Turn 117 of 228

Call Diane and tell her about the appointment and then game with Marcus. At work te next day, Diane tells you about her similar experience wtih her doctor

Lena picks up the phone. The screen is greasy — it's always greasy now, the yellow nails leaving smears of oil and crumbs on the glass. She dials Diane from memory. The phone rings twice.

"What," Diane says. The voice is flat. Not the management voice. The Diane voice — the one that lives underneath, the one that comes out when the beard isn't being managed and the brown eyes aren't being aimed.

"I went to the doctor," Lena says. She's sitting at the kitchen table, the belly resting on her thighs, the laptop still open in front of her. The OnlyFans post is live. The notification counter is climbing.

"Which doctor."

"Reeves. The family one. Third floor, Garfield and Seventh."

"And?"

Lena tells her. Everything. The walk there barefoot, the receptionist's face, the exam room, the stethoscope on the belly, the scales that don't go high enough. The numbers — blood pressure, heart rate, cholesterol, glucose, A1C, liver, kidneys, thyroid, EKG, inflammatory markers. Lower than last year. Textbook. The pen that stopped writing. The face that went through four expressions. The silence. The *I cannot explain that.*

Diane is quiet for a long time. The phone holds the silence. Then: "You told her everything?"

"Everything. No showering. No brushing. No shaving. No nails. No wiping. The food. The drinking. The weed. The naked. All of it."

"And the numbers were clean."

"Clean. Better than clean. Better than last year."

Another silence. The beard moves — Lena can hear it, the soft scrape of hair against the phone. Then Diane says, "I need to make an appointment."

Lena games with Marcus for the rest of the afternoon. The two of them on the couch — 598 and 420 pounds of naked, unwashed flesh, the controllers clicking under yellow nails, the belly spreading across thighs, the screen flashing. They order food. They smoke. The apartment holds them the way it always holds them. The hum is quiet.

The next morning is Wednesday. Lena walks to work barefoot through the cold. The office is the office — the destroyed carpet, the stained walls, the mold in the corner, the fluorescent lights. She locks the door. She sits at the desk. The belly pools on the thighs. The laptop opens. The queue is there. The yellow nails find the keys.

Diane knocks at nine. The door opens and the beard is first — thick, dark, matted, the sauce from last night gone but the crusted pattern still visible. 539 pounds in the doorframe. The belly precedes her. The stretch marks catch the fluorescent light. She steps in. The door closes. She stands there.

"I went to Dr. Morrow yesterday," she says. The voice is not the management voice. The voice is the Diane voice — the underneath one, the real one. The brown eyes are steady but the fingers are drumming the doorframe. Once. Twice.

"Same thing. Everything clean. Blood pressure one-eighteen over seventy-six. Resting heart rate fifty-eight. Cholesterol normal. A1C five-point-one. Liver, kidneys, thyroid — all normal. Inflammatory markers lower than last year." The fingers stop drumming.

"She said the same thing Reeves said. She said she can't explain it."

Lena looks at her. The hum is quiet. The hum is warm. The hum has never been wrong. The numbers are the same numbers. The impossibility is the same impossibility. Two bodies. Two doctors. Two clean charts. Two pens that stopped writing.

"I told her everything," Diane says. The beard moves.

"No showering. No brushing. No shaving. The beard. The weight. The eating. The drinking. All of it. She kept checking the chart. She ran the bloodwork twice."

"What did she say?"

"She said I should be in organ failure." The beard closes. The mouth underneath is still.

"She said there's no medical framework for this."

The two of them stand in the destroyed office — 598 and 539 pounds, naked, unwashed, barefoot, yellow-nailed and bearded. The hum is under everything. The hum is the same hum. The wish is the same wish. The body knows what it wants. The body has never been wrong.