Yeah, a score I never signed up for. Doctors love the word _fine_. It’s clipped, dismissive, and vaguely authoritative—like a slammed gavel closing out a difficult case—_fine. _Full stop. Even as I’m sitting here, in a hospital by the way, sweat prickling at the back of my neck, feeling like something scraped from the bottom of a shoe. That’s where I’m at: David Marshall, age forty-five, being told for the third month in a row that I’m _fine_. Meanwhile, my body mutinies beneath my skin.

Here’s the scene: the clinic reeks of ammonia and despair. Dr. Dalby—whose only notable personality trait is a collection of aggressively patterned ties—stares at his clipboard like it accused him of something vile. I brace for the verdict. My muscles ache like they’ve been wrung out, my chest hums with a wheeze I’ve affectionately named Gerald, and just this morning, my legs threatened to buckle when I stood up too fast. But here we are again: bloodwork, scans, vitals—“perfect.”

“You’re perfectly healthy,” he says, removing his glasses like it’s some magician’s flourish. “Could be stress.”

Stress. It’s always _stress_. Modern medicine’s favorite catch-all. I could drag myself in here missing an arm, and someone would tell me to meditate.

“Stress makes me feel like this?” I ask, incredulous. My voice is tight, my fists curling in my lap. “Tired, breathless, sore? My lungs wheeze like they’re rehearsing for a solo in a jazz club.”

Dalby offers a nod so patronizing I half expect him to pat me on the head. “Movement helps with fatigue. Exercise more.”

I let out a brittle laugh. “I _am_ moving. I climbed the stairs this morning in shifts like I was hauling bricks. I shuffle from room to room like a malfunctioning Roomba. I breathe real hard too, doc—feels like cardio just existing.”

His expression doesn’t crack. Doctors don’t laugh when they’ve run out of answers. Instead, they hand you a pamphlet on _mindfulness_ or remind you to drink water, as though hydration is some cure-all miracle.

“Let’s keep monitoring things,” he says, offering vague reassurance like it’s a prescription.

I leave the clinic and shuffle toward my car, knees wobbling like a bad weld job, thighs burning like I just finished a sprint. The sunlight feels accusatory, like it’s mocking my limp. I slide into the driver’s seat, legs trembling from the effort, and grip the wheel until the shaking subsides. There’s no medal for this kind of endurance—just me, pretending I’m _fine_ while my body keeps breaking down in ways no one can see.

Later that night, it happens again. I wake up gasping, chest gripped in a vice. My lungs seize, the air trapped somewhere between inhale and panic. I sit up so fast my ribs protest, hacking so hard it feels like my bones might crack. Gerald, my wheeze, sputters and whines like a kettle running out of steam. My fingers clutch the sheets, knuckles white. For a second, I think about the ER—imagining the fluorescent lights, the smell of antiseptic, the inevitable: _“You’re fine. Just breathe.”_

So I figured ‘why bother?’ and continued to sit in the dark instead, waiting. Counting heartbeats. Listening to the wheeze as it settles back into its corner like a sulking animal. Alive, I think. _Technically_.

The next morning, Dr. Dalby calls, chipper as ever. “Your test results look great! Heart, lungs—everything’s stable. Perfectly healthy.”

“Fantastic,” I mutter. “I’ll make sure to let my body know.”

I hang up and stare blankly at the wall, caught somewhere between relief and a quiet fury. I think about all the small betrayals: the popping knees, the drenched bedsheets, the way my legs tremble after ten minutes upright. I don’t need marathons or mountain climbing.

**_I just want to wake up and feel like a person again._**

But maybe this is just the price of growing older. Forty-five feels like the point where you stop being unbreakable and start turning _human_—fragile in ways you never expected. So I keep eating salads, swallowing vitamins, and dragging myself from room to room like a relic trying to hold itself together. Gerald wheezes in my chest like clockwork, and I keep showing up at Dalby’s office, waiting for someone to call me something other than _fine_.

Until then, I’ll be here: a man held together by sheer force of will, living proof that you don’t need to die to feel like you’re falling apart.