A prisoner from the correctional facility, wheeled in unconscious and bleeding, strapped down, under armed guard.
Developmentally disabled man brought in an ambulance, wailing loudly about the pains in his leg, apologizing when his mother urges him to keep his voice down, wailing some more, making sounds midway between words and shrieks.
Boy with entire roll of paper towels wrapped around profusely bleeding thumb.
Teen boy and girl with shifty twitchy eyes and grubby hands, waiting for their friend to get assessed for a concussion, sneaking into the men’s room together when no one—but me—is looking, emerging one hundred and ninety seconds later with smiles so big only sex or drugs could have caused them.
Funny-looking boy, very unconscious, presenting with significant malnutrition, hooked up to a feeding tube.
I had woken up enough on the ride over to tell the triage lady that I thought I had food poisoning; had been vomiting since sharing a chicken sandwich with a friend at school and that she’d been feeling sick, too. Wasn’t alert enough to assess whether she—or my mother—bought a word of that utter horseshit; thanked all the gods that I was too out of it to give my lies away with nervousness. Sat down in the waiting area with my mother. Kept flickering in and out of awareness, although I never went back to the dream-beach where I’d met Maya.
“Hey!” the nurse hollered to a different prisoner. “Get your finger out of there! I’m watching you!”
And then I went away for a while.
When I came to I was in a room, sedated, half in and half out of my body.
A tube went down my throat. A machine pumped liquid food into me. I felt my senses dulling, my abilities disappearing as scientifically concocted nutrition-rich sludge bubbled and frothed into my belly. My throat clenched. I coughed. I gagged. I panicked. I wanted to rip it out but my hands wouldn’t cooperate. And then I went away again.
“Matt?” said a lady when I returned. The tube was gone. My gut agony was gone. My supersenses were—gone. I floated on a thick smothering cloud of painkillers and sedatives.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“I’m Dr. Kashtan. Can you tell me a little bit about what brought you here?”
She had rimless glasses, small rectangles over shrewd, kind eyes. Black hair and white hair, trimmed short, warred for dominance of her head, but it seemed like a tie game so far. She looked like a teacher. “Sure,” I said, trying to sit but giving up after five seconds. My muscles, always pretty flimsy, had now progressed to full uselessness. “I’ve been vomiting all day. Food poisoning, probably. I ate a bad chicken sandwich, I think.”
“And this is the first such incident?”
I nodded.
She looked like a teacher who is pissed at you.
“Your mom says you haven’t experienced any recent illness, haven’t been stranded on a desert island for any significant amount of time . . . so why don’t you tell me what’s really going on?”
“What do you mean?” I asked, all innocence.
“Your whole body is showing signs of malnutrition. Your mom’s worried. She says there’s plenty of food in the house, yet you choose not to eat. Why?”
I shrugged. “I’m in training. I want to go out for the track team in the spring.”
Amazing, what the brain can come up with, even in the absence of superpowers.
“They don’t accept corpses on varsity,” she said. She looked like a teacher who is kind but can be unkind when she has to be. From a folder, she produced a stack of photos. “Pick the one that you think is closest to your own body.”
The photos showed shirtless men, ranging from Concentration-Camp Skinny to So Fat They Make a Documentary About You.
Smart lady, this doctor.
“This one,” I said, settling on something utterly average, neither fat nor skinny, instead of the Ridiculous Blimp picture.
She eyed it, then eyed me. Then she asked me a bunch of other questions, about food and my body. Except, I was on to her. I knew what she was gunning for and wouldn’t give her anything that could be used against me. I had learned my lesson with the shrink they sent me to at school, the one who taught me exciting new vocabulary words like suicidal ideation.
Do you count calories?
Do you cut your food into small pieces?
Do you avoid completely certain types of food—carbohydrates, fried foods, etc.?
Do you ever experience guilt after a meal?
Do you ever feel that others pressure you to eat?
Do you ever induce vomiting after a meal?
Do you believe that you’re less attractive than others in your peer group?
Do you feel a lack of control in your day-to-day life?
No, no, no no no, no no, and no.
And so on. For an hour.
“Are you gay?” she asked finally.
“Can you even ask me that?”
“Many gay and lesbian adolescents have a much harder time at your age than their heterosexual counterparts, especially if there are no opportunities for positive romantic and sexual relationships. They do not experience the emotional fulfillment of being physically desired by someone they in turn desire, and it makes them feel unhappy with their physical appearance. Does that sound at all familiar?”
Yes. Yes. Yes.
“No.”
She nodded, put her folder away, sat up straight. She looked like a teacher who had realized she couldn’t pierce a particular student’s shell of obstinacy and assholery. “I’m concerned that there might be underlying psychological causes to your malnutrition, and I think you should see a therapist to talk through it. You should know that since you’re a minor, we do have the power to force you into a treatment program with your mother’s consent, and she’s prepared to give that if your behavior and health do not improve. Are we clear?” She stood up, stuck out her hand. We shook. Why did I feel bad about disappointing this lady I just met, and would never see again?
“I gave your mother the information on several therapists. You can call them, ask them questions, assess which ones might be a good fit. They all take your mother’s insurance.”
I followed her back to the waiting room, where my mother waited with her head in her hands. Her face was red where I could see it. She had never seemed so small before. I stopped, throat clenching as hard as it had with the feeding tube rammed down it, and thought I worried I would break her heart by being gay. Instead I broke it like this.
RULE #26
One secret smells the same as any other.
DAY: 21
TOTAL CALORIES, APPROX.: 2000
“Who’s Tariq?” my mother asked when I woke up and stumbled into the kitchen late that afternoon.
“What do you mean?” I asked, still groggy, and angry to hear his name in my mother’s mouth. He’s not worth the time it takes her to say those syllables, I thought.
“Someone named Tariq left four voice-mail messages for you,” she said. “Sounded very concerned.”