March 29, 2016

Mitch:

I pull the black hood up and tug on the drawstrings to keep it in place before I follow Jerome out of the carpeted tunnel leading out of the cramped airplane and into the shiny silver airport. When I left Montreal and moved down to Florida, I never would have guessed that I would be back this soon, or for this reason. He looks back to make sure I'm still coming and I nod at him, sliding my hands into my pockets to find my sunglasses. He frowns and pulls the brim of his snapback down to shield his face from any passing fans. No one should know we even left Florida, besides Alex and Ryan. Everyone else is watching a steady stream of regular, unremarkable uploads and a challenge video, and tomorrow Alex will post a staged vlog with Abby about a vacation that never actually happened.

'When YouTube goes under and we finally retire, we are going to need shrinks to help us figure out what is real and what isn't. This double-life bullshit is a waking nightmare.' I tighten the straps on my overloaded backpack in case we have to make a run for it, and we step outside of the tunnel. There are dozens upon dozens of people milling around at a dizzying speed and my eyes dart down to the floor to avoid the rising wave of nausea.

"You okay, bud?" I nod and point out the path of least resistance through a set of glass doors to the left, maybe about a hundred feet away.

"Let's just get the fuck out of here, shall we?" He snorts and pushes his hat down a little farther over his eyes, his dark, beady irises scanning the crowd suspiciously as we all but jog over to the doors. This might be the first time in three years that we have managed to enter an airport without someone recognizing us; they even spotted us in Florida and had to have selfies with us. We stand on the curb for a few seconds, waiting for Jerome to pull a Nooch and flag someone down with a fresh, lime green twenty dollar bill. Almost instantly, the cabbies go from ignoring us completely to trying to make eye contact, their mouths watering as he waves the starchy paper around. In less than a minute, a cab materializes in front of us on the curb with an anxious screech, its trunk already ajar for our bags.

"Ten outta ten buzzards. Greedy motherfuckers." We toss our bags in the back and slide into the backseat, the balding driver staring back at us as he puffs on an electronic cigarette, sending whisps of light blue smoke spiralling along the outside of the left-hand side of the cab. "We got an appointment in the medical district, Earl Street. You get us there in twenty minutes or less, we throw in another twenty. Deal?"

"I would get you there in fifteen minutes either way," the cabbie replies in a thick, stilted accent, holding his smoke machine in place with his teeth while he shifts the car into gear and pulls away from the curb, barely glancing behind him in his mirrors while he zooms out into the busy round-about.

"Shouldn't be a problem, then." I click my seatbelt on and roll my window down, hoping not to nail the side of this guy's car during the squealing roller coaster ride soon to come. Jerome rolls his eyes and snaps his seatbelt on, too, looking pointedly over at me like he should be praised. When I don't say anything, he makes a pouty face and snatches his hat off, flattening his hair down pointlessly before he rolls his window down. He rests his chin down on the plastic windowsill and peers out, squinting like a dog as he gets a face-full of cold air. I lean the side of my head against the back of the window frame and watch the people and stores rush by. A heavy ball of dread settles down in my stomach and I feel a different kind of sick. I really don't want to deal with this.

Not only is this little trip to this doctor in Montreal very expensive and painful, but it is also going to be very risky. Jerome doesn't know the whole plan yet, and I have no intention of telling him the whole truth, at least until afterward. I feel guilty but I would rather feel guilty than feel deathly ill like this ever again. I had been planning to buy a bottle of abortion drugs off of his beloved Tor, probably from the Silk Road knockoff that just started up. I was going to down the pills, one every six hours until something happened, then have Jerome drive me to the ER when the bleeding started. The biggest problem with that plan was that all of this would just happen over and over again, and I can't deal with that. I have never been this disgusted with my own body before, and just thinking of having this tumor growing inside of me and hijacking my body is enough to make my stomach start spasming again. I have never hated myself this much.

'I can't do this anymore. It isn't supposed to be like this. I'm not supposed to be like this. I'm tired of being a freak of nature. I just want to be a regular guy - with no diseased body parts or extra holes. I don't want to be like this anymore.' I hear Jerome crinkling up a small piece of paper next to me and I have to fight to not make a face at the smell of his overpriced mint gum. I could clean out an entire buffet if the thought and scent of food didn't make me want to hurl my own stomach up. A few more minutes of silence pass before he speaks.

"You got the address?"

"Earl Street, two fifty-two. We're dropping our shit off at the hotel first. He said we could drop by whenever we want to." There is no answer but I know he's bobbing his head up and down like a pigeon with his lips bunched together. I know Jerome better than the back of my eyelids.

"And we're walkin' from there?"

"Yeah. It's like two blocks over from there." I don't need to see him to know which face he is pulling now, either. "I can walk two blocks, dood. I'm not completely useless."

"That's pretty arguable, Mitch. You can't even rinse your own coffee cups. Got more skid marks in 'em than Burrito Boy's undies."

"Excuse me, Captain Planet? You have your own fucking Ark Survival server living under your bed. Everyone can smell your menagerie from down the hall. Why do you think we never sleep in your room?" He snickers at that and I open one of my eyes to see what the cabbie's reaction was. He seems like he is too busy eyeing the miniscule gap between the two cars in the left lane to be worrying about what his passengers are bitching about.

"At least I don't have chip dust ground into my sheets."

"Who the fuck knows what you've done in your room? Don't think I haven't noticed that you are down to two Pikachus. Where did the other three go, Jerome?"

"Well, one of 'em's downstairs soakin' up moldy ceiling water. And one of 'em's... I dunno."

"Lachlan probably stole one."

"No shit, Sherlock. I bet Dondo scarfed the last one. I bet he sits in his room and rubs it against his face while he listens to us f-" I push my sunglasses a few centimeters down my nose and look over at him, and he snaps his mouth shut in a big, ugly, lumpy frown, like a giant blobfish.

"You're lucky you don't always look like that." He puffs out his cheeks like a Jigglypuff and glares at me, his nostrils flared and his brows furrowed. "Oh, god. I need to put that on Instagram."

"No! You can't take pictures of the artwork! It makes it fade!"

" 'It makes it fade'? Makes what fade? Your LED tan?"

"You're b-ad," he huffs, before he smacks his chin back on the windowsill with a loud clunk. The cabbie glances back us to see if we're trying to break something before he goes back to squinting at the red light keeping us here. He wants to get rid of us as soon as possible. We sit in silence for the rest of the trip, scheming and worrying while Jerome lets out the occasional snicker at something out on the street. We finally turn onto Earl Street and the cab abruptly comes to a halt outside of a grungy-looking hotel down the street from the hospital I will be lying in tomorrow. Jerome digs out his wallet and stares at the digital meter down by the driver's armrest before he counts out a couple of bills and hands them over. "Thanks, man. Go get some lunch." The driver just silently watches us climb out of the car and walk around to get our luggage. Jerome hastily snatches up both backpacks, sliding one on his back and one on his front. He wiggles his eyebrows at me, trying to reclaim the sense of humor that has been lost over the past week.

"Hardy har-har. Next time, I swear you'll be with one who gets knocked up."

"I mean, if you can do that, Benj. A Bac's gotta take a load every now and then, too." When I give a snort of laughter, he scowls and slams the trunk shut, waddling exaggeratedly up the steps to the front of the hotel, his hands resting on his faux belly. I slowly follow him, earning a pitiful grunt from him when he makes it halfway up the stairs. "What the fuck did you pack, Mitch? We aren't gonna go fuckin' bowling."

"Just clothes and my good laptop. Don't blame me for you packing two extra pairs of shoes, Two-Ton-Wonderbun."

"You didn't need the whole goddamn department store! How much shit did you bring?!"

"Like four changes of clothes. We're going to be here for a little while, you know that, right?"

"Yeah, but... It's like you packed for fuckin' Ireland or something."

"Some people change their shirts more than twice a week, dood."

"Is that what it is? You do that? But why?" I hold the door open for him to stumble through and we head over to the desk to check in. He hands them one of his many fake IDs and he signs in as Andrew Morino with a slight smirk. They hand him the keys and we follow the manager's outstretched finger down the hallway on the right. "I feel like a CIA agent, creepin' around like this. Nice change of pace, don't ya think?"

"No offense, dood, but I'd rather take a vacation to Hawaii than here."

"Huahwi? Isn't he one of those YouTube people?" I sigh at his lame pun and grab the keycard from him and unlock the door while he stands in the middle of the hall with his mouth open.

"Are you coming in, Biggums? Or are you waiting for a big, juicy worm?"

"You like those bird jokes, don't you? Asshole."

"Not today, dood. It's too soon for that."

---

March 29, 2016

Mitch:

"We're going to have you strip down and put this on," the nurse says gently as she hands me a paper hospital gown and points to the worn-down maroon examination table in the corner of the room before she hands me the next in the endless series of urine cups, "after you take care of this. The doctor will be in to talk to you in a few minutes." With that, she excuses herself and scurries back out of the room, quickly closing the door to hide the pair of moderately annoyed guys who just spent half an hour being stared at in the waiting room by a horde of disbelieving women and their bratty kids. Jerome bobs his head in his usual, unreadable way and plops down on the doctor's rolly stool, inching himself back and forth against the countertop behind him.

"Does that get you off, dood?"

"Do you want it to?" He sends me his best creeper smirk and starts inching his way toward the bed of horrors - it looks more like a torture device than anything else. How can anyone stand spreading it out for the world to see and having things shoved up inside of them like that? Am I so disgusted by my body that it's this much worse for me, or does everyone else get sick to their stomach when they think about it? "Someone's gonna come back any time now, Mitch. You should go pour 'em some lemonade."

"You're a sick fucker. I hope you know that."

"I wanna be the ver-y best, like no one ever was at something. Nasty's about all I'm good at." I kick my shoes off at his head, one at a time, and he flinches and tries to block them with his arms as I turn and head into the tiny bathroom to get this all over with. I slide out of my hoodie and my strangely empty, packerless jeans and take my time folding everything up before I stuff it all into the hoodie and tie the sleeves around the bundle to keep it all together. I try to zone out to stem the newest wave of nausea as I do yet another urine test, like we aren't already sure that this fuckfest is real, and I slide into the crinkly paper dress, washing my hands and carrying the plastic biohazard cup back to the room in the paper towel so I won't have to walk half-naked back in here while Jerome tries to break the ice with lame ass jokes. I'm at the end of my patience already today and it's only ten in the morning.

"Did they come back yet?"

"Nope. Not a one. They're probably waitin' until they hear you wrap your buns in that burger wrapper." He inches his bony ass back and forth on the stool and nearly wipes out like the clown he is, and his mouth opens wide in horror when I pretend to toss the piss cup at him.

"You should work on that reflex, dood. One day you'll be sorry you made that face." He scowls in good humor and takes his hat off to flatten his hair in embarrassment. I take the paper sheet off of the table and put it over on the chair in the corner, still refusing to sit on the bed of nightmares. For as much as I'm paying this guy under the table, I'm going to do this my way. "You should go get ready for the doctor, Biggums. You can't sit there."

"Aight, Mitch. Let's see if I can do this or break my leg tryin'." He slowly stands up and examines the straps, bars, and braces hanging off of the examining table before he lowers himself down and sticks his legs in the stirrups, his bright purple shoes flailing pointlessly from their metal prisons as he loses his balance from his antics and almost falls flat on his face on the floor. "And I thought Ryan's Bat Mobile had no fucking leg room. This is uncomfortable as shit."

"Now imagine feeling like you just downed a sardine-and-habanero-cupcake-flavored death cup, too. I'm living the high life right now."

"You think if I put one of those beautiful gowns on he'll think I-" There is a loud knock on the door and Jerome jolts up on the table, struggling to free his feet and only managing to reclaim one as the door swings open. The young, dark-haired doctor pauses in the doorway and stares at him, shutting the door behind himself as Jerome continues rattling in his metal troll trap.

"I'm going to guess you're Mitchell?" the doctor asks, extending his hand to me as he tries to fight back his growing frustration with Jerome's clownishness.

"Yes. Dr. Knudsen said some great things about you."

"Always good to hear." He forces an even wider smile and turns to Jerome just as he slides his shoe off to fit his foot back through the leg strap. "Dr. Pereyra. Nice to meet you."

"Jerome. Glad you could make it."

"Anytime, anytime. So we were talking on the phone..." I point to the backpack Jerome had left against the wall behind the doctor's rolly stool and we both watch as Jerome finally climbs down off of the bed and grabs the bag, slowly lining the six stacks of yellow-orange hundred dollar bills along the edge of the countertop; eighty-thousand dollars in hard cash was the price of our little mistake. The doctor grabs the medical chart from the back of the door and quickly flips through it before nodding and coming back to his chair. "Everything looks great here. We just need to run a few quick tests and all will be well. No one has drawn your blood yet, right?"

"Not yet."

"Great. And you just did this?" He points to the urine cup and I nod in confusion, watching as he shakes his head and unscrews the top of the container, pouring it down the sink and washing his hands before unlocking the cabinet above the counter and producing a clean urine cup. "This is where we run into problems. We need you to do this again." He points at me while he hands the cup to Jerome, ignoring the disbelieving look on Jerome's face. "I'm going to go get the supplies to do the blood tests after you take care of that, and we'll go from there." He shoos Jerome off to the bathroom and we wait for him to return while the doctor empties out a box of sterile gloves and stuffs the stacks of cash in, carefully covering the opening of the box with a layer of gloves to hide the evidence before he takes the cup from Jerome, winks awkwardly, and leaves.

"This guy's as crooked as my great-grandma's fucking spine," he mutters as he pumps hand sanitizer on his palm, checking behind him to make sure the door is still shut. "Asshole looks just like that Marco Rubio slimeball Zeus's goin' after and half as trustworthy. You sure this's a good idea, Mitch?"

"This is the best I could come up with, dood. There was another guy who wanted fifty grand and he was all the way over in Taiwan. I just can't deal with this shit anymore. I want it to be over with."

"As long as you're sure it's safe and you won't die or need a hose-sized feeding tube for the rest of your life. I just don't wanna see you get hurt."

"It's fine. Why don't you go take another nap on your bed and just relax? Everything is going to be fine." He doesn't look like he believes me but he nods and sits back down on the edge of the bed, slowly reclining on the crinkly paper cover with his arms behind his head as he stares up at the water-stained plaster ceiling. It feels like we have been sitting here for quite a while now and I find myself wondering if he is ever going to come back.

"What's he doing? Countin' every last dollar?"

"Probably. You know how things went with Dr. Troye when I had top surgery - he even tried to bargain for more on the day of the surgery. This is what sucks about black market medicine." We sit there for so long that Jerome gets bored with the torture bed and breaks out his Swiss Army knife credit card and starts picking the locks on the cabinets, looking for something interesting to get into.

"You'd think there'd be something good in here, the way they lock it up like this."

"If you want to get kicked out, there was a door that went out the other side of the bathroom, in case you didn't notice." With that he's off, looking for something else to go fuck with. I wait for someone to come back to the room, jumping at the loud pop Jerome makes when he returns from his voyage and locks the second bathroom door. He perches back on the edge of the bed and crunches his way through a medium-sized bag of cheese Doritos, his face expressionless as he waits for my reaction. "Did you find the vending machines?"

"Nah. Found the kitchen. Someone just stuck some Popeye's chicken in there. It was still warm." I try not to react, but I can't hold back the laughter when he pulls a bright orange chicken tender out of the bag of chips and rips into it like an animal.

"You are a complete savage, dood. Did you leave them anything?"

"I left the taters. Didn't have a way to eat those. And the hell-naw-cole-slaw." He takes another shark-like bite before he frowns again. "Speakin' of taters, did that guy ever come back?" When I shake my head, he raises his eyebrows and finishes his tender, wiping his cheesy, oily hand on his jeans. "Guy's greasier than my chicken."

"Well, when they make the hurdles too high to climb over, it makes guys like him rich. Who can really blame him for making a fortune off of everyone else's stupidity?"

"True dat. We do it all the time. And we just handed him a down payment on a fucking house." He shoves a handful of cheesy crumbs in his mouth before he pulls out another chicken strip. "I'd give ya one but you said he told ya not to eat. And I'm dying over here."

"I just hope the poor sucker you stole that from doesn't hunt you down and stab you to death with a plastic spork." He shrugs and shoves half of the tender in his mouth at once, staring unblinkingly at me as he munches his way through it.

"I stuck a twenty in their cole slaw. Ain't no one got no use for that green shit, anyways. Bad thing is, all I had was an American twenty. Hope they see it before they eat it." Jerome reaches back into his endless bag and fishes out his last piece of chicken, preparing to cram it in his mouth when we hear footsteps coming down the hall. He shoves the whole spicy tender in his mouth and runs into the bathroom, locking the door behind him just as the doctor knocks on the other door. He comes in with a metal tray covered in blood drawing supplies and frowns at me, looking around for the idiot that came here with me.

"He is in the bathroom. He'll be back, eventually."

"Alrighty, then. We can-" Jerome reappears with drops of water on his t-shirt and a guilty look on his face, and the doctor plasters on a smile and washes his hands once again. "Perfect timing. I'm going to need you two to switch spots so I can draw your blood." He points at me before he beckons for Jerome to sit in my chair. I grudgingly lean against the side of the bed, hoping this isn't slowly going in the direction it feels like it is. I didn't come here to be a test subject - they can look at it after they cut it out of me. "We ran the tests while we were waiting and it looks like you're in the clear. Can you squeeze this for a second?" He hands Jerome a roll of gauze and straps a blue elastic band around his skinny bicep, earning me a death glare from Mr. Needlephobia.

"What were you looking for?"

"It was just a basic drug and pregnancy test. And you were mostly clean."

"Didn't think a little week-old weed'd be the difference between life and death, Doc," Jerome mutters with a bitter face as the needle goes into his arm and fills the first of three tubes with bright red blood. He looks like he might regret thiefing that chicken, after all.

"No, everything worked out fine." He leans back and grabs the chart off of the counter and hands it to me, causing Jerome to flinch at the movement."The results for the pregnancy test were negative. Down on the third and fourth lines. See? Negative. I wrote it there on your chart: negative. The nurses will see that the test was negative. The insurance company will see that the test was negative. The surgeon, me, will see that the test was negative. You aren't pregnant, so we can go through with the surgery. All you have to do is sign there on the bottoms of the last five pages with the pen on the front cover and we can prescribe you the drugs to clean out your system for the surgery tomorrow. By signing that, you agree that you can't sue us because the test results were negative and there weren't any other contraindications. Do you understand?"

"Perfectly. What are the blood tests for?"

"It's just a general health check, but the progesterone would show up on here. I have your records from Dr. Knudsen from last year. It shouldn't have changed that much. Everything should be fine."

"Yeah, should be." Jerome shoots me another doubtful glare as the doctor finally removes the needle from his arm and covers the tiny hole with a cotton ball and a flower-print Band-Aid.

"If everything goes according to plan, you'll be in the OR tomorrow morning at six on the dot and you'll be checking out tomorrow night around ten. In five days, you'll be back at home, safe and sound. Now if you're done, I will take those from you and... give you these." The doctor riffles through the front of the chart and comes up with a stack of little blue pieces of paper covered in his untidy scribbles. "Here we have a pre-op laxative, a post-op laxative, two post-op-only pain medications," he explains as he looks briefly over at Jerome, "a post-op gas relief drug, and a post-op sleep aid. Pick up some extra antiseptic, gauze pads, surgical tape, ladies' pads, you know the drill by now. It should be an out-patient procedure and you'll come back by here the day after tomorrow so we can check in on everything and we'll go from there. Any questions?"

"Yeah. Where's the medical weed?" The doctor looks doubtfully over at Jerome before he grabs all of the paperwork and stands up to leave.

"I don't think you need that for a blood draw." I snicker at the look of annoyance on Jerome's face and the doctor turns to shake my hand before he makes a quick exit.

"Someone doesn't approve of your mate choices, Mitch. If I was half the dickhead people think I am, I'd turn this guy in and get his medical license revoked after we got done with him." He tosses me my clothes from the floor and sits back in his chair, rubbing his hands together as if he is about to see a good show.

"I'm not going to strip for you today, dood. Not even in the mood."

"B-but come on! Why'd they even give ya that ugly ass paper costume if you weren't gonna shimmy for me?!" I hold the hospital gown wide open behind me as I back into the bathroom, watching him try to fight the dumbass grin spreading across his face.

"I think you were supposed to wear it. He only wanted your fluids, after all."

"Most crooked ass doctor this side o' the Atlantic. Coulda at least given us some hashtags, as much as he charged for this hack job." He is back to wiping cheese dust and chicken crumbs off of his clothes when I come back and he looks up at me with an eager look on his face. It must be time for the next dose of his five-times-daily Monster. "Done yet? Fan-fucking-tastic. Let's go get some drugs!"

"And my last supper for at least two days. Let's make this count."