Chapter 31

We proceed to symptoms. I explain, as though a physician wouldn’t know this, that emotional upheaval manifests itself as physical ailment. Maybe I earned this, maybe I deserve it for not bawling and convulsing at Andy’s calling, pain as a metaphor for pain, maybe it’s psychosomatic. “My mother thinks I need a mood elevator.”

“No, you don’t.”

“How do you know?”

“Caving to emotion didn’t build your business. Take the compliment and lay down.”

I do so with effort on the padded table.

“Unbutton your shirt.”

I touch my abdomen. “It hurts the most here.”

“Sit up for me.”

As he wraps my arm to take my blood pressure, he asks that I stop swinging my legs like a child, which I didn’t know I was doing and don’t know why. My doctor-office memories hardly burst with merriment—stitches beneath my chin when I fell off the curly slide at a town park, and a sprained ankle.

“What have you been eating? Any extra fat in your diet lately?”