10 Things to Do Before I Die by Daniel Ehrenhaft Read Free Book Online Page B

Rachel tonight. Approximate odds of that happening: four zillion to one. The second is that the phone has begun to tilt to the left. So has the messy desk on Which it sits. And the messy floor on Which the desk sits. Everything is tilting. Just like the sidewalk outside. Also, I haven’t turned on the lights yet. The entire tilting room is cloaked in eerie bluish shadows. I’m about to lose my balance.
    I stumble into the desk chair and jab a finger at the answering machine button.
    “You have one new message,” the automated female voice pleasantly announces. “Message one received today, 4:12 p.m.”
    Beep!
    “Hi, Ted!”
    It’s Dad. His voice blasts from the speaker, full of tinny enthusiasm: “How’s it going? How’s that application coming along? Remember our agreement. You finish it ay-sap, all right? Then you can have some fun. How’s the Weather there? The Weather here in Denver is just fantastic!”
    “Well, I don’t know how the Weather is,” Mom cuts in. For once she doesn’t include an exclamation point. She sounds grumpy. “I Was stuck inside the Hyatt all day. I Will say that the convention floor does have great air-conditioning. Your father and I did the B-to-B ads for the Wholesaler.”
    Dad laughs. “Yes, your mother had to Work the convention floor, but I got the day off. You’ll never guess Where I Went! There’s a small town in Colorado that has the most billboards per square mile of any—”
    “Not the most billboards,” Mom interrupts.
    “Yes, the most per square mile. Of any town in the Whole World.”
    “It has a lot, dear. But not the most.”
    “It Was in The Guinness Book,” Dad tells her brusquely.
    Mom sniffs. “You’re just making this up.”
    “I’m not! You Weren’t there! I saw a billboard for it! It Was—”
    I slam my hand down on the machine.
    “Your message has been erased,” the automated voice concludes, as pleasantly as ever. “End of messages.”

Two out of Four Ain’t Bad
    So, everybody of importance in my life has been accounted for. My parents have touched base to update me about their exciting business trip. My blameless girlfriend has stormed off in a huff. Mark and Nikki are most likely still at the diner, celebrating Mark’s triumphant heroism. All of Which means I have some much-needed time to myself. Now I can figure out What’s Wrong With me.
    I bury my cowardice and turn on the computer.
    The screen spins in circles, like vinyl on a turntable.
    I don’t get it. I know it isn’t spinning. So Why does it look that Way? I grit my teeth, fighting to ignore the hallucination as I punch the Words dizziness nausea ringing in the ears abdomen pain into a “Feeling Lucky?” search engine. Several sites appear. All of them revolve (literally) around something called Ménière’s disease.
    I click on the first one.
    DO YOU HAVE MÉNIÈRE’S DISEASE?
IF YOU SUFFER FROM SOME OR ALL
OF THE FOLLOWING SYMPTOMS,
THE ANSWER COULD BE YES:
    Frequent episodes of severe rotary vertigo or dizziness
    Progressive low-frequency hearing loss
    Tinnitus
    Pressure in the ears
    Number one, check.
    Number two, not so much. I hear fine. Except I hear ringing, too.
    Number three … What the—?
    I grab a dictionary. My breath quickens. Words like this make me nervous, even more nervous than Words like examination procedure. I riffle through the pages, frantic. At least I know What those Words mean. But I have no idea about—
    tin-ni-tus n. med. Ringing in the ears.
    Oh.
    I toss the dictionary on the floor.
    Number three, check.
    Number four … I don’t think so. Nope. No pressure.
    That leaves me With two out of four of the symptoms. Fifty percent. I sense I’ve failed some sort of test. Still, two out of four ain’t bad. “Some or all,” right? I skim through the rest of the medical literature on the site, searching for any indication that Ménière’s disease is fatal. There is none. I do learn, however, that it leaves its victims incapacitated for hours