by Tom Stern
Walter felt the familiar, well-worn softness of the bedroom carpet, a sensation typically registered by the bottoms of his bare feet but now gently brushing the back of his neck. He felt a lump pressing into his right butt cheek. He opened his eyes.
The bedroom ceiling hovered eight feet above him.
The quiet of the bedroom was at its usual dull hum, allowing Walter a moment’s normalcy before recalling that all that had been normal now was not.
Walter reached groggily underneath his hips to isolate the source of the ache wedged into his buttock. He tracked the discomfort into his back pocket, from which he pulled out the semi-folded-more-so-wadded pamphlet from the doctor’s office. In what was still left of the soothing calm of post-unconsciousness, Walter found himself at least momentarily pondering whether he might be capable of somehow deluding himself into simply forgetting the last twenty-four hours of his life altogether. He surmised, however, that the growing, living thing inside of him would certainly make this impossible.
Walter sighed. And slowly, gently began pulling at an edge of the wadded document, uncrumpling just enough to find a non-descript man staring back at him with an ominous, affected smile pulling at his face. Was this man happy? Was he masking a profound depression? Or perhaps he was numb to all human emotion and he was simply mimicking what he had observed others doing when they were happy?
As Walter tugged the pamphlet corner a bit further, inching himself further into wakefulness as well, a mess of anxiety began prickling his intestines and stirring him up dizzy. So he stopped. He reached up and placed the pamphlet atop the bedroom dresser before dropping back onto the floor and holding very still.
But the anxiety and its symptoms continued to build.
So he pulled himself to his feet, careful to maintain balance, and took several steps back from the dresser and the pamphlet atop it.
From this distance, he looked again at the man on the cover of the pamphlet, only now noticing that the man’s eyes were cast slightly up in contemplation just as feigned as his smile. From this angle, more of the pamphlet’s cover was visible as well, enabling Walter to see a couple of pixilated, interlocking, roundish shapes hovering above the man’s head. It was presumably a logo of sorts or perhaps an illustration. Walter could make out the figures of a sun, a baby, and of some sort of vegetation, but how these elements unified into a cohesive representation relevant to the literature’s content eluded Walter. Above the logo, in a rainbow-arc dominating the page, hovered those odd, conflicting words that Walter encountered now, for only the second time in his life, placed beside one another: Vanishing Twin Syndrome.
Walter took both a breath and two quick steps closer to the dresser, from whence he swiftly plucked the pamphlet, unwadded it, and started to read. The first page was an FAQ offering, in dueling speech bubbles, a poorly realized attempt at mimicking a natural human conversation…
Q: What is Vanishing Twin Syndrome?
A: A medical phenomenon in which one fetus in a multi-gestational pregnancy is absorbed by a twin fetus.
In an order Walter’s brain could not track, the following things next took place: Walter stared at the ceiling motionless for a full fifteen minutes, Walter climbed back in bed, Walter placed the pamphlet back on the dresser, Walter closed the pamphlet, Walter gasped, Walter held at bay a series of thoughts he really did not want to think.
At the end of those fifteen minutes, however, Walter found that holding still was no longer abating the inevitable tide of the following logical connections forming in his mind…
Thought one: Vanishing Twin Syndrome occurs before birth.
Thought two: I have been diagnosed with Vanishing Twin Syndrome.
Thought three…
Walter sprang out of bed.
He darted for the corner of the room furthest from the pamphlet, which required that he scale Veronica’s night stand, displacing her lamp, alarm clock, books, and some pocket change.
Walter locked his eyes upon his feet.
He held as still as a respiring man could, convinced that a big enough movement would easily jar his brain just enough to cause it to reason this next thought further.
But still the thought came.
Walter could think of nothing else to do, so he screamed.
“Walter?” Veronica called, panicked, from the other room.
And Walter could not stop screaming as the thought formed and settled…
Thought three: I have had this living mutant inside of me my entire life.
Veronica came hurrying into the bedroom, alarmed to find Walter in such a state and atop her nightstand.
Thoughts four, five, and six: Every decision I have ever made as anyone might has been profoundly wrong. I am not anyone. I am a freak.
Walter’s next coherent perception found him sitting on his shower floor with hot water running down his back and Veronica speaking to him in gentle, reassuring tones.
“I love you, Walter,” she repeated over and over, “no matter what is happening right now.”
Walter lingered once again as long as he could in this gentle moment just after unconsciousness but before full coherence.
“I am not who I thought I was,” he muttered as the moment receded yet again and a great, deep guilt descended upon him.
“Tell me, sweetheart,” Veronica cooed as she reached up and turned off the shower.
Walter stared down at his feet. His feet were his. Even before this diagnosis, his feet were the same feet. Unchanged.
“I have been lying to you all this time. I have been lying to myself. To everyone.”
Veronica pulled Walter to his feet, wrapped him in a towel, and gently rubbed his back.
“How have you been lying?” she asked.
“I have been pregnant my entire life,” Walter explained, still focusing squarely on his feet, the only part of his body that he had always found sufficiently manly over the years, they were slender, bony but not severe, they were lean.
Veronica took a moment to strategize her response before deciding to ask, “That’s what the pamphlet says?”
Walter appreciated that she had not taken his unconsciousness as an opportunity to read the pamphlet herself.
“I’ve only read the first page so far,” Walter explained, “but it seems to follow…”
“The pamphlet says ‘pregnant?’” Veronica double-checked.
“It does not use that word, no.”
“So that’s your word?”
“It’s everyone’s word. I just apply it in fitting circumstances,” Walter did not mean to be sharp, but it nevertheless felt good to lash out.
“But it’s coming from you?”
“What does it matter?” Walter realized he was yelling now.
Veronica decided to stop this thread of conversation. She pulled Walter from the tub and walked him back into the bedroom, where she sat him down on the edge of the bed and finished toweling him off. As she moved the towel over his head, scrubbing the water from his hair, Veronica gently explained, “I’m going to read the first part of the pamphlet, Walter. Only the part that you have read.”
Walter considered a moment. Then nodded from underneath the towel, which Veronica left draped over his head and shoulders as she picked up the pamphlet from the dresser.
“Stop after the first question,” Walter instructed, his voice muffled.
And Veronica did. Taking five seconds to read what had taken Walter half the day.
She put the pamphlet back on the dresser and sat down beside her boyfriend.
But she said nothing.
“Well?” asked Walter.
“The pamphlet does not say pregnant,” she answered.
Walter got up, pulled the towel from his head, dropped it on the bed, and walked over to the pamphlet. He opened it and started reading some more.
&nb
sp; Q: Am I at risk as a result of VTS?
A: Potential side effects, if there are any at all, typically effect the mother during pregnancy. In most cases, the mother and the surviving twin are never aware that anything outside a normal pregnancy has occurred.
Q: How might the presence of VTS become known later in life?
A: In some instances, the twin fetus might resurface in what is often diagnosed as a cyst or a benign tumor. In actuality, this growth is the remains of the twin fetus. This growth can include teeth or hair of the expired fetus.
Suddenly, Walter was screaming again, although he had no recollection of having started the scream.
“What?” yelled Veronica.
Walter slammed the pamphlet shut again and leapt into the bed, burying his head under his pillow and trying to eradicate the knowledge that hair and teeth even existed from his mind altogether.
“Walter, what?” Veronica insisted again.
“Read the next two,” Walter demanded, his voice even more muffled.
Veronica went to the dresser.
“Only the two!” Walter found himself screaming. Then he waited until he felt Veronica’s weight return to the edge of the bed.
“It says ‘pregnant,’” Walter yelled.
“It says ‘pregnancy.’ And not as you were using the term,” Veronica dismissed.
“It does say ‘hair’ and ‘teeth,’ though. Just like what I’m saying.”
Veronica sighed. And then conceded…
“It does say ‘hair’ and ‘teeth.’”
Walter pulled the pillow tighter over his head, as if a seal could be formed that would keep out any further unwanted information.
“Walter,” Veronica insisted after a stretch of silence, “we are going to need to do something about this.”
Walter could easily have gotten offended by Veronica’s choice of the pronoun “we”--as if she, too, had hair and teeth underneath her skin--but he chose to let it go in light of the larger and more pressing issues at hand.
“The doctor,” Veronica went on, “said he might be able to operate.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“You were there. You heard him.”
“Maybe I was there, but I did not hear him!” Walter demanded at full volume.
Veronica did not know what else to say. So she said nothing. And a silence set in, until…
“Might?” Walter said, still under his pillow.
“That was his word,” Veronica explained.
Walter decided he was done talking for now.
“The alive part is not covered in the literature,” Walter insisted gravely.
It was 3:00 a.m. now and the pamphlet was fully read and clutched in Walter’s death grip.
Walter was still in bed, but his head was no longer under the pillow, which represented its own form of progress.
Veronica was asleep beside him but Walter’s declaration did not prove enough to stir her. Walter deduced, from the fact that the bedroom light was still on and that Veronica’s body was diagonally positioned across the width of the bed and atop the covers, that her sleep had not been planned.
“It’s not covered,” Walter announced again, this time louder and closer to Veronica’s ear, jostling her into wakefulness. “The part about it being alive.”
Veronica sat up, put her face in her hands and rubbed her eyes.
“All it talks about,” Walter continued, “is not-alive twins. So how the hell is this fucking freak thing alive and growing in my abdomen?”
“Don’t call it that!” Veronica snapped, stunning Walter silent.
She snatched the pamphlet from Walter’s hand and began reading the rest of its contents.
Dr. Grunburg’s next opening wasn’t for three weeks but inasmuch as he was considering preparing a medical paper on Walter’s condition, he agreed to squeeze Walter in. He did not make mention of this paper or any other explanation for his actions, saying flatly to his receptionist, who had Walter on hold at the time, “Squeeze him in.” It did not sit well with Walter that the receptionist, by proxy of Dr. Grunburg, was making him feel as though he was receiving special treatment. If his circumstance did not merit immediate, albeit non-emergency, access to a doctor, then he could not fathom what in the name of all medicine and human decency possibly did.
“It is called fetus in fetu,” Dr. Grunburg explained a few hours later from exam room five, which was all but indiscernible from exam room seven aside from the numbers on their doors. The rooms were not only identical in layout and adornment, but they also contained the exact same medical equipment and supplies in the exact same amounts and positions. Irrespective of whether these things had been used and replaced or had simply remained static since his last visit, Walter found this not at all in keeping with a man who purports to be so busy.
“I thought it was called Vanishing Twin Syndrome,” Walter countered, his frustration teeming.
“It’s called that, too,” the doctor went on, offering no acknowledgement of Walter’s emotional state. “But it’s also not really called anything because it’s fairly unprecedented.”
“Don’t tell me that,” Walter criticized. “Why would you tell me that? You shouldn’t say things that way.”
“To answer your larger question, though,” Dr. Grunburg went right on as if Walter had said nothing, “we don’t really know how the entity is living. Other than to say that it is likely feeding off of your body as a host.”
Walter shook his head and scoffed into the immaculately clean linoleum floor. He was unsure whether this reaction was to the content of Dr. Grunburg’s statement or to the terseness of the doctor’s language. Or to the unthinkably frightening piece of information the man just placidly conveyed. Whatever the case, he found most everything about this man’s being downright negligent.
“Why is it growing now?” Walter altered his approach, determined to make at least some sort of sense of any one aspect of his current circumstance.
“We don’t know,” monotoned Dr. Grunburg.
“It can be removed, yes?”
“Will it be able to live on its own? If we remove it?” Veronica jumped in, rephrasing Walter’s question.
“We won’t know that,” the doctor stated, as though incapable of caring less, “until we get a closer look.”
“Won’t know what?” Walter clarified as he motioned to Veronica to stand down and stop confusing things. “That it can be removed? Or that it can live on its own?”
“Well…” the doctor paused to suggest that he was thinking, even though he couldn’t actually muster an expression commensurate with contemplation, feigned or actual, before finishing his noncommittal response, “…both.”
Walter suddenly felt an insatiable urge to punch this man, stronger than he had ever felt the urge to punch any doctor before. He had once wanted to punch a human being worse than this, but not a doctor. And only once.
“How,” Walter asked instead of punching, even though this question really shouldn’t need to be asked as much as it’s answer should have been the result of a natural empathy on the part of any human being in a place of greater knowledge on such a topic, “will you get a closer look?”
“Exploratory surgery,” came the response with an urgency befitting ordering 4:00 a.m. and semi-sober pancakes at a crappy diner. “We can remove it if it can survive independently.”
“And if it cannot?” Walter did not bother waiting for the doctor to offer additional explanation.
“Then we will leave it in.”
“I don’t want it left in.”
“That is a legal issue that I cannot venture into. It is an ethical issue as well that I do not want to venture into.”
“You don’t want to? I’m your patient. If I insist—”
“I would recommend you find another doctor, then.
”
Walter found it wildly inappropriate to be interrupted by one’s own doctor in such a historically unprecedented medical moment in one’s life. But Walter also found, settling into his chest, a growing sense of overwhelming dependence upon this man to whom he had been bureaucratically assigned. Going through all of this again with another HMO-mandated practitioner was enough to all but guarantee that this living thing would remain inside of Walter for at least several months more. And this was not even to mention suffering the indignities of the diagnostic process all over again. Walter had somehow made it this far, he could not now go backward. So Walter inhaled, swallowed, and reset.
“Can you tell me anything definite about this entire situation?” Walter tried again, all but begging for some sort of solid ground…
“You have a living person in your abdomen.”
…only to flood with outrage and stupefaction once more.
“How developed is it?” asked Veronica, who could bite her tongue no longer.
“It appears to be in its adult years,” Dr. Grunburg stated flatly.
“How do you know?” Veronica followed up.
“It has facial hair.”
“Excuse me?” Walter squawked, a jolt of panic and revulsion firing through his system.
“It appears to have—”
“There is an adult man in my abdomen with a beard?” Walter bellowed in full voiced denial, revulsion, and disbelief. If Walter could have opted to never come into physical contact with himself ever again from this moment forward, he would have done so.
“That is correct,” replied Dr. Grunburg.
As Veronica continued her barrage of questions, Walter could no longer process her words. In fact, Walter could think of no reason to seek any further information on the topic at all. There was nothing more he could be told that would put his fragments back together. And these fragments would, even if expertly reassembled, never quite add up to the whole that had been there before. He was an abomination. With a bearded man inside of him. The only words Walter could muster in this moment were…