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Show that God's eyes are as warped as my own. I do not mind their lolling gaze and ask my mother to tape them to the wall beside my bed, surrounding myself with fractured vision. The doctors are puzzled by the failure of my head to heal. While the bump is no longer hard-it has grown soft and mushy-it has not disappeared. I finger it when no one is looking, pushing the blood from one end to the other, playing with the waterbed of skin. When they think I am not listening, the doctors tell my mother about another test, not as painful as the spinal tap but more uncomfortable. It involves hanging me upside down like a side of beef until I vomit. What this will prove, I fail to understand. My ears stop listening as I begin to ponder why the body's response to being upside down is to throw up. If the blood is not reabsorbed by my body within the next few days, they say in low whispers just outside my room, they will have no choice but to try this test. I spend my nights pushing the mushy bump into my skull, hoping to convince the blood to go back to where it came from, though it is hard for me to envision just where I would store this extra blood. Each morning I measure my success, but the bump remains. I practice for the test by leaning my head over the hospital bed, examining the springs on the underside, the mattress tag, waiting for the nausea. Within seconds, the pressure increases in my neck and ears and feels as though I am trapped beneath a wave. I stop practicing. The day of the test arrives, but my mother does not. I am pushed down the halls in a wheelchair by an orderly who does not know what is about to happen to me. Left alone in the waiting room, I begin to panic. I do not want to throw up. I do not want to be hung upside down. When I was smaller my dad would pick me up from my ankles and swing me around like the blades of a helicopter. Up and down, up and down he 82 |