by Ryan Schow
“Remove robe again, please,” she says, totally unfamiliar with the concept of complete sentences.
“Why?”
“Photograph.”
“No, no photographs. The paparazzi already did that and I nearly died because of it.”
“Died?”
“Killed myself.”
“These are photographs for you, sweetheart.” The way she says “sweetheart,” it could have been a voice recording done by the mother of some thug in the Russian mob. “We don’t keep. You keep. You later see how far you come.”
I’m thinking, you must not have to speak proper English to enter the medical field. All you need is purple eyes, perky tits, an hourglass-shaped body and voilà, you’re hired!
I remove my robe, then she photographs my body (in my underwear) with an expensive digital camera. She starts with my face, first from a distance then up close, and then my teeth and eyes.
“Remove bra, please,” she says.
She photographs my body from a distance, then zooms into my breasts—sloppy B-cup, all nipple on one, barely any nipple at all on the other; drooping on the left, not so droopy on the right. She snaps pictures of my legs (brown ripples), then turns me around and snaps more pictures there as well. When I hear the zoom feature activated, all the tears pooling in my eyes finally spill over. I’m horrified at her looking at me this closely. It’s even worse that I allowed this to happen.
She tells me to turn around. I wipe my eyes and slowly turn around, my big sloppy body quaking. She has a dull white plastic tool that is the V shape of a point and pencil compass with lots of numbers on it. I cringe. She’s about to measure my body fat percentage. She looks into my eyes, sees them red and wet, and for a second maybe part of her feels for me. She furrows her brow, then says, “It’s okay, almost done.”
She pinches a slab of fat between her thumb and forefinger, clamps the tool down around it, writes the number on her chart. It’s not good. Thirty-seven percent body fat. The way I hate myself right now, I’m looking around for the nearest bottle of pills to swallow.
The tears quicken, the trembling inside me intensifies and before you know it I’m sobbing. Big, forceful sobs that have my whole body rocking.
I manage to get my toilet seat cover back on and that’s when Nurse Arabelle sweeps me into a hug. That her body even bends into compassion is a mystery for Sherlock Holmes, the biggest surprise of the day. Where she was once stiff and mechanical looking, now she is warm and loving and it seems almost impossible.
She says, “Your life will seem like bad dream you’ve woken up from in just few months.” The gruff nature of her accent is distracting, but more than her heavy words are the first signs of affection. She rubs her hand up and down my back and says, “I am knowing your pain, how body is unhappy. That all comes to end. You can trust.”
By the time I’m dressed and back in Gerhard’s office, I feel so vulnerable and so raw I just want to go home.
“Your treatment is simple,” Gerhard says. “The science, however, is not. You will have some side effects. This is normal.”
He looks more refreshed than before. Maybe he took a nap while I was having my insecurities documented and photographed. Or maybe he switched from water to Scotch.
“Every day after school you get a shot. Saturday and Sunday you will not come in for your treatment.”
He shows me a chrome plated needle with some cotton candy pink solution inside, and the fires inside me spark to life again. I hate needles. This one looks menacing enough to slay a horse.
“I will administer the shot each day after school, that way the side effects will occur at night and not in the middle of the day.”
I ask, “Side effects?”
“Weight loss, possible sleep discomfort, skin irritation, nausea,” he says.
“This is starting to sound like my other medications.”
“We are restructuring your DNA, Savannah. This is not a band-aid. It’s a cure.”
“A cure,” I say, shifting uneasy in my seat. “You said that already.”
“If you haven’t noticed—and I suspect perhaps it’s too soon for us to be having this conversation, but we’ll have it anyway—this is not your everyday school. Astor Academy prepares its students to achieve untold measures of success in the real world through superior academics, physical education and mental well being. If you haven’t figured it out, the middle class is in tatters. We’re swiftly returning to a world populated by serfs and peasants. We’re not the peasants, Savannah. In this new world order—and I can only speak for my field of study—superior genetics rule.” He doesn’t smile when he says this.
“I’d like to call my dad.”
“Please, use my phone.”
He shows me how to dial out and I call my dad’s office. Tanya, his secretary and a woman I am friendly with, asks how I am. I tell her I’m fine. She wishes me good luck at my new school then transfers the call.
“Hey, Savannah,” my dad says, sounding like he’s trying to mask his exhaustion with false enthusiasm. “How was your first day?”
“Good. I can send you an email about it,” I say, knowing he prefers communication by email over phone calls like this. He’s not good on the phone, and he’s miles from social. “I’m calling because I’m sitting with Dr. Gerhard and we’re talking about the treatment you arranged for me but neglected to mention.”
“Oh, yes. Sorry. I thought it best that he explain this to you.”
“I didn’t like feeling ambushed by your decision.”
“You know how your mother is always trying to fix herself with injections and surgeries and treatments?”
“Of course.”
“I never wanted that for you. Because of your mother’s obsessions, you were subject to her abstract mindset. As far as the looks department, genetically speaking, I didn’t lend you anything worthwhile or redeeming, and for that I’m sorry.”
“I never blamed you for the way I look.” Okay, that’s not entirely true.
His voice is soft, parental, not at all like his business voice, which seems to be his default these days. “I want you to be happy, to not be so anxious all the time, to not have to feel afraid, or humiliated.”
My eyes are watering again and I can’t stop thinking I need Dr. Gerhard to do something with my emotions, make me less weepy, less…emotional. More like a robot, but not as bad as Nurse Arabelle.
Sniffling, I say, “What’s going to happen to me, dad?”
“Dr. Gerhard is the best doctor in the world when it comes to the science of genetics. Rather than relying on drugs and plastic surgery to make you happy, I wanted him to fix the problem at its root. His studies are legendary in the medical community, and his success with patients like you is overwhelming. You are in good hands. And I want to know all about your journey, so please be sure to email me, or call me if it’s late enough in the day.”
“I will.”
“Be good,” he says.
“I will.” I hang up the phone.
Dr. Gerhard gives me a bottle of pills and says, “In case of pain or discomfort take two tablets. You should feel relief within five to ten minutes. Only take them once a day, no more.”
“Okay.”
He stands, walks around his desk and kneels on one knee before me, like a marriage proposal, but not. With a cotton ball swab, he takes my left arm and wipes alcohol over the injection spot. On the desk, in a custom stand sits the needle with the bright pink liquid. My eyes won’t stop seeing it. He removes the needle from the stand, flicks it three times, then presses the plunger to remove any lingering air bubbles. When he presses it to my skin everything in me cinches tight. A small squeal escapes me and he says, “It’s okay, just a little pinch.” True to his word, it is a pinch. That it’s a little pinch is a gross exaggeration.
“More like a violent pinch,” I say.
“Now you know,” he says.
He presses the plunger, slowly, evenly, and I have to look away fro
m the needle because I’m afraid of passing out. When he’s done, he slides the needle out. The feeling of it emerging is the same as sucking in a deep breath after being underwater too long. Instantaneous relief.
“Is that it?”
“That’s all.”
He puts a band-aid over the injection point, then hands me the bottle of pills and reminds me to take them for the pain. “When it gets too bad,” he says, “two will work as good as four, so only take two.”
“What do you mean ‘when it gets too bad?’”
“It is different for everyone.”
“Can I call you if it gets too bad?”
“My phone is only on during business hours, so no.”
“Who should I call in the case of an emergency?” He hands me his home number, scribbled on a card, and tells me only if I am dead should I call that number.
“I feel remiss to address the subject of patient/client confidentiality. If you discuss your treatment with anyone outside of myself or your father, your treatments will stop and you will no longer be able to attend this school. Your father signed a detailed, non-disclosure agreement to this effect, which binds you because you are a minor and he has power of attorney over you. What we’re doing here, this is the cutting edge science of the elite, and not for public knowledge, ever. Do you understand? There are severe consequences for a breach of contract.”
“Yes, jeez. I get it.”
“Good. I’ll see you tomorrow after school. Oh, and be sure to get your pictures from Nurse Arabelle on the way out.”
No problem there. The last thing I want is them ending up at The Enquirer, or the Star. Where they’re really going to end up is torn to pieces and flushed down my new toilet.
Janine’s Ugly Six
1
At dinner, where I don’t discuss my meeting with Dr. Gerhard, I eat with the girls, telling them about my day. Victoria is practically crying when I tell her about the incident in Psychology and how Cameron was so embarrassed by her phone farting in front of not only Damien and the whole class, but Professor Teller.
Bridget says, “Being there, seeing that, oh my God, it was better than sex.”
Across the cafeteria I see Brayden eating with Laura and three other people—two boys and a girl. The girl is overweight with a rashy looking face; the two remaining boys are as ugly as me and Brayden. Finally, the last members of Janine’s ugly six are revealed. After dinner I go and say hello, but only Brayden and Laura seem happy to see me. The remaining three seem introverted, suspicious. Brayden introduces me to everyone at the table.
Tyler Dent is a chubby, sweaty looking kid with pimples, an overbite and a hillbilly’s sense of fashion. Oakley McAllister looks emaciated, anorexic for sure; he makes a nodding gesture when we meet, his lips never allowing his teeth to show. I wonder if he’s a Chernobyl survivor, or perhaps in chemotherapy. It actually hurts looking at the pallor of his skin, at how malnourished his body appears. Sunshine Cranston is as dog-ugly as her last name with a mouth full of veneers, a pillow for a nose and a body fit for all the ‘Before’ shots of obese people who later become thin.
Janine’s ugly five plus me makes Janine’s ugly six, and what a bunch of mutts we are. Truth be told, I’m relieved they’re here. They are, after all, my kind.
I sit down beside them, thinking this is where I should really be sitting. Sunshine looks at me with appraising eyes and says, “So how did you manage to become friends with the clones?”
“Who?”
“Victoria, Georgia, Bridget,” she says, deadpan. “That’s what everyone calls them. The clones.”
“They’re not clones. They’re nice.”
“But they’re not like you. Not like us.” She sounds like a fifty year old telemarketer who’s thinking of drinking herself to death by the end of the week.
“They rescued me from Julie Sanderson and her stupid friends, then stuck by me when it would have been easier to walk away. If they can be friends with someone like me, and not care how I look, then I can be friends with them and not care how they look either.”
“I think they’re smokin’ hot,” Brayden says. Oakley nods his head. So does Tyler. Sunshine says, “They’re alright. Too skinny. And Bridget looks like a tramp.”
In my mind I’m thinking this is the first official meeting of Janine’s ugly six. Of course, it’s probably no big deal to them considering, before me, they were Janine’s ugly five and they probably didn’t feel all that nostalgic about it. Hell, they probably never even thought about it. You don’t glamorize things when you’re in survival mode, and make no mistake, if you’re in this school and you’re a throbbing dumpster troll like me—like them—you’re in survival mode.
2
Hours later, when the pain first hits, it isn’t exactly subtle. The way your body might heat up after you step out of an air-conditioned car into the dry Las Vegas heat in late July, that’s how fast my temperature spikes.
I start a heavy sweat just after nine o’clock that night. Who knew buying outfits online with Victoria and the girls was such hard work? Georgia asks if I’m alright.
“I think I might’ve eaten something bad,” I say. Suspecting this might be side effects from Gerhard’s treatments, I say, “Maybe I should go home and sleep it off. Or take some Pepto Bismol.”
“I’ve got Tums,” Victoria says.
“That’s okay, I’ve got some in my room. But thanks.”
We say good-night. At the end of the hall is the elevator. In the elevator I begin to squirm because fire ants are marching beneath my skin. I press the First Floor button, then descend from the Fourth Floor to my floor feeling like I’m about to have the worst case of food poisoning ever.
By the time I get my key in my dorm room door, the number of fire ants marching under my skin has doubled. Sweat soaks my shirt, my pants, the bottoms of my socks and I start to cry. Something is wrong. Very wrong.
Dr. Gerhard said there would be pain. He said it would be bad. I vomit twice in the toilet. A massive burst of food and stomach bile and something grey-looking splashes into the toilet water. The grey looking mass appears to be uncooked and squishy. What the hell? Of all the times I’ve seized up food, never before have I hurled up something like this! I check for blood, or maybe a lung before flushing. The fire ants continue growing in mass and individual size. They’re carrying flaming hot torches.
I tear off all my clothes, run a cold bath.
Tears mix with sweat and before I can even step into the tub, the lower half of me becomes so explosive I just know my colon is going to plunge into the bowl along with everything else. Sitting on the toilet, my shins are sweating and I’m chewing through my teeth. A few minutes pass and my butt feels empty. I wipe, I flush, and oh my God, I’m so beyond gagging it smells that bad.
I step into the tub and a hard chill hits me. Sharp needle points of pain radiate well below the surface of my skin. The chill strikes my already burning bones and for a second I wonder if I’m going to shatter. I ease into the water inch by inch, gritting my teeth, cursing with such frequency you would swear I was getting paid by the word. In the cool water, steam actually rises off me in plumes. My temperature begins to drop, to even out. Finally the fire ants stop marching, their torches extinguished.
When it comes time to get out of the tub and into bed, I hesitate. Will the fire ants return? How hot will their torches be this time? Looking at the prune-like consistency of my skin, I decide after two hours bath time is over. By now I’m actually shivering.
I towel off, avoid looking at my hideous body in the mirror and head for bed. I pull on a tank top and sweats and crawl under the blankets. The luxurious blend of Egyptian cotton sheets combined with the weight and feel of the down comforter on top of me feels like the world’s best hug. I close my eyes thinking if this is the worst of it, maybe I’ll be okay.
But what do I know?
All night long the pain churns through me. Kicking my blankets off the bed, snuggling deep inside
them, then kicking them off again, my frustration sounds like moaning. Sometime in the middle of the night I feel unseen things scribbling under my skin. My nerve endings spark sharp and electric. The fire ants are back and now they have glowing orange swords instead of torches.
I force myself out of bed and stagger to the bathroom, looking for whatever is squirming beneath the layers of my belly. It doesn’t make sense, things moving under my skin, but I feel them. Like spiders crawling inside me. In the mirror, with my tank top pulled up I study the push of fat, looking for movement, trying to understand something that can’t be understood. The feeling wiggles to my back. It itches. Just a little tickle on my side, nothing significant. Just a normal itch. No, not normal. Nothing about this feels normal right now!
I scratch and the itch intensifies, becomes inflamed. I scratch some more until the need overwhelms me and the skin beneath my scratching nails becomes bright red lines, trails flecked with tiny pulled edges of torn skin. The trails become splotchy and all the sudden I’m going for the pills, cracking open the bottle, dumping them down my throat. I cough up one; it hits the floor and bounces one, two, three times. I’m not sure how many pills I end up swallowing, but back on my bed a few moments later, itching, bleeding, my face damp with tears and sweat, I can’t help thinking I’m dying. If the pain pills don’t work, I’m dialing Gerhard and telling him I’m dead and he should get his German ass over here and pronto.
Within minutes the pain dulls around its edges, the incessant itching no longer gripping me. Even the fire ants just sort of disappear. I almost feel normal again. Almost. Then the little voice in the back of my head reminds me Gerhard said to take two pills, that four is too many. Or did I take five? Wait, crap, how many did I take? Oh, no. I think about taking the bottle and subtracting the number of pills left from the original supply, but instead the exhaustion overwhelms me, overcomes me, and I fall into an unnatural, overly-medicated sleep.