A Year of Stories (Collection Two)

A Touch of Indigestion

I knew it was there, before I knew it was there.

It all started with a touch of indigestion after dinner. I'd be sitting alone, as I usually am, in my kitchen – knife and fork in hand, plate shiny from leftover grease and fat and the bones of whatever dead thing I had just consumed – I'd be sitting there and suddenly there would be a pain. Not a bad pain, not bad enough to take anything for it at least, but enough to know that something wasn't entirely right.

This continued for weeks. At first, I thought it was heartburn. I had recently survived my fiftieth birthday, and it would be just my luck to have gotten chronic heartburn as my only gift.

That sounds cynical, I know, but it doesn't make it any less true. I've never been much of a social creature, not one for weekend BBQs and golf trips. Worse, I've worked at home since I started working, which means that the usual Friday nights at the Pub, for me, amounted to not much more than sitting on my back porch, sipping Whiskey, with only the songs of cicadas for company.

Over the decades, those few friends I'd managed to make in childhood and keep through College, had found wives and spawned children and left old Ronald behind.

It's not that I blame them, in the best of cases I'm not great company. I've always been the bookish sort, interested in philosophy and literature and history, rather than the latest celebrity gossip or talk of sports games.

Still, a card would have been nice.

The pain continued to increase, until I felt it necessary to go and see my physician. I was getting to that age when small pains are constant, but can no longer be safely ignored. It's impossible to know whether an ache is arthritis or a wart some woefully aggressive Cancer.

My doctor insisted on giving me a checkup before he would even talk about my stomach. This is perhaps because I had missed the last four appointments I had scheduled with him. He didn't seem to understand that scheduling is easy, all that requires is a computer and Internet connection, leaving the house on the other hand...

My blood pressure and sugar and cholesterol were all a little higher than he would have liked, but not high enough to earn me the pharmacopoeia of prescriptions I had expected him to suggest. It's not that I'm particularly unhealthy – I gave up smoking years ago, I eat my vegetables and I go on my daily walk around the block, but I'm not exactly lifting barbells over my head either.

After he had decided I wasn't going to keel over immediately, he asked me about my stomach. When I described my symptoms – the fatigue, the pain, the occasional nausea – he told me that I was either pregnant, or he needed to order more tests.

Since I did not have the necessary equipment for the former, he scheduled me for an X-ray the next morning.

I spent the night wishing I was allowed to eat, or at least have a glass of Whisky, but apparently X-ray's require both starvation and sobriety, which left only the cicada's song to get me through the night.

When I got to the clinic, my doctor wasn't there, which seemed a bit rude too me. I don't know what the usual protocol for these sorts of things are, but I thought that he would at least be there to wish me luck.

Instead, it was the Radiologist, a severe looking woman in her early forties. She handed me a lead apron and told me to lay down, then hid herself behind what looked like a blast shield. She took a few dozen pictures of my stomach, and then asked me to wait outside while she had a look at them.

"You have worms." she said.

"What kind of worms?"

"It's difficult to know for sure without more tests, but they are bigger than any I have ever seen."

"Are they dangerous?"

"Not really, about 50% of the world's population has some kind of parasite. I have no idea how you ended up with an infestation like this, but we have medications that should fix you right up."

"You mean, get rid of the worms?"

"Yes, that is the point of the treatment."

"Oh. OK, I don't want that."

"Mr. Haft, I don't think you understand the seriousness of your situation. You have creatures living inside of your GI track. They are stripping you of nutrients, and will continue to do so until you run out energy to give."

"Will they kill me?"

"Not if we treat them..."

"And if we don't?"

"I can't say. Usually, parasites are more of a nuisance than anything else, but the ones you have are so much larger than usual, and you aren't getting any younger Mr. Haft. It's impossible to tell how your body will react if you don't do something about them."

"And how much time would have in that case?"

"A year? Five? Twenty? I have no idea...I think we should talk to your Physician..."

"I don't think that's necessary."

"Well, I do!"

"Thank you Doctor, I'll be going now."

At first it was strange to share my body with creatures I couldn't see, creatures who were slowly leaching my life away, but soon we found a rhythm that seemed to work for all of us. Worms are simple creatures when it comes down to it, all they want is enough food to survive and warm place to breed.

I could happily give them both, for a while.

In return, they provided me with company.

You might not think of a colony of intestinal parasites as the greatest conversation partners, but they know how to listen, they never interrupt, and they always love your cooking.

Most importantly, they never leave you.

At least not until the food runs out, and by then, it doesn't really matter.