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Post about Diane's doctor visit on OnlyFans too. Dr. Reaves wants to conduct a study with you as te subject. Your curiosity causes you to agree. Skip to August 22nd, your Birthday and have a bacchanalia of a celebration

Lena opens the laptop at ten. The OnlyFans page loads. The yellow nails find the keys. The post about her own doctor visit is still live — the notification counter has climbed past three hundred, the tips have passed eight hundred dollars, the chat is still moving. She types the new post. Diane sits on the floor beside her, eating cold chicken with her fingers, the beard orange with grease.

*Diane went to her doctor. Same story. 539 pounds. No showering. No brushing. No shaving. Beard. Body hair. Stretch marks. Everything I do, she does. Same habits. Same life. Blood pressure 118/76. Resting heart rate 58. A1C 5.1. Liver, kidneys, thyroid — all normal. Inflammatory markers lower than last year.*

*Two bodies. Two doctors. Two clean charts. Two pens that stopped writing.*

*The body knows what it wants.*

She posts it. The notification goes out. The chat moves faster.

The phone rings at eleven. Dr. Reeves. The voice is careful — the clinical voice, the one that held steady through the exam — but there's something underneath it now. Not the fourth expression. A fifth one. Something that sounds like hunger.

"Lena, I've been reviewing your chart. I'd like to propose something. A longitudinal study. Just you. Your body, your habits, your bloodwork, your vitals. Monthly visits. I want to understand what's happening."

The hum is quiet. The hum doesn't argue. The hum has never argued — it has only ever said *more* and *yes* and *this is better*. Lena's curiosity surfaces the way the doctor thought surfaced last week — something old, something that belongs to the Lena who existed before the wish, the Lena who read studies and analyzed data and asked questions because questions were the job. The curiosity and the hum don't fight. They overlap.

"Okay," Lena says. The yellow nails tap the desk.

"Okay, let's do it."

The months pass the way months pass now. February becomes March becomes April. Dr. Reeves takes blood every month. The numbers hold. Blood pressure 120/78. Heart rate 62. A1C 5.2. Inflammatory markers lower than the month before. Lena is 640 pounds in March, 680 in April, 715 in May. The numbers climb and the medical numbers don't. Dr. Reeves writes everything. The pen moves now — pages and pages, the notebook filling, the charts growing. She doesn't say *I can't explain it* anymore. She says *this shouldn't be possible* and the two sentences mean the same thing.

June. July. The summer is hot and the apartment is hot and the bodies are hot and the smell is thicker and the apartment doesn't care. 750 pounds in June. 790 in July. Diane is 680 in July. Marcus is 510. Carl is 470. The four of them fill the apartment the way they fill everything — the couch groaning, the floor groaning, the walls sweating. The OnlyFans is past 1,400 subscribers. The tips are steady. The chat says *more* and the hum says *more* and the bodies say *more* and the *more* is everything.

August 22nd. Lena's birthday. Twenty-five years old. She wakes on the couch — 820 pounds, naked, unwashed, barefoot, the yellow nails longer than ever, the matted body hair thicker than ever, the belly enormous and spreading across the couch and onto the floor. The hum sings. Not quiet. Not warm. Singing. The wish has never sung before. The wish sings *happy birthday* and the singing is the *more* and the *more* is today.

Marcus is already up. 530 pounds at the kitchen counter — the counter covered in bags and containers and boxes. He's been cooking. The stove hasn't been used in months but today it's on and the pans are full and the smell is pancakes and bacon and eggs and the apartment is full. Diane and Carl arrive at noon. 710 and 505 pounds in the doorframe — the belly first, the beard first, the bodies filling the hallway. They carry bags. The bags are heavy. Liquor and weed and cake — a sheet cake, chocolate, the words *HAPPY BIRTHDAY LENA* in icing that's already melting in the August heat.

The four of them eat. The four of them drink. The four of them smoke. The apartment becomes the bacchanalia — the couch and the floor and the kitchen and the table and the bodies everywhere, 820 and 710 and 530 and 505 pounds of naked, unwashed, barefoot flesh in the small apartment. The music is loud. The food is everywhere. The cake is cut with a yellow nail. The liquor is passed between mouths that haven't brushed in months. The weed is lit and passed and lit again. The bodies fill the apartment and the apartment holds them because the apartment has always held them.

Lena lies on the floor at midnight. 820 pounds on the stained carpet, the belly rising like a mountain, the matted hair fanned on the floor, the yellow nails resting on the belly. The four of them are around her — Marcus beside her, his hand on the belly, the warmth of him. Diane on the couch, the beard crusted with cake, the brown eyes closed, the unguarded face fully unguarded, sleeping. Carl on the kitchen floor, the body spread, the beard rising and falling. The apartment is destroyed. The food is everywhere. The bottles are empty. The cake is gone. The hum sings. The wish sings. Twenty-five years old and 820 pounds and the body has never been wrong and the body has never been healthier and the body is comfortable and the body is everything. Happy birthday.