Chapter 5: At the Hospital

The drive to the hospital was uneventful and easy enough. Tim’s mother, Juanita, parked the family SUV in a General’s parking spot, right outside the front entrance to the emergency room. Tim’s father, Raymond, who was standing just inside the ER doors, knew from the frantic sound of his wife’s voice on the phone that she would not obey the parking rules and would take the first available space she found. Raymond quickly reached the SUV before Juanita could turn off the engine.

He stuck his head in the passenger window where Tim was sitting and said, “Don’t you dare turn that key off, just yet! You can’t park here. The car will get towed, and I’ll get in trouble. Now I’ll take Tim inside, get him situated, and get a doctor to look him over. You park in a normal parking lot, and then come on inside. I’ll get you all reunited again.”

His tone left no room for questioning. Tim got out of the SUV and stood up next to his father. Rather than having to look up at him, they were looking eye to eye.

“How are you feeling, champ?”

Raymond noticed his son’s new height right away, as he thought he’d seen a taller Tim this morning, right after his monstrous bowel movement. He also quickly noticed Tim looked weak, and he looked like he had lost weight, even more than just his significant bowel movement. There was a visible difference in body mass. Raymond’s diagnostic skills, sharpened by twenty-five years as a Registered Nurse, told him something was wrong with his son. He thought his wife was correct to bring him to the hospital.

“I was feeling really sleepy and run down, yesterday, so after we ate last night I watched a little wrestling and went to sleep. Next thing I know, Mom is shaking my shoulder, and I find out I’ve been asleep for like, seventeen hours or so. Now I don’t feel like I need to sleep, I just feel really run down ... like after finals, you know? Like, umm, ... exhausted.”

Exhausted was a perfect way to describe how Tim felt.

Raymond got Tim to sit down on a hospital bed in the back room of the emergency room section. Then he went to get a doctor to check Tim over. He left the door, and the curtains opened. Tim passed the time watching the people walking back and forth. He didn’t recognize anyone, but it sure did seem like there was a lot of stuff going on.

From down the hallway, he could hear, “Ma’am you are not allowed in here.”

Tim figured his mother must have found a nice parking place and returned to the ER in near-record time. He stuck his head out the door, and sure enough, his mother spotted him. She had his sister in tow. They made a beeline for the small treatment room where Tim had been waiting until his father found the doctor.

“Oh, good, here you are. What has the doctor said?” his mother asked.

“I haven’t seen one yet. Dad said to stay here while he went to get a doctor to come and see me,” Tim answered and immediately felt terrible for his father.

“What the hell? Why didn’t he have someone waiting for when we got here? I gave him plenty of time when I called for him to set this all up for you. We need to find out what’s wrong,” she was close to freaking out again.

Tim decided to take control until his father returned, “Mom, hang on! You’re gonna scare Carmen.”

His sister looked up from her tablet, confused because she’d heard someone call her name. Tim gave her a quick negative shake of the head, and she instantly knew he was trying to calm their mother down.

Mom looked over at Carmen, realized the ridiculousness of the situation, and began to calm down.

“He said he was gonna get a doctor to check me out; but come on, Mom, it will take a few minutes at least. We should be happy he at least has us in a treatment room, instead of sitting out in the waiting area.”

Juanita took a seat next to Carmen and tried to calm down while Tim sat back down on the bed and waited for his father to return with a doctor. The waiting opened the door for another problem; he had not eaten since dinner the night before. His stomach chose that moment to announce its presence. Even though it was smaller than a couple of days back, it still had mighty bass sounds. The grumble was easy to pinpoint by all three people in the treatment room. “Mom, you don’t happen to have anything to munch on in your purse, do you?”

“No, sorry but I can go and get you something from a snack machine. Do you want anything Carmen?”

“No thanks Mom, I’m good.”

Juanita smiled at her kids and paced down the hall to the waiting area to find something for her son to snack on. She immediately worried that maybe she should not get him anything to eat since it might mess with the results of upcoming tests, but then she remembered he had not eaten anything since the meatloaf last night.

Now selecting a couple of chocolate bars from the snack machine, she smiled while remembering how he asked her to burn the meatloaf because that was the way he grew up eating it. Another of her son’s witty ass remarks, usually she would get upset at anyone making fun of her cooking, but she knew he was kidding. What made it funny was no matter how hard she tried, she always burned the meatloaf, even when she would try not to. It was the only meal she cooked that she could not get correct. But, since her family had learned to prefer it, she kept it that way.

Walking back to the treatment room, she noticed her husband entering the other end of the emergency room with a doctor. She hurried a little faster to ensure she did not miss a thing. She knew she would have to tell the doctor everything she had seen about her son. She gave Tim a Snickers bar, and he ripped the wrapper off and practically inhaled the chocolate bar. She would save the other bar for him later if he needed another one, but he finished the first before her husband and the doctor came into the treatment room. She gave him the second bar, and he ate that one more civilly rather than like some wild animal.

“I guess you were a little hungry,” she said to the room. Tim nodded; his sister smiled. That was when Raymond and a doctor came into the treatment room.

“Well, Timothy, Sarge here says he thinks there might be something wrong with you. He told us all about a certain undeniably incredible bowel movement you suffered,” the doctor said with a smile while filling out something on a clipboard. “The way he described it most people would be using those characteristics with giving birth, not describing bowel movements.”

Tim smiled at his mother, and she blushed.

“So Timothy, my name is Doctor Anderson. I am the head of the Gastroenterology here at BAMC. And with that tale of a walloper of a BM you had yesterday, your dad said there are several things he has noticed about you, and they are all very recent. Tell me what has been going on with you and we’ll see if we can’t figure it out for you, okay?” his condescending attitude put Tim on the defensive immediately.

“Well, yeah, Dad told you about the most embarrassing thing the other morning. I didn’t feel bad or anything before. I woke up early cause I had to pee and when finishing, I got the urge to sit down but nothing too extreme. I felt it when it started and grabbed a face towel off the counter and folded it over a couple of times to bite down on,” Tim explained.

“So it started and after the first push it just kept going. When it felt finished I stood and looked between my legs to see I could not see much water left in the toilet, so I flushed and about maybe a quarter of it went down, and new water filled in the gaps of what didn’t go down the drain. It did take a few flushes but it went.”

The doctor nodded while listening to Tim’s description. “Sorry to be graphic about this but, was it formed solid or was it formless?”

Tim was embarrassed, so he looked to his father for guidance on answering the question. His father put a hand on his shoulder and said, “Just tell him the truth, don’t cookie coat it. The forms could be important.”

“I can see it is a little embarrassing for you, Timothy but imagine that I get to hear about this stuff all day long ... I went to college to learn about this stuff, so don’t worry about being embarrassed. We just want to make sure you aren’t hurt.” Dr. Anderson said and minus the condescension from his voice.

Tim let out a breath he did not realize he was holding and relaxed.

“Well it started normal, and then after a few pushes it turned into ... I guess you could call it solid diarrhea. Sort of like excess stuff falling out, after the main event.”

The doctor continued, “Okay, so what happened after you finished and the smell died down?”

Tim’s father laughed and said, “Yeah the smell was a definite ‘death smell,’ that’s for sure.”

Everyone had a nervous laugh, including the doctor, but Tim’s mother, Juanita, was not in a laughing mood.

“I really don’t think we should be laughing about this, Raymond.” She crossed her arms over her chest and glared from her seat in the corner chair.

“Well, I took a quick shower ... just to get the sweat off ... and then went back to my room, ‘cause I was really tired. Dad came in to check me over but I told him there was no blood, or anything like that. Just a lot of shit and loud farts.” Tim’s mother stared bullets into his skull. “Oops, sorry about the language, Mom.”

“I went to sleep, and next thing I knew it was dinner time. I ate then went back to my room to watch a little TV. I went to sleep again, and I guess it was now about nine pm. Next thing I know, Mom’s shaking me. She was worried since I had not gotten out of bed since the night before, and it was now around three-thirty in the afternoon. I had to go to the bathroom again. After peeing, I got the urge to sit, again. This time the smell was a lot worse than before.”

“Worse than before, Tim? I don’t think that is possible,” his father joked.

A pillow flew across the bed and hit Raymond right in the face. It came from Juanita’s direction, but she played it off like she had nothing to do with it.

“Yeah, Dad, it was worse.”

The doctor asked, “How was this second BM formed?”

After thinking, “Well, I guess soft serve ice cream would be the best description. Not much pain that time. It took about the same amount of time to flush, but it was ... I’d say ... about a quarter of the amount from the other BM.”

“Do any of you feel anything similar to what he is feeling, like maybe you all ate something bad for you?” the doctor asked.

The family all nodded negatively.

“So how are you feeling now, Timothy?”

“Actually, I’m still really tired and actually pretty hungry.”

The doctor took a few more notes and turned to use the phone on the wall. After a quick, calm conversation, he returned to the bed Tim’s family surrounded.

“Well, we have room upstairs in gastro, and we need to run a few tests to rule out some things. I don’t think he is in any jeopardy, but that much fecal expulsion in such a quick amount of time, and the fact your clothes look like they are falling off you, means there is something going on inside of you.”

The doctor stepped closer to the bed and put his hand on Tim’s shoulder.

“Don’t worry. We’ll figure this out. Hopefully we can fix it quickly for you, but I think we need to keep you here for a couple of days, just make sure there is nothing seriously wrong with you.”

Carmen was still giggling about the pillow throw. Tim’s mother looked worried. His father thanked Dr. Anderson for looking at his son as the doctor left to prepare to move Tim upstairs.

With only the family still in the exam room, Raymond gave another synopsis of what the doctor had just said.

“Okay, if it was nothing, he would have just told you to go ahead and go home and make sure our plumbing was in fine order. Since he wants to admit you, he must be thinking either of a foreign object, or maybe some bug. Either way, he’ll do a few blood tests and have you watched, so he can keep track of what comes out of you.”

He then walked around the bed to where his wife was sitting and took her hand.

“He’s gonna be alright. I think he is thinking of some kind of tapeworm or something. So we’ll take some MRIs or Cat Scans to see if we can see one, or we’ll wait for another BM and check it for any signs of tapeworm. Normally you get tapeworms eating undercooked pork or something like that, but we haven’t had anything like that in a while, so it’s a mystery.”

“So you, young man,” Tim’s father began with a grin. Then he said, “Damn, you do look skinnier.”

Raymond began again after noticing, “You, young man, are going on a little vacation for at least a couple of days in the gastroenterology ward. Hopefully, doctors who have studied shit for years will be poring over yours to find an elusive tapeworm.” He was trying to joke, but it flew over like a lead balloon.

“What if he does have a tapeworm Raymond, can it kill him?”

“Oh, no! Don’t worry about that. They have a couple of drugs that he can take and it will kill the thing. Then they just wait until he shits again, and the worm will come out.”

Tim’s mother visibly relaxed on hearing that. His little sister also looked like she was worrying once she overheard her brother admitted to the hospital. When she heard he would be alright, she relaxed and returned to reading.

“The only bad thing I see for you, young man, is that they are going to put you on a high fiber diet to force you to retake a dump so that they can collect samples,” his eyes were smiling because he was allowed to discuss one of his favorite subjects openly.

Tim’s first night in the hospital was ‘not very interesting. He was alone in a dual-occupancy room. If he was in the room alone, he wasn’t keeping a bed from someone who needed it.

The doctor scheduled all of the tests for the following day, and everything went exactly how the nanites said it would. The first evening they left Tim alone and waited while the high fiber diet meals served to him did their job.

The nanites activated the peristalsis and segmentation actions in the lower and upper intestines. After breakfast first thing in the morning, Tim informed his nurse he needed to go ahead and have a bowel movement.

“Go ahead and go, just don’t flush. Let me know when you are done,” the nurse said. “Do you think you’ll need some Lysol?”

She asked her question with a smile aimed right at Tim. The smile flustered Tim for a moment.

“Um, actually, I dunno. The last one yesterday morning was awful rank, so I guess having a can handy would be a good idea.”

She nodded.

Now sitting on a toilet, Tim wanted a status report.

“Well, fellas, is all going according to plan,” he mumbled.

“Perfectly. In this first sample for the doctors we are fabricating pieces of a tapeworm to insert in your feces and give the doctors the proper clues they need to treat you correctly. And before you ask, this will be another larger than normal BM, we calculate 25% smaller than your most recent. In the future, consider half the size of this BM will be your new normal,” the words disappeared from his sight. They were soon followed by “End of message.”