Suicide Med (19 page)

Heather wanted me to come to her parents’ house for Thanksgiving, but I begged off, saying that my parents would be disappointed that I wasn’t coming home. I couldn’t tell her the truth.
Sorry, honey, I’ve got a PET scan of the brain in my ass scheduled on Friday morning and I can’t miss it.

The PET scanner looks simil
ar to the CT scanner in that it’s a large donut-shaped apparatus with a stretcher that slides through. I’m slightly concerned about the fact that the radiation from the scanner will be right along where my genitals are, but there’s not much I can do about it. By the end of all these tests, I’m going to be glowing green, at least around my crotch. Mason will have a field day with his Hulk jokes.

The radioactive material is injected into my arm as I lie on the table.
I close my eyes, imagining that I can feel the isotopes running through my veins. I hear Dr. Petrov’s voice in the room, but he’s speaking quietly and I can’t make out the words.

“Abe.”
The voice is right over my head now. I open my eyes and see Petrov’s white beard. The unusual fact that he’s here for a basic diagnostic test does not escape me—he must think my case is pretty amazing.

“We will begin now
,” he says. “I will read you questions as they scan the brain tissue. Try to lie still.”

I nod.

I hear the whir of machinery and I close my eyes once again. I felt the table below me moving. The sensation of movement while my eyes are closed makes me feel slightly nauseated and I have to open them.

Once the donut is positioned over my lower abdomen,
Petrov approaches my side. Even though the doctor towers over me in a standing position, he doesn’t attempt to find a chair.

“I’m going to give you some instructions,”
Petrov tells me. “I want you to try to follow them best you can. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I say.

It’s pretty basic stuff. Lift your right leg. Bend your knee. Curl your toes. Squeeze your fingers into a fist. After about twenty minutes of that, Petrov approaches me again.

“Now I am going to give you some calculations,” the doctor says.
“I want you to try your best to do them in your head. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I say.

Then comes the barrage of questions. I’m asked everything from simple calculations to logic puzzles to tests of my memory. I feel like I’m taking some sort of horrible IQ test. And after every set of questions, Petrov walks over to the monitor that is scanning my body and strokes his beard thoughtfully.

It seemed like hours have passed when
Petrov finally closes his book of questions.

“So did I pass?” I ask.

Petrov strokes his beard, “I’m not quite finished yet. I’d like to try stimulating the eye itself.”

I thought I heard wrong.
“What?”

“I’d like to show the eye a series of images,”
Petrov says. “I’d like to see if the brain tissue lights up. That will also confirm if it’s actually brain tissue.”

That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. But I kept my mouth shut.
I’ve just got to get through this.

“Okay,” I agree.

I’m instructed to turn over onto my stomach so that the eye is exposed. I rest my head on the poorly cushioned table as Petrov turns the pages in a book. Even though I can’t feel the eye, sometimes I can tell when it is blinking. It is a vague fluttering sensation just above my tailbone.

I wish
Petrov would say something, anything. But instead, all I hear is the endless turning of pages. Once I thought I heard Petrov say, “Hmm.”

“We are done now,”
Petrov finally says. “Lie still.”

I continue to rest my head on the table as the machines whirs into action.
The table moves again, ejecting me from the machine. I look up, prepared to ask Petrov for the results of the test, but when I lift my head, the doctor is already gone.

_____

By Sunday, I can’t wait to see Heather again—it’s all I can think about.

I take a steaming hot shower to try to take my mind off how desperate I am to see her. I try to forget the humiliation of that stupid PET scan. Soon this will all be a distant memory. Things are going great with Heather, and I’m going to keep it that way. I’m going to marry her and spend the rest of my life making her happy. She’s never going to know my disturbing secret.

I’m lathering my short red hair with shampoo
when a sudden noise in the bathroom startles me. At first, I think it must be Mason, but then I realize that it’s Heather. Naked Heather. In the bathroom. With
me
.

And I panic.

I start screaming at her to get the hell out. The shock on her face breaks my heart, but I’m too scared to think straight. I need her to leave. Now.

I realize t
his is not normal behavior for any red-blooded male. My girlfriend just tried to slip into the shower with me—I ought to be celebrating. This goddamn eye. It’s wrecking my whole life.

When I come out of the bathroom, she’s sitting quietly on the couch.
I can tell she’s shaken. I also know that there’s no way she’s going to let me get away with this. Heather may be a pushover, but this is a big deal. I just kicked her out of the bathroom naked.

“What’s going on, Abe?” she asks.
She’s hugging her arms to her chest.

I close my eyes and sink down onto the couch next to her.

“Heather, I’m really sorry…”

Heather is staring down at her lap, shaking her head.

“I know I put on a lot of weight lately,” she murmurs to herself.
She looks up at me, a pathetic look on her face. “Do I turn you off?”

Is she kidding me?
How could she think that? It hurts to hear those words coming out of her mouth.

“No, of course not!”
I say. “My God, you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever met in my life.”

She believes me, I think.
I see the wheels turning into her brain, trying to figure it out. Finally, she says, “Are you afraid of
me
seeing
you
naked?”

Bingo.
“No…”

Her shoulders relax and she smiles.
“Oh, Abe,” she laughs. She touches my arm. “I know you’re not a model or anything, but I like your body. Really.”

She has no idea.
No freaking clue. If I were just a big fat guy, I’d be thrilled.

And then her hand is sliding under my T-shirt, exploring.
It feels so good, but I know she’s moving into dangerous territory. It’s almost painful, but I’ve got to stop her. I grab her wrist, gently but firmly, and push her away.

She stares at me.
“What’s going on, Abe?”

“Nothing.”

“Then strip.”

I’m not going to do it.
No way. She’ll have to rip my clothes off.

“Abe, I don’t care what it is.
I swear I don’t.” Heather’s eyes search my face. That’s when she starts guessing: “Is it… a tail?”

Granted, I wouldn’t want a tail.
But I’d prefer a tail to what I’ve got. The eye is disturbing. It freaks people out. I don’t want Heather to think of me that way. I don’t care how pissed off she is at me, she’s not going to see my deformity.

I’ve got to get rid of it.
Whatever it takes.

The next day, I buy flowers on the way home. It’s a bouquet of lilacs, Heather’s favorite, even though I spent a good minute eying the red roses. Roses are more romantic. Even though I haven’t spoken to Dr. Petrov about the test, I’m feeling cautiously optimistic. They aren’t going to tell me no and turn down an expensive operation. They’re just trying to minimize my risks, like they said.

I race up the flight of stairs to Heather’s room.
I grip the lilacs in my right hand as I knock on the door. I feel sweat accumulating under my armpits. I don’t know what I’ll say when I see Heather. I don’t want to make things worse, especially since I’m still not ready to tell her the truth.

I’m slightly relieved when Rachel answers the door, looking irritated as usual.

“Is… is Heather home?”
I ask.

“She doesn’t want to see you,” Rachel says, folding her arms across her chest.

I hang my head. “Well, can you give her these flowers?” I ask in a small voice.

Rachel’s eyes soften slightly.
“Look, I… I don’t know what happened between the two of you, but you really upset her.”

“I know,” I murmur.
“I didn’t mean to…”

“
You
never do,” she says. I guess that “you” refers to all men.

Tell her that I love her,
I want to say. But that’s not the sort of thing that should come from a third party. I need to tell her myself. But I can’t do it until I have the surgery.

I’ll tell you soon, Heather.
I swear it.

I’ll fucking butcher myself if I have to.

_____

“It must have been hard,” Patrice says knowingly, “growing up… with that.”

I chew on my lip.
I have an appointment with Dr. Adamsky tomorrow and it’s all I can think about. “I guess.”

“Did the other kids tease you?”

“They never knew.”

In gym class, I took pains to hide the eye.
I never showered in the gym locker room and always changed in the bathroom. The other guys made fun of me for that, but not as much as they would have if they knew the reason behind it. I never tried out for sports teams, even though a few overeager gym teachers tried to drag me kicking and screaming to football practice.

Instead of gym classes I opted for weightlifting. I kept it up through all of high school and in college. I got pretty good at it.
My parents bought a bunch of weights, and I’ve still been lifting regularly, as much as my schedule allows. I won’t brag about how much I can bench press, but I’ll tell you it’s more than you and your best friend weigh combined, I’ll bet. Don’t think I’m just a fat guy—I’ve got a very solid layer of muscle under that blubber.

“It must have made it hard… to get close to girls.”

Gee, you think?

“I guess so,” I say.
“I’ve always been pretty shy around girls. They never seemed that interested in me.”

“Heather is your first girlfriend?

I nod and look away. It’s embarrassing that I’ve gotten to age twenty-two and never had a girlfriend before.

“Do you have any siblings?”

I shake my head. Sometimes I think my parents didn’t have any more kids because they were worried that there was something messed up in their genes. I wouldn’t blame them.

“How about your parents?”
Patrice asks, still digging. I don’t know what she’s trying to find out. Psychologically, I’m fine. “What’s your relationship with them like?”

I shrug.
“Fine.”

I get along well with my parents.
My mother always told me that I’m the “sweetest little boy in the world” although I don’t think “little” is an adjective anyone would ever use to describe me these days. I lived at home through college and probably would have continued to do so if the only medical schools that accepted me weren’t over an hour away. Home is safe.

“Did you ever tell them that you wanted to remove the eye?”

I did, only once. When I was in elementary school, some friends of mine were throwing a pool party and I wanted to go but I was too ashamed to be seen in a bathing suit. I asked my mother in a humble voice, “Is there any way to get rid of it?”

My mother took my round freckled face in her hands and said to me in a solemn voice,
“Why would you want to change who you are, Abe? That eye is part of what makes you
you
.”

In retrospect, her words made no sense.
The eye doesn’t make me who I am. It’s nothing more than an unusual birthmark. Yet her words served to keep me from daring to ever ask about it again.

_____

Today is the day they’re going to schedule the surgery.
I sit in Dr. Adamsky’s examining room, tapping my fingers nervously against the examining table. At least this time I’m dressed.

Eventually,
Adamsky enters the room with Dr. Petrov at his side once again. I imagine that it must have taken a lot of effort for the two physicians to coordinate their schedules just to see me. I guess that a case like mine only comes along once in a lifetime. Hey, maybe they won’t charge me for the surgery because it’s just so damn interesting. After the surgery, they can write me up in the
New England Journal of Medicine
or something.

“Hello, Abe,”
Adamsky says. Petrov nods his hello.

“Hi,” I say.
“So uh… how were the tests?”

“Well, there is some good news,”
Petrov says. “It seems that the brain tissue in the lumbar region has no control over your own thinking or locomotion, as far as I could assess.”

“Great,” I say.
“So when can we take it out?”

“It’s not that simple,”
Petrov says. “You see, it seems that I was wrong about the vanishing twin syndrome. I think what you actually have is
Craniopagus parasiticus,
otherwise known as a parasitic twin.”

“I have parasites?”

Shit. None of this is going to make me seem more attractive to Heather.

“A parasite simply means another organism that derives all of its nourishment from your body without giving you anything in return,”
Petrov explains. “It seems that when you absorbed your twin, enough of him remained that he was able to stay alive, although dependent on you for his survival.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“There are several documented cases of this,” he says. “Sometimes a parasitic twin is just a torso with no independent heart or brain. This twin depends entirely on the dominant twin’s beating heart in order to stay alive, sometimes to the point where the dominant twin goes into heart failure in an effort to support both bodies. Fortunately, your case does not appear to be this dire.”

“Great,” I say without enthusiasm.

“But have no doubt,” Petrov says, “the brain tissue is alive. And it controls the motion of the eye. Your twin is alive inside you, Abe.” He adds ominously: “And he does more than just sees.”

“What do you mean?”

“It seems,” Petrov says, “that the brain tissue lit up differently depending on what sort of image we showed to the eye. It seemed to be able to react uniquely to pictures that evoked different emotions.”

I feel a sinking sensation in my chest, “Are you saying that the eye has
emotions
?”

“No,
eyes cannot have emotions,” Petrov says. I have about five seconds to be relieved before he continues. “I’m saying the brain tissue,
your brother
, has emotions.” Crap, that’s much worse. “In fact, when we showed the eye a picture of a child experiencing the death of a pet, the eye exhibited a small amount of lacrimation.”

“Huh?” I say.

“He cried,” Adamsky clarifies.

Is he freaking kidding me?
I can’t even believe what I’m hearing. All this time, there’s been a functioning brain inside me, separate from my own, that now appears to have its own emotions. I had a twin brother and somehow he still lives inside me. But what surprises me more is that this in no way weakens my resolve to have the eye removed.

“I don’t care,” I say.
“I still want it out.”

In fact, more than ever, I want the damn thing out of me.
The whole thing is bordering on creepy.

The two
doctors exchange looks. “I don’t know if we can do that,” Adamsky says slowly.

“What are you talking about?” I demand. “If I had worms in my intestines, you’d help me get rid of those, wouldn’t you?”

Adamsky laughs. “Well,
I
wouldn’t. You have to see a GI doctor for that.”

Ha
ha.

“The ethical implications…”
Petrov says. “This is a living, thinking being. It has compassion. How could we just… kill it?”

I grit my teeth.
“Then just take the eye out and leave the brain tissue.”

“How could we though?”
Petrov asks. “If this brain is an entity separate from you with its own thoughts, we’d need its informed consent in order to do such a drastic procedure. And of course, an eye can’t give consent. So you see our dilemma.”

“Why does he have to give consent?” I ask. “Abortion is legal, isn’t it? And the fetus doesn’t have to give consent.”

“I’d say that this brain tissue is far more intelligent than a fetus,” Petrov says thoughtfully. “I’d say it’s at least as intelligent as a toddler.”

“I can’t believe this,” I mutter.
Petrov is using some ridiculous ethical argument to cheat me out of my surgery.

“Do you really want to kill your own brother?”
Petrov asks. “Especially when he appears to be such a kind and compassionate soul.” He smiles. “Maybe he’s your better half?”

I hate this guy.
You know what? If I were an eye on someone’s lower back, I think I’d want someone to put an end to my miserable little life. This eye is
not
my better half. He’s my
evil twin
.

“My suggestion,”
Petrov says, “is that instead of destroying the eye, you try to nurture it. Stimulate it by showing it photographs or silent movies. Perhaps you and your brother can be friends.”

I hang my head.
I want to cry. Or better yet, I want to tell these two prestigious surgeons to shove it. I can’t believe these assholes are playing God by telling me what I can or can’t do to my own body. Emotions or not, the eye is mine. It’s in
my
body. If I want it out, that should be my right.

“Please…” I say.

The exchanging of looks once again. At that moment, I realized that these doctors are never going to do anything to help me. I’m going to have to help myself.