The Pills That Make Me Like You

“I need the pills,” I told the doctor. 

“What pills?” she asked. 

The doctor was thin like I wanted to be, and beautiful because she was thin. She was on the thin pills, the pills that I needed. Her model legs revealed by her short black skirt were crossed, and her hands were folded over her lap. Her posture was impeccable because she was as slender and elegant as a praying mantis.   

Being thin was the answer to all my sad problems. I couldn’t manage to get anything right. 

Yesterday at work, I told my coworker that she looked nice. What about the day before? she asked. I told her that she looked nice on all the days. She said she didn’t believe me because I hadn’t said it to her any other day except today. I left her then and went to my desk where I never sat because it was too small for my body’s widening circumference, opened the locked cabinet, smuggled several packaged cakes and pies into the bathroom, and ate all of them on the toilet. When I came back, she told me that she took a self-admiration pill, and apologized for taking out her lack of esteem on me. I wanted to go home, put on a pair of pants that stretched further than my current stretchy pants, and eat more food under the covers of my bed. However, given that my boss was not pleased with me and passed by the lab windows at regular intervals, I had no choice but to work until he left. On the way home, I bought two pizzas and ate them in the car. 

The doctor tapped her pen against her clipboard. Her cheekbones were so high she appeared more model than human.   

“The pills that make me like you,” I said.  

Her fingers wrapped around her face, and she leaned in as if she cared about my story. “In what sense?” she asked. 

I was naked on the table because in order to get the thin pills I wanted I was required to submit to a full examination, and the full examination was making it impossible for me to answer her questions. The doctor had told me to lie back on the table and pinched my stomach to determine if my skin was able to tolerate the shrinkage. Red welts freckled my body. If I were the doctor, then I wouldn’t care about being naked. But, I wasn’t. 

“What does your research consist of?” she asked, backing off from her original question. 

I explained that my work consisted of development of a drug that would allow women to remove unwanted body hair. Never again would they have to spend money or time on razors, lasers, threading, electrology, sugaring, waxing, and light therapy. It was not the solution to a sickness, but it was a solution of some kind. This was what I tried to tell myself on the good days; on bad days I possessed an unquenchable hunger that created a tumor inside my stomach. The drug companies were eager for the release of the drug, but I was facing challenges. The drug wasn’t removing all the unwanted hair on the test subjects, but it was removing hair that women wanted -- like eyebrow and head hair. 

I should consider asking the brilliant doctor for an intelligence pill, too. 

“Fascinating,” she said. 

“Maybe,” I replied. 

I was going through what my co-worker called the doubting phase of research, where I had started to wonder not only if I was going to succeed on this anti-hair pill but whether I was going to succeed in my job and life. Everything was washed in gray when I was at work, and gray when I wasn’t at work. My boss had suggested that I work harder, which was impossible to do even with the alert pills I was taking. I was running on less than four hours of sleep a night, and my hands refused to stop shaking. Not that I didn’t understand his concerns; he was under pressure to get the anti-hair pill out there. It didn’t help my stress level that my co-worker had told me that our boss had started taking relaxation pills.     

The doctor finished the physical examination and sat down in her chair. She turned her head back and forth as she wrote notes on the clipboard. 

“Can I put on my clothes?” I asked. 

“Not yet,” she said. 

“I want to have less flesh.” 

“I don’t understand,” she said. 

The room, already of restricted dimension, shrunk further in size and wrapped around my body like a too-small coat. Meanwhile, I continued to grow. It wasn’t the doctor’s fault, this confusion, it was my own.

“Do you have the pills that make people thinner?”

“Yes,” She said. 

“That’s what I want.”

“Why?” She asked. 

Can’t you see me? I wanted to scream. I couldn’t see my feet; my hair was falling out in chunks; my abdomen was grossly distended; and my primary doctor had said I was malnourished, and at risk for bone loss and all other sorts of fun diseases. I was over-nourished, and yet all the things that happened to starving people in third world countries were happening to me. 

My entire body was red from humiliation, and I was beginning to wonder if this was part of the examination. Did they need to determine the status of my mental health? If so, then give me the paperwork where I can check the box that I am of sound mind. 

“I’m fat,” I said it as quickly and flatly as I could manage.  

The words hurt my teeth, then jaw and temples. 

“Stand up,” she said. 

This was a horrendous exercise – cruel and unusual.   

“I can’t,” I said.  

My head had just stopped spinning and my breath was almost normal, which were the results of my efforts to get on the table. If I saw my naked reflection in the mirror, which I had been avoiding to continue living, then I would certainly die from an over-extended heart. 

“Here, let me help you,” she said and offered her hand. 

Her eyes indicated pleasure, and she swallowed what seemed like a laugh. From her perspective, I must’ve been a grand joke. A woman like her, who never had concerns about her appearance, or worry that her friends or partners wouldn’t love her, wasn’t capable of understanding a woman like me. Just don’t eat, was her position, I’m sure. That was probably why she didn’t want to give me the thin pills because the solution was simpler than a pill that had a long list of painful side effects like gallstones, chest pain, chronic diarrhea, internal bleeding, and suicidal thoughts. It was nice of her, in a strange way, to want to do this the way things were done in the early 2000s – so retro medicine. But there were easier solutions available, and I wasn’t interested in spending my limited amount of income in therapy and trying out different diets. 

“I want the pills,” I said. 

“You don’t qualify.” 

“I’m overqualified!” 

She sighed and wore a confused expression. 

After the visit was over, I decided to fill out the survey rating my satisfaction with my appointment. There, I planned to recommend that she consider a bedside manner pill. For this was beyond the beyond. I came here for a thin pill, and should’ve had it hours ago. 

“I really wish you would come look at yourself in the mirror,” she said.  

Of course her face was angelic, so it was impossible to remain mad. In fact, I had started to feel guilty for yelling at her. Obviously I was the source of her distress. 

I managed to get off the table better than I was able to get onto it; it might have been her help, or it might have been my keen desire to get into my clothes and get out of there. If I wasn’t going to get what I needed, then I was leaving, and my next step was to find the nearest location to purchase excessive amounts of fatty, greasy, slobbery food to ingest and then lie in bed the rest of the day, into the night, and then the next day and the next night, until I was too tired to lie down anymore.  

The full-length mirror was the final assault against my physical personhood.   

“This mirror is broken,” I said. 

“I assure you, it’s not.” 

It was impossible to believe; I was thin -- so thin that I barely had any skin on my body. I wasn’t as beautiful as the doctor, but I was thinner than her, much thinner. My hair was pulled into a tiny ponytail, and there were patches of baldness. My legs resembled puppet strings and my arms hung beside my body as if there were no bones inside. 

“I want the pills,” I said.  

“Why?” She asked.

There was still too much flesh.  

“Because I do.” 

The doctor stared at me as if she were trying to memorize every flaw on my body to record for future study.   

“Fine. Sign here,” she said as she handed me a clipboard and a pen.  

She mentioned that she would be right back with the prescription. The door closed. I signed and initialed the paperwork, and then filled out the survey. I rated her service as excellent.