The Cessation
by Ginny Hogan
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3 |
part 2
Several more weeks passed. No urine emerged. Not even discharge, I didn’t think. Some #2s, but less than before. The Cessation was about urination, that was true. At least, initially.
Before long, though, the Committee’s message morphed from merely descriptive.
They said we should try to halt other bodily functions, too. “Stop shaving,” they’d say. “Stop crying. Stop sweating. DEFINITELY stop menstruating, if you ever decided to start. Maybe if we take the first steps, our bodies will follow suit. Imagine how horrifyingly productive we could become if the Cessation spread. While substances dripped from us, we could never be fully whole — we were losing parts of ourselves every day. We have to retain as much as possible if we want to be Complete. To reach our full potential.”
And what was this potential? They never said. If there were science to support that claim, they didn’t make it public. They didn’t have answers; so, instead, they gave instructions.
I brushed my teeth for 45 minutes the next night. I must have picked up a new kind of toothpaste by accident. It was tingly and nice. So I just kept on brushing and brushing, and the steady motion offered time to reflect.
Here was my main question: why would the Cessation have happened all at once? I rejected the idea that evolution was now moving in discrete steps; there was no scientific backing for this, and it seemed dumb. All evolution up until this point in time happened gradually. The Cessation felt less like learning to walk upright and more like frogs accidentally growing a fifth foot in a polluted river. Ew. Frogs are even worse than people.
I wrote to Dr. Rash asking him if he would have the Committee fund research to investigate this question. I did not hear back. The next day, I found that the WiFi in my home had been completely disconnected. I was forced to use the dial-up computer in the kitchen. Damn. Now, my fool of a son would need to share my computer if he wanted to keep promoting his bogus conspiracy theories online, or whatever it is he did all day.
* * *
One afternoon, I went to the grocery store to get Tilex. We were out for the second time that week. I watched two ladies choose apples. I like to stare at people picking fruit because I don’t have much of an intuition for it myself, so I can usually learn something from others. For example, it’s good to buy bananas when they are still a bit green, but it’s bad to buy them when they are a bit brown. I never would have known.
I leaned closer.
“I just sort of miss peeing,” said one.
“Shhh,” hissed the other. “They’ll hear you!”
“Don’t you?”
The woman sighed and put down the apple. I marked its exact spot; I would take it, if she failed to retrieve it.
“Of course I do,” she said. “More than I missed going outside during COVID.”
“There’s something they’re not telling us,” said the first. She flicked her wrist as though a fly had landed on it. I did not see the fly, but I was delighted to see she’d abandoned the fruit. Mmm. Honeycrisp.
I understood their sentiment. Urination gave me ample time to scroll my phone, I realized in retrospect. Now, if I wanted time to text friends back, I’d have to block off time in my calendar. Fortunately, I didn’t have friends. I was perhaps pre-emptively preparing for this scenario; I’m often ahead of the trends.
I turned towards the kitchen computer. A tab was open. Ah, Reddit. My stupid son. Stupid, lazy piece of—. Wait. This wasn’t Reddit. I leaned in to read the header: Prostream.com. A message board as hideous as Reddit, but with a yellow background. Yellow, like apple juice. Yellow like...
I began to read:
The Committee is pretending the Cessation is a good thing because they’re trying to hide their secret space shuttle. 100 upvotes.
The government is actually taking our urine from our bodies before we pee it out and they’re using it to power windmills. 200 upvotes.
The scientist who figures out the truth behind the Cessation will save us all. 300 upvotes.
Dr. Rash is named that because he has a rash on his penis. 400 upvotes.
I’m so dehydrated because drinking water feels futile. I have basically no energy, and my skin looks like shit. This was true before the Cessation, but still. 500 upvotes.
I scanned through the comments on the last post. Again and again, they echoed his sentiment. Everyone was dehydrated and exhausted. Everyone but me.
And they didn’t blame processed food or Big Soda; they blamed the Cessation.
I looked next to me. I ran my finger over the shiny counter. Wow — had I hired a maid and forgotten about it?
I turned back to the site to find myself locked out.
Error: The site you’re trying to enter has been formally shut down.
Further attempts to log back in may result in an official ban from The Internet.
* * *
The next day, in between patients, I took a walk. A blue van drove by and snapped a photo of me. I really thought turning 50 would change things, but no, it’s nearly impossible to be a beautiful woman in today’s world.
I came back and looked over Tuzzy’s charts. It was bleak. Her T-cell count was growing, despite no further activity in her bladder. She’d reported increasing levels of exhaustion, her face was all red, and her eye had begun to twitch. I’d given her magnesium to quell it, but her body hadn’t gotten the memo. Normally, I became furious when patients didn’t respond well to the treatment I’d prescribed; how dare they defy me like that? But in Tuzzy’s case, I was just concerned.
I went to check on her. My keycard didn’t get me onto her ward. Idiots — didn’t they know I had actual work to do?
“I need to see one of my patients,” I said to Dr Schill, my new boss and nemesis.
“Ah, your last remaining patient?” he asked.
“Oh, did the others die?” I asked. I guess I should probably have kept better track.
“No, they were taken away from you.”
“Let me see Tuzzy.”
“She’s not your patient anymore.”
“Yes, she is! I’m her only doctor! And she’s like a daughter to me!”
“Firstly, that’s not an appropriate patient-doctor relationship, and secondly...” he looked at his watch. “As of 30 seconds ago... you’re not a doctor.”
Doctors had been acting worse and worse since the Cessation, and they never acted that well to begin with. For people who claimed to “trust science,” they sure were quick to shut up when threatened. I guess that’s what scientists would call “natural selection.”
Dr. Schill slid a newspaper in front of me.
BREAKING: ALL MEDICAL PERSONNEL INVESTIGATING THE CAUSE OF THE CESSATION ARE TO BE IMMEDIATELY EXPELLED FROM THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION.
“But... but... I’m not investigating the cause of the Cessation,” I sputtered.
He sneered and slid another document towards me. It was one of Tuzzy’s charts, one from weeks ago. In the notes section at the bottom, I had scribbled in tiny, almost illegible print: “Look into whether or not Cessation can cause dehydration.”
“You’re dismissed, Dr. DuBois,” he said. “Or should I say, Ms. DuBois.”
* * *
I returned home to a silent house. I debated ordering pizza, since crust was still not bread, after all. I’m dainty and cannot eat more than one or three slices, so I opened the door to my basement and yelled to my idiot son.
“Jacques?! Do you want pepperoni?!”
He didn’t respond. Probably sleeping, the lazy slob.
It may seem like I’ve always hated my son, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. I used to love him dearly, and he loved me. His father loved us both, too. We all loved each other. The family was held up by love; we were intertwined. But then, his father stopped loving me. And the entire foundation crumbled.
In my defense, Jacques stopped loving me first. In his defense, he was a child. He took to the basement — which, to be fair, is where I put his bedroom — and spent all day spreading rumors on the Internet. It was pathetic. A single mother raising her loser son who shows her nothing but cruelty? He refused to speak to me, and I had no idea why. I still fed him! I still housed him! I got no credit! All my love, with nowhere to go. I couldn’t even look at him. I hadn’t looked him in the eyes in years. He should be ashamed of the way I acted.
I ordered Hawaiian.
* * *
The reporter bravely raised his hand. “I’m... uh... I’m wondering why The Committee is now making environmental policy. You said something about more fracking—”
Dr. Rash looked taken aback. He was holding a press conference to discuss the future of the Committee, and just because he had invited the reporters to ask questions didn’t mean he believed they should. “We handle all matters related to the Cessation. And bodies are related to the Cessation, and climate change affects our bodies. Hence, it’s under our purview. Obviously.”
I bit my fingernail. The next day, the front page of the newspaper told me not to.
BREAKING: COMMITTEE ASSERTS ALL BODILY EXCRETIONS — INVOLUNTARY OR OTHERWISE — ARE NOW BANNED.
We weren’t allowed to release anything, but we could expand at will. Seemed unfair. I farted, just to prove I could.
My top priority was Tuzzy. And now that I was gone, the hospital had discharged her, so I had no choice but to treat her from home.
“You need to keep her pumped full of Liquid X,” I said to her obtuse husband.
“The other doctors don’t even know what that is,” he said. “Are hospital janitors even allowed to bring their own cleaning supplies?”
Idiot porta-potty man. I should never have told him how I found Liquid X. Stick to what you know. I didn’t have an answer for him, I just had a solution. And solutions were better than answers.
As I opened my mouth to snap back, though, I noticed something. Roy was not the rosy, energetic idiot I’d always known. He’d grown into something of a sickly, shriveled idiot. And if I hadn’t noticed it right away, it’s because — upon closer reflection — everyone seemed a bit shriveled these days.
Not me, though. I was as robust as I ever was. But in a dainty, feminine way. I was just lucky like that.
* * *
Copyright © 2021 by Ginny Hogan
