How to Leave Your Body
And her face brightened up at the thought that she was now the right size for going through the little door into that lovely garden. First, however, she waited for a few minutes to see if she was going to shrink any further: she felt a little nervous about this; ‘for it might end, you know,’ said Alice to herself, ‘in my going out altogether, like a candle. I wonder what I should be like then?’ And she tried to fancy what the flame of a candle is like after the candle is blown out, for she could not remember ever having seen such a thing.
— Lewis Carroll, Alice In Wonderland.
It’s 2005.
They lose your results and then find them. When the black film is finally pulled from its manilla envelope and pushed against the light screen on the wall you can see it. A rogue fleck of white where all else is shadow. The whiteness is a disc, flushed out of proper alignment with your spine, digging straight into the sciatic nerve, which extends all the way down your leg. Severely herniated. This explains the numbness and tingling, the wrapping burn of muscle pain. You are diagnosed. You are identified.
