Удушье (Choke)

A little muscle twitch means rabies, means muscle cramps, thirst, confusion, and drooling, followed by seizures, coma, death. Acne means ovarian cysts. Feeling a little tired means tu­berculosis. Bloodshot eyes mean meningitis. Drowsiness is the first sign of typhoid. Those floaters you see cross your eyes on sunny days, they mean your retina is detaching. You're going blind.

'See how her fingernails look,' I tell Denny, 'that's a sure sign of lung cancer.'

If you're confused, that means renal shutdown, severe kidney failure.

You learn all this during Physical Examination, your second year in medical school. You learn all this, and there's no going back.

Ignorance was bliss.

A bruise means cirrhosis of the liver. A belch means colorectal cancer or esophageal cancer or at the very least a peptic ulcer.

Every little breeze seems to whisper squamous carcinoma.

Birds in the trees seem to twitter histoplasmosis.

Everybody you see naked, you see as a patient. A dancer could have clear lovely eyes and hard brown nipples, but if her breath is bad she has leukemia. A dancer might have thick, long, clean-looking hair, but if she scratches her scalp, she has Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Page by page, Denny fills up his pad with figure studies, beau­tiful women smiling, thin women blowing him kisses, women with their faces tilted down, but their eyes looking up at him through falls of hair.

'Losing your sense of taste,' I tell Denny, 'means oral cancers.'

And without looking at me, looking back and forth between his sketch and the new dancer, Denny says, 'Then, dude, you got that cancer a long time ago.'

Even if my mom died, I'm not sure if I'd want to go back and get readmitted before my credits start to expire. As it is, I already know way more than I'm comfortable with.

After you find out all the things that can go wrong, your life becomes less about living and more about waiting. For cancer. For dementia. Every look in a mirror, you scan for the red rash that means shingles. See also: Ringworm.

See also: Scabies

See also: Lyme disease, meningitis, rheumatic fever, syphilis.

The next patient who presents herself is another blonde, thin, maybe a little too thin. A spinal tumor probably. If she has a headache, a low fever, a sore throat, she has polio.

'Go like this,' Denny yells up to her, and he covers his eye­glasses with his open hands.

The patient does this.

'Beautiful,' Denny says, sketching a study fast. 'How about if you open your mouth a little.'

And she does.

'Dude,' he says. 'Workshop models are never this hot.'

All I can see is she's not a very good dancer and, for sure, this lack of coordination means amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

See also: Lou Gehrig's disease.

See also: Total paralysis. See also: Difficulty breathing. See also: Cramps, tiredness, crying.

See also: Death.

With the edge of his hand, Denny smears the cork lines to add shadow and depth. It's the woman onstage with her hands over her eyes, her mouth slightly open, and Denny picks at it fast, his eyes going