I spent my lunch break today – well, what passes for a lunch break when you’re cobbling together a living, you understand – looking at a small bruise. Faint, really. Insignificant to most. But it was on my leg, just above the ankle, and it was that particular shade of ochre-blue that sent a small chill, a familiar tremor, right through me. And so, instead of drafting those specifications for that *someone* who’s always late with their payments, I found myself on the internet. Searching. For the *meaning* of such a mark. The various etiologies. The differential diagnoses. The potential sequelae. I typed in terms like ‘spontaneous ecchymosis elderly’ and ‘idiopathic hematoma etiology’ and ‘platelet count correlation with minor trauma.’ It’s an old habit, you see. This seeking. This meticulous dissection of symptoms. This deep dive into medical literature – layman’s terms, of course, but striving for the precision. It’s a mechanism. A way to control, or at least understand, the uncontrollable. The fragile nature of the corporeal vessel. Especially when you’re without the safety nets. No employer-sponsored benefits, no steady income to fall back on should something… develop. The sheer logistical nightmare of a prolonged medical issue, when you’re operating week-to-week. It presses on you. A constant low hum beneath the surface of everything else. The results, predictably, ranged from benign senile purpura – a rather charming term, I thought, for the capillary fragility that comes with age – to the more ominous possibilities. Thrombocytopenia. Leukemia. Myelodysplastic syndromes. All the things that whisper from the darker corners of the internet. The kinds of things that, once read, leave a residue. A thin film of dread. Even when dismissed, they linger. Like the scent of a forgotten perfume. And I remembered. Vividly. The *other* time. The time with *that thing*. Decades ago. I was younger then, full of a different kind of architectural ambition. The kind that hasn't been tempered by the harsh realities of the market, the fickle nature of clients, the sheer exhaustion of it all. I had a persistent fatigue then. And a series of these little marks. Not bruises, exactly. More like petechiae. Pinprick crimson constellations on my skin. And a profound sense of malaise. A general, creeping lassitude. I remember my doctor then, a kind man, his voice a low rumble. He used terms like 'hematological picture' and 'blood dyscrasia.' The careful way he looked at me. The way he avoided my gaze when explaining the next steps. The bone marrow biopsy. The fear, cold and sharp, that pierced through the professional calm I tried to maintain. The silence in the waiting room. The smell of antiseptic. The way the fluorescent lights hummed. Everything felt amplified. It turned out to be nothing. Or, rather, something self-limiting. A temporary perturbation. My system had, as he put it, "righted itself." A spontaneous remission of a poorly defined something-or-other. But the memory of that fear… that absolute, visceral certainty that my body was betraying me… it never truly left. It embedded itself. A seed. And now, again. This tiny bruise. This minuscule signifier. It’s not just a physical mark. It’s a portal. A gateway back to that old terror. The feeling of utter helplessness. Of being adrift. Especially when there’s no one. No one to hold your hand, literally or metaphorically, through the labyrinthine corridors of medical appointments and financial anxieties. Just the silence of your own small apartment. The hum of the refrigerator. The glow of a screen. So yes. My lunch was spent not on a sandwich, not on a walk in the sparse city park, but on a deep dive into the ICD-10 codes for various hematological pathologies. A fruitless endeavor, probably. A form of self-torture, perhaps. But it’s what I do. It’s how I cope. Or rather, don't cope. It's just a thing that happens. Another layer added to the edifice of quiet anxieties I carry. The price of living. The price of an existence that never quite solidified. And the bruise, well, it’s still there. Faint. But undeniably present.