Big Brother by Lionel Shriver

Author:Lionel Shriver
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Literary, Retail, Fiction
ISBN: 9780061458576
Publisher: Harper
Published: 2013-06-01T04:00:00+00:00

chapter two

Dr. Corcoran had a flat, unadorned frankness that I had always liked. He delivered reliable information with a practiced neutrality. He’d treated a second-degree burn from boiling pasta water and kept it from getting infected. He’d stitched a stab wound from my careless removal of an avocado stone so neatly that I regretted the invisibility of the scar; from catering, my hands were crisscrossed in prized tribal tattoos. With that diffident blankness Corcoran cultivated, I hoped he’d be good for Edison, who didn’t need to feel any more harshly judged.

However, during our joint appointment I noticed that lightning-bolt chevrons now etched the doctor’s brow, suggesting that in his leisure time he forwent that blankness for a great deal of scowling. By the end of this consultation, I would be interpreting his neutrality in a different light. It was fatalism. For his practice to have bought such a sturdy, high-poundage scale, he must have seen enough wide-load patients for the investment to earn out.

“You’re pre-diabetic,” Corcoran delivered in a bored, of-course spirit, once Edison had dressed in the examination room and we had assumed chairs before the doctor’s desk. His monotone was almost flip. “Your blood pressure is elevated. At a BMI of over fifty-five, your chances of getting most cancers are significantly raised. You have edema in your extremities—that’s fluid retention, from poor circulation. Your lung capacity is reduced, and if you keep smoking emphysema is almost inevitable—”

“One problem at a time,” I interrupted. “Is Edison in good enough health to go on a severely restrictive diet without keeling over?”

“Probably.” Corcoran sounded casual. “We can bring down the blood pressure with medication. His heart’s in better shape than it has any business being, though he’s still a prime candidate for cardiovascular disease. What did you have in mind?”

“From what I’ve read, we’d eventually have to step it up to eight hundred, then twelve hundred. But to start with, between five and six hundred calories a day.”

Since Edison didn’t gasp, he mustn’t have had any notion how little sustenance that amounted to: two-thirds of one Cinnabon. As for Corcoran, I swear I remember him laughing. Maybe not a belly laugh, but a distinct guffaw. “That’s ambitious.”

“With Edison’s size, there’s no point in doing this if we’re not ambitious,” I said. “Could you tell me what he weighs?”

The doctor glanced at the patient for permission.

“It’s not a state secret, man,” said Edison.

“Three-eighty-six.”

My brother added, “But that’s including boxers.”

It could have been worse. I borrowed a pad and pencil to do the following calculations: 386 – 163 = 223 pounds to lose; 223 × 3,500 calories per pound = 780,500 total calories to burn off. I ballparked that Edison would burn an average of 3,000 calories a day—more at the beginning, less at the end. So 3,000 minus, say, an average of 800 calories of consumption = a 2,200-calorie shortfall per day. And 780,500 ÷ 2,200 = 354.77.

That was days. I dreaded telling Fletcher. Even if Edison stayed improbably on the straight and narrow, we could be roommates for a year.

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