Love In The Time Of Apps

by Jay Begler

  If Sheila’s celebrity was diminishing, Goodwin’s was rising, at least in his limited circle of friends. He had now become a minor celebrity at Harborside and, fitting comfortably within this role, took pleasure in regaling his friends at the club with stories, some real, some exaggerated and some in between, about his encounters with the press. All of this was reflected in his PPR, which miraculously crept back up to a 25, while Sheila’s dropped to a 22. People began laughing at his jokes again, though they were no different from the ones he told a few months before when he was a 16.

  Best of all, he was mildly involved with a woman named Lolli Glick, the very attractive and very sensuous widow and former trophy wife (Playboy’s Miss October 1994) of Maurice Glick, the richest member of Harborside. While Goodwin still secretly yearned for Sophie and would have left Lolli or for that matter any other woman in a heartbeat had Sophie returned to him, he knew that at this point in his life he needed to move on.

  Two weeks earlier, Goodwin and Lolli had been teamed together in a couples’ golf tournament and began light tactile contact by the time they reached the ninth hole. He had escorted her to the club’s tournament dance that evening. They danced closely to old standards and kissed quietly behind the thick maroon velvet curtains of the club’s ballroom. This post-golf evening they planned to have a quiet supper at her mansion after drinks at the club’s bar. His evening with Lolli was going to be a perfect ending to a perfect day.

  Goodwin’s second shot landed about 170 yards from the green, but directly behind, by about 30 yards, Hell’s Angels. He would have to hit over them. While Goodwin didn’t know it, this was about the same position that Sam Snead was in when he hit his third shot in the earlier tournament. Snead’s shot had cleared the trees and came to rest four feet from the pin, allowing him to birdie the hole.

  Goodwin spoke with his caddy, chose a five iron, took one practice swing, set up and swung effortlessly. The ball flew high off of his club, well over the imposing twin maples, and landed softly behind the pin. Because of the angle of Goodwin’s downswing, his ball had backspin and rolled backwards to the very lip of the cup where it teetered precariously until an imperceptible wisp of wind, or the rotation of the Earth, or the God of Golf, who is usually merciless in these situations, caused it to fall in. An eagle! No one, not even the great Sam Snead, had ever made an eagle on McDonald’s Folly.

  By the time Goodwin had left Harborside’s luxurious locker room and entered the “19th Hole” to have a drink with his buddies and to rendezvous with Lolli, the buzz about his great shot had spread throughout the club. It was somewhere around the time that one of the members made a toast to Goodwin and suggested that maybe they should change the name of the hole to “Goodwin’s Conquest,” that the bartender said, “Excuse me, Mr. Goodwin, there’s something on the TV I think you should see.” Goodwin at that wonderful moment was mellow and relaxed, made so by a combination of a couple rounds of drinks used to toast his golfing success, the good and, importantly, loyal, friends who surrounded him, and Lolli, who had her arm around his waist. He was thinking that he hadn’t felt this good or happy since the morning he had first seen his Pragat rating. In this fine state, he fully expected to see a video of his famous shot. He turned slowly towards the television set that hung over the bar.

  What he saw was a live television shot from the Med-TV room. It was immediately clear to Goodwin that something serious was happening. A crowd of doctors surrounded Sheila’s bed. When they moved and enabled the camera to focus more closely on her, Goodwin saw that Sheila’s cocoon of light had increased significantly in mass. A television reporter close to Sheila’s bed spoke, “While all of us covering this story assumed at first that Sheila’s cocoon of light had increased in size, this was not the case. According to several of the doctors, it is not the cocoon that has increased in mass, but Sheila herself. Her girth, by one physician’s calculations, has increased by more than 40 percent and is growing geometrically, every two hours. I spoke earlier today with the Meditainment Center’s administrator, Doctor Friedrich Wang, who wanted to go on record by saying that he is confident that Sheila’s increased size was not due to her special SPA -IV. Doctor Wang pointed out that when this change in her condition occurred, the doctors conducted a thorough examination and reported that thus far Sheila’s vital signs were fine.”

  Wang had a tremendous reputation at the Meditainment Center, not only as an excellent doctor, but also as an extremely gifted administrator. Staff people spoke of him with a sense of reverence and usually did not call him Doctor Wang, but a more respectful, “The Administrator.” One nurse whom Goodwin had befriended several weeks earlier had once offered to show him Doctor Wang’s office, but noted that she would have to check to see “when The Administrator was not in and whether he would mind.”

  This mosaic of admiration led Goodwin to conclude that Wang, a tall and handsome man in his early 60s, who seemed to always sport the kind of pinkish complexion one sees on movie stars or alcoholics, never lost control and could deal with virtually any type of crisis in a cool dispassionate manner. It was evident, however, that he was extremely perplexed by this unexpected change in Sheila’s condition. Wang looked worried, if not grim. Goodwin suspected that this was not at all due to a genuine concern for Sheila’s well-being, but because this whole medical episode was on national television. If there was a tragedy, he would be held accountable, not only by the nation, but more importantly the people that cut his pay check every month, the management of Marriott.

  The potential for disaster was enormous, since Sheila had become a national heroine as well as a mystical and religious icon to a substantial number of people. As Goodwin watched this hospital drama unfold there was little doubt in his mind that his plans with the lovely Lolli Glick would have to be put on hold.

  When Goodwin arrived at the Meditainment Center, Wang approached him and said in a rather shaken manner, “I think there is a slight enlargement of her head, something akin to being hydro-cephalic, nothing to worry about; pulse and heart rate are normal; blood tests okay and her blood pressure is perfect. I’m certain that the swelling will go down in a few days.” “Slight enlargement” was a gross understatement. Sheila’s head no longer resembled that of a human being. It looked more like giant watermelon.

  “What do you mean slight enlargement of her head? Are you nuts or blind?” Goodwin’s explosive response was reflective of his desperately bad mood, due in part to his sudden change of circumstances and the loss of a potentially wonderful, sexually oriented, evening with Lolli Glick who had promised him “a very special reward” for his eagle. No one had ever spoken to The Administrator in that manner before. The nurse who had offered to show Goodwin the Administrator’s office held her hand over her mouth in shock.

  Up until this moment, Goodwin had little doubt that Sheila would ultimately emerge from her coma. He now had the deeply troubling thought that it was possible that Sheila might actually die. Notwithstanding a mounting sense of guilt stemming from his email he began to speculate about her funeral through a series of disjointed thoughts: “Do they make caskets like beds, single for a normal person, queen for a large person and king- sized for huge people? Will I have to get an oversized plot? Will I have to pay extra for perpetual care? Maybe I should have joined the Cremation Club. Maybe they’ll send me another discount coupon.”

  As he considered Sheila’s hypothetical death, Goodwin noticed that a CNN reporter was interviewing Wang. Damage control appeared to be Wang’s primary goal. In a weak voice, Wang said: “And the good news is we’ve run an MRI, a CAT scan, and many other tests and they all prove negative. We also did a biopsy on a small piece of her skin and it proved negative. She’s just fine, except for being in a coma.” Wang’s unfortunate slip of the tongue simply underscored his high level of anxiety. “I’m so sorry,” he said, “I meant to say being in a beyond REM state.

  For the next few hours, virtually every hour on the hour Sheila’s body mass appeared to g
row substantially. Sheila’s weight, for reasons the physicians could not explain, increased from 105 pounds to 270 pounds. All of this was being broadcast in real time. Pressed hard by reporters for explanations, the best the doctor could do was to use a default explanation. Sheila’s weight gain was due to a “physiological anomaly.’

  When Sheila hit 500 pounds, Schnell received a call from the producer of the Biggest Loser, “just to say hello.” The producer of Dancing With The Stars, still hoping to get Sheila on the show, comatose or not, asked his assistant to check the weight bearing strength of duct tape.

  By the time Sheila had quadrupled in size, about three hours after Goodwin’s arrival at the Meditainment Center, all regularly scheduled television programming was pre-empted by the broadcasts from the Med-TV room which was once again filled to capacity with reporters. Sheila’s merchandise was put back on the shelves and even marked up. Nike advised Schnell by fax and email that the sneaker deal was back on and that it would be sending over a fully executed sneaker agreement and a $500,000 advance the following morning.

  There also appeared to be a developing correlation between Sheila’s expansion and the aggressive nature of the questions put to Wang by reporters, the greater her girth, the tougher the questions. Just about the time that the Meditainment Center announced that Sheila had quadrupled her size, a reporter shouted at Wang, “What do you mean you don’t know what to do? Did you see the sign in the parking lot? This wonderful woman’s medical bills are over $750,000 and you don’t know what to do? Why not? You’re a doctor.” Wang, the man who was always in control, the man who was held in awe, “The Administrator,” panicked and to the shock of all around him, folded under the pressure and admitted that he never had a medical degree, only a PhD in Hospital Administration with a sub-specialty in “hospital cafeteria arts,” and “was not responsible for medical decisions.”

  Several hours later, a rather desperate and nervous Wang called Goodwin into his office. On second viewing, Wang’s office appeared to be rather modest. The Administrator was drinking from a mug that carried the notation” Prescribe HALCYON,” and an illustration of a sailboat on a calm sea. Wang’s hands were shaking so violently, however, that the boat, like Wang, appeared to have encountered a perfect storm.

  “Mr. Goodwin,” Wang said while he attempted unsuccessfully to steady his hands, “first, let me tell you that we are giving your wife the very best care possible. I know you’d like an explanation, but we don’t have one. The swelling appears to have accelerated and is beyond levels we have experienced in any patient we have ever treated. We checked with hospitals all over the country and I’ve had a team of physicians review the computerized literature on the subject. Unfortunately, we have come up with nothing solid, but we have a theory and a way we would like to treat Mrs. Goodwin. While we do not know what the outcome will be, the consensus is that if the swelling and weight gain continue, Mrs. Goodwin’s life will be in danger. And, quite frankly, we see no contraindications in the procedure we propose.”

  “Contraindications?”

  “In layman’s terms it means downside risks or bad side effects. In some patients, certain adverse things happen to them when they take drugs or undergo a procedure, even if the procedure is executed correctly. Sometimes the results are quite startling, even bizarre.”

  “But how,” Goodwin asked, “do you know if a procedure is contraindicated in a patient?”

  “All reports on drugs and operative procedures contain sections devoted to their respective side effects or contraindications. We’ve reviewed all of the relevant literature and find no contraindications on the procedure we have in mind for your wife. More importantly, we never have had a problem with it. It is perfectly safe.”

  “You see, every person has a slight electromagnetic field which surrounds them. We have some very sophisticated diagnostic tools in our medical arsenal including what we call an EMM, short for electromagnetic meter. The EMM has been used by us for a number of years as a diagnostic aid with its primary function being the analysis of patients with migraine headaches. It is particularly useful in determining whether abnormalities in the patient’s electromagnetic field might be related to the onset of migraines. The statistics, however, are inconclusive. On average, the electromagnetic field that surrounds most healthy individuals has a ratio of positive to negative charged electrons in the order of 1000:1. Headache patients’ ratios reach levels as high as 3000:1. The highest ratio we ever found was 8000:1. Interestingly, the patient in that case was a severely obese woman. In fact, we are just beginning to study these ratios in connection with obesity, but don’t know where our research will lead us.

  “Your wife’s ratio is 7,000,000: 1 and we all believe that her unusual ratio is somehow the cause of her anatomical abnormality. To be perfectly candid, we don’t understand the mechanism of the abnormality, but we have no other viable theories. What we propose, assuming you sign all of these release and indemnity forms, is a procedure designed to get her ratio back to near normal, if not back to normal. If we do that, we think the swelling will stop and perhaps diminish and even reverse itself.”

  “How do you to propose to do this?”

  “Our best guess is that her high ratio is due to an internal buildup of electricity from the lightning which probably has fused with the cells in her body. That might account for the cocoon of light as well. Somehow the electrical charge is affecting her tissues and causing them to grow. What we would attempt to do is to flush out the fused electrical charge by infusing her body with enormous amounts of electricity.”

  “You mean,” Goodwin replied, “Sheila is electrically constipated. And to fix her, you have to give her sort of an electric enema.”

  “That is correct, although we can’t call the procedure an “electric enema.” As doctors, particularly doctors on television, we need to give the procedure a name that no one understands. We’ve dubbed it a ‘Modulating Polarity Shunt.’”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Who knows? We called the Medical Linguists hot line and this is was their best suggestion. It actually sounds kind of impressive, though it really is just an electric enema. I know you must think that this is bizarre, but we simply can’t appear on television and say we are giving your wife an electric enema. On the other hand, if we say we are going to give Mrs. Goodwin a Modulating Polarity Shunt, most people will not have a clue to what we are doing and because we are doctors, or in my case a PhD, people will be impressed.

  “But,” Goodwin said, “You don’t know what will happen with this experiment.”

  “That’s absolutely right, but let me stress again, while the experiment might not work, there is virtually no down-side risk. On the other hand, if we do nothing and her trend towards mega-obesity and beyond continues your wife could well be at risk. Take a look at her now. I think you’ll agree that the procedure is absolutely required.”

  Goodwin glanced at the small television set on Wang’s desk and realized that Wang was correct. Sheila’s swelling had increased dramatically over the last half hour. The woman he saw hardly resembled Sheila or for that matter any woman. It was as if Sheila was pumped up with an enormous amount of helium. She looked like the Hindenburg with mascara.

  “Mr. Goodwin?” Wang asked gently.

  Goodwin blinked back to his environment. “Where do I sign?”

  Several hours later, Goodwin was summoned to a completely transformed Med-TV Room. It no longer resembled a hospital room, but looked more like the interior of the control room of a nuclear power plant, one disturbingly reminiscent, in Goodwin’s view, of Chernobyl immediately before its disaster. Sheila, within her cocoon of light, rested on a large metal platform suspended 10 feet in the air by thick metal chains that hung from a large mini-crane. The raised platform diffused some of the light emanating from Sheila’s cocoon and created a slightly hazed effect within the entire room. Wires and electrical cables of different sizes and shapes were affixed to the metal pla
tform or to Sheila’s body, though the precise location of the wires on her body was difficult to discern through the cocoon of light. A silver tarpaulin with electrical wires and cables of varying diameters connected to it hung just above the cocoon of light.

  All of the wires led to large and somewhat ominous- looking generators and other types of machines. Four enormous magnets, each measuring five feet long and three feet wide, hung above Sheila at spaced intervals. Monitors of every conceivable type took up the walls of the room. Some were flashing blue and green lights; some were spewing out little printouts, while others were printing various measurements. Goodwin now swears that he saw one screen that had “Play Station 2” on it, but cannot verify this.

  “What are all of those mechanisms, Doctor Wang?”

  “No one really knows. They were here when the hospital opened; don’t work at all, but they will look terrific on television.”

  Goodwin was so engrossed with the equipment that he had not noticed until that moment that the entire amphitheater was empty except for a security guard posted to prevent anyone from entering. He had an uneasy feeling about this and asked Wang, who was sipping from a large bottle marked “Liquid Prozac,” “Where are all of the reporters?”