Skinny(20)
“Ah, there we are. I was afraid for a moment we were going to have to call this whole thing off.” Smiley Face laughs like she has just told a hilarious joke. Helper Nurse bustles around the bed, hooking up tubes and bags to my arm. She slides a metal cap over my finger and moves the monitor stand over closer to the bed. Numbers flash on the screen accompanied by an occasional beep. I watch the monitor and hope the line doesn’t go flat. I’ve probably watched too many medical dramas. I know flat lines are not a good thing.
The song playing over and over in my mind is “The Point of No Return” from The Phantom of the Opera.
The nurse asks Rat to move over to the chair by the windows. She pushes the thin blanket off my legs and starts fiddling around with my feet. First she pulls a pair of stockings on me, then straps on some leggings over the top.
“These are the hottest things out there.” Patting my legs, she smiles at me. “Lovely, aren’t they?”
She plugs the leggings into a machine under the bed and they start to fill up with air, squeezing tightly against my calves over and over again with a weird pumping sound. The sound masks the scared panting noise of my breathing.
“It’ll help your circulation,” Rat says. “So you don’t get blood clots.”
The nurse looks at him in surprise. “You’re a smart boy. Want to be a doctor someday?”
“Not a medical doctor, if that’s what you mean,” says Rat, “although I will probably get my PhD in nuclear physics.”
The nurse doesn’t know what to say about that, so she just nods and leaves again. Rat continues to read the booklet we received at the informational session.
“Is this going to work?” My voice shakes a little.
“Probably,” says Rat, pushing the glasses back up his nose, his big blue eyes unblinking behind them. “Most people lose from thirteen to twenty pounds in the first month, and most of this weight is lost in the first two weeks because of the diet. It takes about a year to lose the rest.”
“But is it going to work for me?”
“The odds are that it will,” Rat says solemnly. “It says there is plenty of time for weight loss after the gastric bypass surgery has healed.”
And then he smiles. One of those rare “Rat Smiles” that so few people have ever seen. The angles of his face soften, his eyes crinkle, and two huge dimples appear out of nowhere. I could swear you almost hear music like when angels appear in the movies when Rat smiles. It makes me feel better. How could it not?
The curtain pulls back with a squeak, and my dad is there.
“Hey, Mr. Davies.”
“Rat.” Even my dad doesn’t know his real first name. “How’s it going here?”
“Good. She’s almost ready,” Rat reports like he’s the doctor in charge. “They have her IV started, and we’re waiting for the anesthesiologist.” He stands. “Here, take this chair. I need to go to the bathroom.”
If it was anyone else, I would think he was being sensitive to leave me and my dad alone for a while. But it’s Rat, so I think it probably means he has to go to the bathroom. He pulls the curtains back and disappears. Dad drags the chair over closer to the bed and sits down.
My dad sent me a letter once when I was thirteen. He actually mailed it to our house. I guess he didn’t know how else to get my attention. It was after he tried to say something to me when I took a second piece of chocolate cake after dinner. He looked at me like he’d been looking at me a lot, with this critical, disapproving look.
“He’s sorry he has such a fat, ugly daughter.” It was the first time I heard Skinny clearly. She’d been mumbling around inside my mind for a while, but this time her words came out in fully formed sentences. “You are such an embarrassment.”
“Do you really need that second piece?” my dad had asked.
“Yes,” I mumbled around the huge bite I’d stuffed into my mouth, “I do.”
I ate every bite. My dad kept glancing over at me with that disgusted look on his face, and I kept stuffing in the forkfuls of chocolate. When it was done, I put the fork down on the smeared plate and stomped upstairs to my room. I pushed my headphones in my ears and turned the Rent soundtrack up loud enough to drown out every thing else.
The letter came a few days later. I didn’t recognize the round, loopy handwriting. I don’t think I’d ever seen my dad’s handwriting like that. On a single page of notebook paper.
Dear Ever,
The reason I want you to lose weight is because I love you, and I want you to be happy. I want you to fall in love someday and have children of your own. If that’s what you want. I know what boys are like. Finding someone who will take the time to look beyond just your looks might be hard. I want you to have a healthy, long life full of many exciting opportunities. Being overweight may keep you from doing everything you want. That’s why I want you to lose weight.