Gilbert’s

by Jeff Nazzaro

I hadn’t seen a doctor in years, but then I lucked into a job that offered health insurance, so I chose a primary care physician from the health insurance company website and, though I felt fine, made an appointment for a check-up. Part of the physical was a blood test. A few days later, I had a voicemail on my phone: “Mr. Lacroix, this is Carmelita from Dr. Golden’s office. Could you please call me back so we can discuss your lab results?”

I’ll admit, out of fear I didn’t want to, but I called back. There was an anomaly, it seemed. My bilirubin levels were a little high, and they wanted me to come in for a retest on an empty stomach. I went in at seven the next morning, no breakfast, no coffee even, very little sleep, and looked away as the phlebotomist drew a fresh tube of blood from my arm. Three days later, another voicemail from Carmelita. We played tag for a couple of days. When we connected, she delivered Dr. Golden’s diagnosis: Gilbert’s Syndrome.

I knew it! I always knew I had something, something horrible and incurable, named after a hyphenated pair of famous virologists or an athlete, like Creutzfeldt-Jakob or Lou Gehrig’s disease. This explained everything. I was dying a slow, horrible death. I wouldn’t live to see forty. Okay, I was forty-three, but I definitely wasn’t seeing fifty. I would waste away, suffer, and die.

“What does that mean?”

It meant, Carmelita explained, that I had elevated levels of bilirubin in my liver. There were usually no symptoms, and there was no known treatment. I looked it up. All true. Wikipedia said Gilbert’s Syndrome had been discovered by a Frenchman, from which I deduced that Carmelita and I had been saying it wrong. There was a little something about jaundice. Also, in addition to his eponymous complex, Napoleon had it. I already knew he was French. More or less. My girlfriend was relieved. She’d first been concerned, then relieved, and finally just unimpressed. She definitely was not amused when I tried to get out of doing the dishes by claiming my Gilbert’s Syndrome was acting up.

I am coming to terms with being a Gilbert’s Syndrome sufferer, or, I should say, survivor. I now have a retort for the accusations of hypochondria that have dogged me through several doomed relationships with women. I remember the whites of my eyes appearing yellow for a period of time some years back, based on the fact that a few people made remarks like, “Wow, your eyes are yellow,” and now I know why. Oh, to have seen the looks on their faces when I said, “Of course my eyes are yellow. I have Gilbert’s Syndrome. Do you go around telling those with dwarfism they’re short? Hey, guy with emphysema, little trouble breathing over there?”

I even found an online support group, the People for Action on Gilbert’s Syndrome, based in the UK. Folks of all ages post on their website, blaming their worldly problems on their Gilbert’s Syndrome diagnoses. I read their posts and wonder if they use the English or French pronunciation of Gilbert when they talk about his syndrome in real life or hear it in their heads as they type or read, but mostly I just sit and peruse and think how wonderful it is that the site exists. I might even try posting there myself. I have worldly problems, too, after all, and I’ve always wanted something to blame them on. I’ve always wanted a group I could call my own.

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Jeff Nazzaro teaches creative writing at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. His flash fiction has appeared in numerous print and online publications, including Every Day Fiction, Brilliant Flash Fiction, and Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine.