Gemotions

The waiting room felt like a pressure cooker. Amelia picked at the chipped nail polish on her thumb, the metal of the chair cold against her skin. A cold sweat beaded on her forehead despite the air conditioning. She’d been waiting for an hour, each passing minute amplifying the knot in her stomach. Then, the doctor, a woman with a kind but weary face, emerged holding a thick file. "Amelia, please come in. We have some… discrepancies in your records."

Her voice caught in her throat. Discrepancies? The room spun slightly as the doctor explained the mix-up, how another patient’s medical history was erroneously attached to hers. The details, which were utterly alien to her life, came tumbling out: a history of opioid dependency, a diagnosis of a rare genetic disorder. Each word was a tiny hammer blow against her chest. She wanted to disappear, to vanish into the floral wallpaper.

"I... I don't understand," she stammered, her voice barely a whisper. The idea of being wrongly labeled, the weight of another person's illness unfairly placed on her shoulders, felt suffocating.