Page 25 of Hello Stranger

By the end of the fifth test, I was in tears.

“That’s enough for today, choonks,” Dr. Nicole said, putting her arm around me for a side hug.

“Did you just call mechunks?” I asked. What on earth could that mean?

“Choonks,” she corrected. “It means sweetheart in Trinidad.”

That felt really good for a second. I liked being a sweetheart.

But then I started crying again.

She squeezed my shoulders tighter. “I know it’s a lot.”

“The thing is…” I said, really giving into the crying now. “The thing is… I just don’t know what’s going to happen to me.”

“We’re not going to worry about the future,” she said. “We’re going to focus on the here and now. You’re healing great. You’ve taken care of your cerebrovascular issue. You’ve done the hard part.”

She was patting my back now.

My thoughts were churning like a cement mixer. “What if,” I said, voicing my worst fear, “I get stuck like this?”

That’s when Dr. Nicole shifted her position to face me. I looked down at my blanket. “When I hear you say unproductive things,” she said then, “I’m going to call your attention to them and challenge them.”

“Did I say an unproductive thing?” I asked.

She nodded.

“What did I say?”

“Here’s a hypothetical question,” she said next. “If there’s a five percent chance something bad will happen, and a ninety-five percent chance that things will be fine, which one is more likely?”

Was this a trick question? “That things will be fine?”

She nodded. “I want you to work on that.”

“Work on what?”

“On which of your thoughts you’re going to choose to indulge in.”

“Is this about my worrying I’ll get stuck like this?”

She nodded again. “Our thoughts create our emotions. So if you fixate on your worst-case scenario, you’ll make things harder for yourself.”

“You want me not to fixate on the worst-case scenario?”

“I want you to start practicing the art of self-encouragement.”

“So when I catch myself worrying, I should try to convince myself that things are going to be fine?”

“That’s one way to do it.”

“But what if I don’t believe it?”

“Then keep arguing.”

I was supposed to argue myself into feeling optimistic? “I’ve never been great at optimism,” I said.

“That’s what the arguing is for.”

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