Surely We Are Unwell

“You’re too big. What’s inside of you?” says the man.

The man is short and bald with white fuzz circling his mouth. The man is important—he takes care of people and fixes things. He does not wear a white coat, but there is a badge. I don’t know what it says. I was told to come—for him to tell me what is wrong so he can make it right.

“I don’t know, sir, but I am getting big,” I say. “Every day, I am bigger, yet I feel fine.”

“You are not fine. I can see the illness,” he says. He pats my head and shines a light through my eyes to my brain.

“It’s everywhere—on your face and your neck and your legs and your back. You are sick. You have too much inside of you.”

I am in danger now, so I tighten my arms to my sides, careful not to spill myself all over the table that creaks when I move.

“I think it’s ice cream or burgers… maybe too much Chinese,” the man says. His breath is hot and dry. An unpleasant spray sticks to my face.

“But I don’t eat, sir. I will explode,” I say. “I only drink water.”

The man plops into the chair across from the table. He is tired. It is 9:03 in the morning. (I checked my Apple Watch before undressing.) (I don’t like it.) (The undressing, not the Apple Watch.) (But I don’t like the watch either.) (I do both, though, because I am fat—I mean scared—I mean obedient.)

The man is a doctor. He looks thirsty. I cannot tell if he sweetens his drugs before he takes them. The others don’t taste anything—they are not alive. They suck it down, black and boiling hot.

“I am not sure what to do,” I say. “I follow the rules—all one million of them, but they  break.”

The doctor says that I am lying. He asks me again what I eat—so I tell him babies. I tell him vitamins and minerals and Facebook and hotel bills. I tell him mifepristone and misoprostol. I tell him dignity—apostasy—worth.

“Lies!” he says. Lies. Lies. Lies.

And maybe he is right. Maybe I am full of lies.

He hands me a clipboard with my name and my weight and my height and my problems—he calls it my history. He tells me what to do.

“No dairy…or sugar…or meat… or food,” He says. “Only water. Water is nothing. Our  bodies need water.”

He is scribbling down the recipe for my recovery when I notice the picture of his family on his phone. Two small brown boys are jumping into something that sparkles like a night sky.

He is standing beside his wife in red swim trunks with blue ships, and a yellow tube looped around his belly. He is hairy and smiling, and the whites of his teeth glow against the shiny black ink of his chest. He cuffs her shoulder gently like a seashell.  Her hair pours down her back, long enough to sit on, and I wonder if she does, or if she moves it to the side gracefully, or if she scoops her hand from her forehead to her crown and tilts her chin to the side before she kisses him—like she is the only one that can do this.

I want to ask if the surf was rough…

Which son is the oldest…

Does his wife have Facebook…

I want to tell him how beautiful she looks—that love is momentary—that other things can fill up the in-between. But I don’t.

I press my lips tightly against each other until they disappear.

A larger woman at the desk outside the room, with her own creaky table, asks for my card. She smiles at me the way small children do when they are good boys and girls.

“At least you’re early, you know? Before you’re too, too big. You’ll be empty in no time.”

She punches a bunch of keys for a minute. It plays like a song.

“I’m doing it too,” she says. “I’m almost done.”

Her color has gone.

Dark oval patches make up her cheeks.

Her breasts are two deflated bags under her Mickey Mouse scrubs.

Only her belly is left, sitting hard and round atop of her thighs—a snow globe.

Ryan Russell is an emerging contemporary writer based in Central Virginia. She teaches writing and literature at Randolph College, and is currently working on her first flash fiction collection. She lurks but hardly posts @Rynopages.