Heatwave

Last night I thought I would die. I woke up at 3am, texted my mom telling her I believed I wouldn't survive this one. I cried. I was thinking, again, about how death is stalking me and might just get me this time. Took a shower, went back to bed. The strange thing is that despite all of this, my body temperature was low: 36.1 as I went back to bed. It probably wasn't much higher before.

Just how? Why do I feel so godawful and yet I'm nowhere near heatstroke? How does my body even...? Could I survive after all?

But still. Tears flowed. I cried. And I may cry again, tonight. All heat and no cool makes Hi'iaka a teary girl. All death and no life makes Hi'iaka a scared girl. 

But mostly, all wake and no sleep... you know the rest of the phrase.

***

This morning, I stuck my sister's drawings to the wall. I added some books to my desk for decoration, some I don't really read but still like, and also my wisteria branch.  

The first thing the guy who will be replaced by Passiflora asked is:

So, how was that weekend? That Father's day weekend?

He was looking at me.

Listen, I don't want to talk about th- This isn't the moment.

He apparently is still in contact with his dreadfully abusive father. At this point, I don't even want to know. He didn't push, but I still feel so uncomfortable around him. He says that "you know where you stand with him", and prides himself on being blunt, but I feel that the difference between his bluntness and mine is night and day.

Mainly, I may be frustrated with people and the institution for how poorly they handle things. But he shits on Leo and Janus. I don't like his tone of voice when he starts going on about them, or about Hera. For sure they are not perfect. Superiors can tend to be out of touch with their subordinates.

Apparently one woman in the service is on leave due to an argument with hers, who is none other than the guy who helped me prepare for my oral exam alongside Hera (let's call him... Osiris? I think an Egyptian god would fit him well, although he doesn't have any Maghrebi or Middle Eastern ancestry). To argue with Osiris? Apparently he's not "as nice as he seems". 

But damn I literally have no problem with the guy. Nor with Hera, nor with Leo, nor with Janus. And if they ever get on my nerves, I could take it. I wouldn't think of them as lesser people unless they were truly acting awful to me, which I think has little chance of happening because they seem to like me a lot.

And I just hate it when people rave about others anyway. 

This dude literally says that people talk behind each other's backs constantly but that he doesn't, and what does he do? Exactly what he says he doesn't do.

And he's stormy, like me. He curses, he gets annoyed, and for a minute I was afraid I was making everyone as uncomfortable as he makes me.

But then, as I'm typing this, I remember one detail that changes it all: I can sometimes be a little frustrated and say that someone is disconnected, or that they're a bit annoying (like the wife of a reservist, a limping major, who is constantly on his back whenever he's here, poor guy), but I would never, EVER add so much negative energy like he does. 

Plus I had to decline two calls from what I thought was his wife given the name, but it was actually his father. He had left it with the sound on. And he leaves the radio on, constantly. Me? I'm afraid of even putting on music because the last thing I want is to disturb the others. But I'm thinking of charging my earbuds and getting them here.

He makes me so incredibly uncomfortable, and I don't want to mean this in a victim way. But he feels... I wouldn't say evil, but just... mean-spirited. He's known in the service for being a little "peculiar" anyway.

I can't wait for him to go and for Passiflora to replace him.

***

After saying hello to the rest of the service and some banter with Esme...

Hello!

Hello, Mrs Hi'iaka.

But you have seen me already.

No I haven't. [She was literally in my office and said hello lol]

You did.

That was my subconscious saying hello to you...

So you're admitting that your subconscious notices when I'm in the room? Pfft, I'm just pulling your leg.

...I went upstairs. After all, I had said hello to my service, I wasn't going to skip the team.

***

It's strange, but I had a feeling Hopoe could not be there. I was both afraid of the heat plus the possible stress of seeing me making her feel physically weird, but at the same time, I had a feeling she would not be at work precisely because it's so damn hot upstairs and with her fragile health, it wouldn't be a good idea. 

She doesn't just have endometriosis that landed her in the hospital multiple times. She has at least one metabolic or respiratory disorder. How do I know? Back last September, a little before she closed off, she had a medical appointment. She came back with a bandage on her ear lobe. This is a sign of a blood gas exam, capillary I believe. Those are not for minor conditions. I never really knew what is her specific disorder and I may know eventually, but she said it herself, her health issues are "kinda serious". 

As I climbed the stairs, it was getting hotter. I was already thinking about the team downstairs in my new office: if it was this hot in my ground floor room and in the new office, even if it's much cooler than the 19th century buildings, imagine on the top floor.

No Cassiopeia. Her door was closed and I didn't knock. I didn't knock on the Cetus-Libra-Hopoe-Oria office door either: probably none of them is here. Knowing that Oria is pregnant and that all three (Cetus, Libra and Cassiopeia) are parents, I'm pretty sure that they are on leave because schools are closed. There's actually a plan for that: many today will be out of work because their children can't go to school. Megara, Austral, they weren't here either. I really didn't see many.

I first said hello to Grey and Cygnus, who are now where used to be Megara, Gill, and Chin. Soon Jolene will join them (she isn't here probably for the aforementioned reason). Cygnus is struggling with the heat, but he's managing. I sometimes think of asking for his contact info like Austral. Dude... starts to feel more like a friend to me. Especially after he was my guardian angel when I got drunk on beer last time. He's making his way in here seriously. 

Then, Cepheus. I casually mentioned that there weren't much of them here. He said that the lady I haven't named because she isn't really relevant is sick, and that Hopoe was on leave.

He didn't mention the others. He only mentioned Hopoe.

Probably he knows, somewhere, that I'm still looking for her. The pearl, after all. I don't say her name, and yet she's all over my words.

While I got a surge of anxiety because Hopoe literally never takes any leave as she cumulates them to go back home for months every few years, I realize that my instinct about her having likely taken leave due to the heat is probably spot-on. 

Add to this the fact she deleted her profile pic again a couple days ago: that tracks. She is exhausted. She probably doesn't want to see nor talk to anyone. Maybe the sense of solitude I felt the same evening, which wasn't mine (because I don't feel lonely lately), was indeed... hers. Maybe I did pick up on her state. 

I'm too tired to really have my antenna tuned at the moment, though. 

I talked with him for a bit. He did tell me again about Gill, Chin and Bootes leaving the team. That we had "lost" them. But to me, they're not lost. They have just moved.

I may not see Bootes or Chin much again, but Gill... I will. 

I actually saw him moving stuff around with Virgo in Austral's former office. Virgo doesn't talk to me very much, but I don't get the impression she dislikes me. More that she feels relatively neutral about me, and I feel the same about her. Really no hostility: just perhaps neutrality. But I find it interesting that we just start to talk this year. Probably there's a chance we will get to know each other more?

***

Capella is not going to be here this afternoon. She was here in the morning, but has to take her daughter for other exams. It turns out she's got mononucleosis. I'm floored: I thought this disease was mostly affecting teenagers and young adults because we call it the "kissing sickness". She's got another infection on top of that that requires blood tests to check.

I'm just... I feel bad for her. Imagine being in a heatwave. Which is already hard. But imagine being in a heatwave with a sick child. This is something I wish on no one.

***

Either way... my mom also reassured me, seeing pictures of the cracks in the wall, that they weren't structural. Phew. At least my own office won't collapse on me...