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Ask Diane how her call went after a couple days. She got the scan and had similar results. Post to OnlyFans. A few days after that call Dr. Reeves and ask how the case study is progressing

Diane is on the floor when Lena arrives Wednesday morning. 710 pounds of naked, unwashed flesh settled on the black carpet, the beard crusted with something orange — cheese dust, maybe, or the remnants of a morning energy drink she's been buying from the vending machine in the hall. Her phone is face-down on her belly. She doesn't look up when the door opens. The brown eyes are fixed on the ceiling. The fluorescent lights hum their industrial hum above her.

"How did the call go?" Lena asks. She lowers herself into the desk chair. The chair has stopped protesting — it gave up its structural integrity sometime in July and now simply bends, permanently curved, shaped to the 890-pound body that fills it. The belly pools on her thighs and spills over the armrests. The yellow nails rest on the curve.

Diane picks up the phone. The screen is greasy from the beard. She scrolls. The brown eyes come off the ceiling and find the screen. She holds it up. The image is a muscle scan — black and white, cross-section of an enormous thigh, white streaks of muscle running through the fat. Dense. Structured. Layered. The same image. The same impossible image.

"Morrow ordered the scan Monday," Diane says. The voice is flat. Not the management voice. Not the underneath voice. Something newer — the voice of someone who has stopped being surprised by the impossible because the impossible has become Tuesday.

"Muscle density above the 90th percentile. Fiber structure — she used the word *exceptional*. She said it's exceptional. She said she's been practicing for fourteen years and she has never seen muscle like this in anyone, let alone someone who weighs 710 pounds and hasn't exercised since high school gym class."

Diane puts the phone down on the belly. The beard closes. The mouth underneath is still. Then it opens.

"She said she's starting her own case study."

Lena takes the phone. The scan is the same — the white streaks, the dense fibers, the 90th percentile. Two bodies. Two doctors. Two scans. Two case studies. She photographs Diane's scan with her own phone. The yellow nails hold both devices. She opens OnlyFans. The post writes itself.

*Diane's muscle scan. Same results. 710 pounds. Muscle density above 90th percentile. Dr. Morrow used the word exceptional. Two bodies. Two doctors. Two scans. Two case studies. The impossible is becoming literature.*

She attaches the scan. She posts it. The notification goes out. The chat will move.

Three days pass. The office holds them — 890 and 710 pounds working naked on the black carpet, the reports finished in minutes, the food consumed in hours, the bodies rising and falling. Friday afternoon. Lena picks up the phone and dials Dr. Reeves. The yellow nails tap the belly while it rings. Three rings. Four.

"Dr. Reeves."

"It's Lena. How's the case study going?"

There is a pause. The kind of pause that has weight. Lena can hear the pen — the same pen, the one that stopped writing in February, the one that has been writing nonstop since. It taps the desk. Once. Twice.

"I've completed the first draft," Dr. Reeves says. The clinical voice is there but something else is underneath it — not the hunger, not the fifth expression. Something heavier. The sound of someone standing at the edge of something large.

"Seven months of longitudinal data. Bloodwork, vitals, body composition, inflammatory markers, the muscle scan. Your habits, your weight progression, the timeline. I've included the photos you posted — the ones you gave permission for. Your name is on it. Your weight is on it. Everything."

The pen stops tapping.

"I'm sending it to three colleagues on Monday. Two at the university medical school. One at a private practice who specializes in bariatric anomalies. They'll review the data. If they validate it — and I don't see how they wouldn't, the data is the data — we move to journal submission."

Lena listens. The hum is warm. The belly rises and falls. The yellow nails drum a rhythm that isn't a rhythm. The body is 890 pounds and the body is becoming literature and the literature is becoming permanent and the permanent is becoming *more*.

"How long?" Lena asks.

"Review takes weeks. Journal submission takes months. Publication — if it's accepted — could be early next year." The pen taps once more.

"Lena, I need to tell you something. I've been practicing medicine for twelve years. I have never written a case study. I have never had a patient whose data warranted one. You are the first."

The hum sings. Not the birthday song. Something older. Something that sounds like *now*. The body knows what it wants. The body is becoming a data point. The data point is becoming a reference. The reference is becoming permanent. The permanent is becoming *more* and the *more* is everything.