So far he had told only two people about his diabetes. His mom had been compassionate and sympathetic on the phone, reminding him that there was so much good medicine out there these days, that it was perfectly manageable. “It’s not like it used to be,” she said.
“When Sylvia was diagnosed, you mean?” His father’s late sister had been playing on his mind ever since his mom had dropped the bomb in his Instagram comments that diabetes ran in his family. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“I did.”
“No you didn’t. I’m terrified of diabetes, I would’ve remembered.”
“I did, Emmett,” she insisted, an edge in her voice. “I’m sure I did.”
Lizette, frustratingly, had treated the diagnosis like a rite of passage.
“Welcome to the club,” she said, working at her sewing machine as Emmett stood in the doorway of her bedroom. She’d been diagnosed with type 1 at the age of five.
“Don’t say that,” he snapped. “It’s not a joke.”
“Sorry.” She didn’t sound it, turning the garment and feeding it back through the machine she controlled with a foot pedal. “I just think you’re taking this a little too seriously.”
“And maybe you’re taking it too lightly. Should you even be drinking that?” Emmett nodded at the half-empty Vitamin Water bottle on her sewing table.
“Girl, you’ve been diabetic, what, all of a day? Get back to me in twenty years and tell me how easy it is to live sugar-free in this country.”
The disagreement left Emmett more determined than ever to improvehis diet and set the right example for Lizette. He took Dr. Halleck’s advice and went off sugar cold turkey: no sweets, no sugary drinks or coffees, no breads, soups, sauces, or salad dressing that contained added sugars. He cut way back on carbs and dutifully filled the pantry with raw almonds, canned tuna, and bland whole wheat crackers. He anesthetized his sugar cravings with apples and berries and artificial sweeteners, and made filling dinners packed with vegetables and lean meats and reasonable quantities of extra virgin olive oil.
But though his belly was full, he finished each meal possessed of a chemical urgency that begged at him like a wound in need of closing. He almost couldn’t tell where his physical hunger ended and the other began, the dissonant cries of his body, mind, and heart harmonizing in a single, terrible scream.
Anyway, who cared if he was “bad” for a few more days? The Phase I documents said Obexity lowered blood sugar. Even Dr. Halleck had agreed it would probably help.
Everything would be fine. The most important thing was to keep up his strength before the procedure.
It wasn’t long now. The preparations were all made—he’d managed to bribe Jazz into covering his shifts while he was out, and Lizette had agreed to drive him—but he realized he knew virtually nothing about the procedure itself. Maybe he had missed it in the paperwork he’d received. But even as he scoured the documents, he couldn’t find more than a sentence or two about what he was in for.
He left a voicemail with Monstera’s participant hotline, but no one called him back. Cronus Health claimed the details were “proprietary” and told him to get in touch with Monstera.
Researching gene therapy procedures online, Emmett learned they typically involved a vector—a carrier of therapeutic genetic material—being administered to the patient either by injection or IV before going to work on the patient’s cells.
So, worst-case scenario, it was a shot. That didn’t sound too bad.
But what kind of shot required an overnight stay?
The night before the procedure, Emmett was restless, adjusting the tube of his CPAP with each toss and turn. He couldn’t settle. Bella moved down to the corner of the bed, practically giving him side-eye.
After drifting off sometime around 4 a.m., he dreamt vividly. A repeatof the nightmare from weeks before, in which he’d lain awake on an operating table as surgeons hacked away his fat. This time it culminated not in the removal of his brain, but his still-beating heart. Emmett begged them to put it back.
“Don’t worry, sport,” replied the masked surgeon, the organ pumping in his gloved hand. It was thick-walled and cancerous with fatty deposits, oozing blood between his fingers like red velvet syrup. “You won’t be needing this much longer.” Sliding a finger under the top of his mask, he pulled it down over his gaping mouth and sank his teeth in—a deep, squelching champ.
He chewed and gulped, blood leaking from the corners of his grin.
“The trial’s about to begin.”
CHAPTER 13
The Cronus Health Medical Complex was a moldering artifact of 1970s architecture, a compound of dull cream stonework and tinted black glass, impenetrable enough to hide atrocities. Emmett gazed up from the passenger seat of Lizette’s SUV, dismayed. He’d expected something ultramodern like the Monstera building, not rust-stained and dilapidated, like a relic from a bygone era.
They deposited the SUV in the parking structure and checked in at the front desk. It was just as old-fashioned and sterile inside, the waiting room empty but for a couple of patients squeezed into too-small seats: a woman eating fried chicken straight from the bucket, a man staring at the wall, tongue circling his red chapped mouth. Cracked, mottled purple skin stretched like scales over the sacs of fluid hanging off their enormous legs.
The pair reminded Emmett ofMy 600-Lb. Life, a show he loved, hated, and hated himself for loving. Worse than a guilty pleasure, it was a guilty pain, in which he routinely indulged to feel better about himself. Peering into the half-lives of the shows’ stars—trapped not only inside their bodies but their mobile homes, too big to bathe themselves and wipe their own asses—was strangely validating. Their bodies made his feel tiny in comparison. Their lived realities made his less empty and pathetic. They reaffirmed his humanity by allowing the cameras to strip them of theirs. Sitting beside Lizette, he watched his fellow patients like he watched those shows: feeling a greasy combination of sad, smug, guilty, and cruel. Afraid that if he didn’t change he’d end up just like them. Beginning to suspect that on some level, he and they were already the same.
After a few minutes a nurse emerged. Youngish. Pretty. “Emmett Truesdale? We’re ready for you now.”
