting room. I know, back again. I've gotten a descent handle on telling the difference between stress symptoms and illness. If it's just nausea, dizziness, the air being sucked from my lungs, that hot feeling in your cheeks before you're about to vomit, then it's not an illness. It's not this.

Problem is, sitting in the waiting room, remembering the first time, my body starts to panic even though my mind is telling it desperately that this is not the first time. I'm safe. There's no need to flea or hide or die. And that complicates things.

I feel guilty, looking at all the other people waiting, that I'm even here. There's a teenage boy with his father, holding a bloody rag to his forehead. He gets called back first. An elderly woman limps to a seat. She must be in pain.

A girl walks into the waiting room, barefoot, with a hospital gown wrapped around her. A matronly looking mother and patronly looking father and two older brothers and a little sister talk with her for a minute and she walks back to her room. They look like a little unit, like she's the missing piece that completes them, and I feel jealous for half a second. And guilty. She must have been here for a while.

I see Blaze walk in the sliding glass doors. It's dark outside, gotta be past midnight. "Hey, babe." He kisses the top of my forehead and sits down next to me.

"Thanks for coming." I feel my face scrunch up and try hard to quell a downpour of tears.

"What's up?"

"You mean why I came in here?" I ask. "My throat."

He raises his eyebrow, as if to ask, and?

"It hurts," I say. I wish I was better at expressing myself right now, but when I do, people tend to look at me like I'm crazy.

Like when I tell people that there's a pain that's not in a specific place but it's like it reverberates outward to the bridge of my nose but when I pinch the bone, it doesn't really help, it doesn't really scream migraine to people. I've gotten used to internalizing pain. Maybe that's why I waited so long to come to the ER.

The problem I mentioned earlier is really becoming a problem now. When in pain, the body produces adrenaline. Adrenaline does all sorts of things. It's a natural pain reliever. It also produces the fight or flight sensation.

As I look around at all the other people and their families in the waiting room, I feel dizzy. Like, heat on a blacktop dizzy. And guilt washes over me that all these people might have to wait a little bit longer because it hurts just to breathe and I'm literally drooling because my throat feels like sandpaper and I can't tell what's up or down anymore.

Blaze squeezes my knee. "I'm going to get you something from the vending machine."

He gets me a sprite and himself a dr. pepper. But he winds up dumping out the dr. pepper so I can gurgle the sprite and then unproductively spit it back into the dr. pepper bottle.

A uniform on watch gives me a weary eye right before I get called back. I must look like I've consumed something I shouldn't have.

I start to feel like I'm going to vomit. Not from the throat, but from the stress, I think.

I don't think it will help if I tell myself, "It's going to be okay. I know it feels like it. But you're not being attacked. Fight or flight is not going to help you convince the doctor you need answers." He'll just think I want pain pills. Which is not what I want.

Doctors have always made me nervous. But I don't think I should mention that, either.

The first thing the doctor says when I get back into a room is, "you mentioned to the nurse you get panic attacks," and I curse myself for being so honest. I need answers not criticism.

"She asked me if I felt short of breath."

She looks at a chart. "You told her it feels like something is stuck in your throat."

"Well, those are two different things. You see, I do feel like that, accompanied by the pain. But that's different from when I felt like I couldn't breathe earlier last night. See, I think that was just a panic attack."

She raises her brows. "Why don't you tell me what the feeling in your throat is."

I tell her that it's like a bunch of snot is stuck behind a big lump in my throat, and I feel this pressure even though I can't blow anything out my nose. I gurgle salt water, and it only helps for a minute. And I know there's probably not something actually caught in my throat, but it would really help if she could assure me of this.

She looks bored by this request. "Anxiety can cause a feeling of dysphasia."

Unfortunately, my superpower makes it a little hard to convince her otherwise.

I think I've given her too much information, similar to what happens when I describe migraines.

Maybe I should have just said it hurts. Would that be too little information?

It doesn't help that I've already looked up all my symptoms and have a pretty good idea of what I think the problem is. I try not to sound too textbook when I relay the symptoms, trying to describe them as I might have before I looked up my symptoms. Doctors really hate it when you tell them what's wrong with you. Tends to make you look like a hypochondriac, I think. So I try not to tell her to look extra closely at my tonsils as she opens my mouth and flashes a light back there.

"Your tonsils are a little swollen." She takes a swab to my tonsil which makes me gag exaggeratedly.

She gives me a doubtful glance.

"I have a sensory disorder called autism," I want to say, but I can't make the words come out. What comes to mind is this episode of Grey's Anatomy where Bailey walks into the ER sure she's having a heart attack, but the doctor looks at her chart and sees that Bailey has struggled with OCD in the past and she almost dies because the doctor was too stupid to look past her previous mental diagnosis.

Occams Razer: the simplest solution is usually the best one. Which really sucks for me.

"It's alright," Blaze reassures me as I ask that he please bring the garbage can closer.

As we wait, I realize that the nurses out there really can gossip like no high schooler can. Problem is, they have a lot of personal content to work with, what with all the patients having the worst days of their lives and all.

"You tested negative for strep," she says when she comes back.

"I did?"

"You can go home."

"I can?"

"I can refer you to a specialist if you would like."

"Yes, please."

I cuddle with Blaze on his couch and cry about how much pain I'm in at his house. This makes it so much worse as mucus takes the opportunity to conquer my sinuses and throat.

We watch the new power rangers movie and he holds me tight. This helps a bit.

Three weeks later I listen to another doctor tell me that aggravating the tonsils can make them swollen and it's nothing to worry about.

"Can you at least look at my throat?" I ask, near the end of his spiel.

He takes one look and writes me an angry prescription for antibiotics. "That should clear the drainage."

He seems confident of this, and tells me to check back in six weeks.

Seven weeks later I wait in pre-op to get my tonsils removed. Evidently chronic tonsillitis is a thing that happens sometimes in older patients.

At home Sky rests her wet nose on my chin as I lay quietly on Blaze's couch. The pain meds help some.

I turn to Blaze, who's making me a special ice cream recipe made with yams and dairy free chocolate chips since dairy aggravates the sinuses.

"I have aspergers," I tell him.

He comes over to me and gives me a quick peck since I can't really kiss him back with surgical cotton in my throat.

"I know." And he goes back to the kitchen.