The x-ray showed tiny vipers in my arteries. It showed my liver had become a manatee. It showed the racetrack of my large intestine was nothing like the labyrinth of the smaller counterpart. It showed my gallstones were made of Amish cheese wheels that rolled around neighboring organs like ghosts on unicycles. It never showed a miniature Jack Nicholson hiding behind a hedge in my digestive track. The x-ray was in surprising technicolor. I was floating on a dense cloud in the examination room as he pointed out the obvious. He gave me a prescription that sounded made up and contained thirteen consonants. He said the likelihood of side effects would be, at best, entertaining. Despite being cloaked in a white coat, I’m not sure he was a doctor. He wanted to see me as soon as possible. He turned on a box fan and blew my cloud into the hallway so Sandy the RN could escort me back in. This time he tried to hide the x-rays and said unconvincingly that I looked in imperfectly good health and he would see me in six months… no, make that six days. The brood of vipers will be shedding their skin by then, he whispered to Sandy the RN. My cloud autopiloted its way through the lobby and out of the building. I felt like a manatee on a cheese wheel, so I hugged my inner manatee. I never revisited the shroud of Jack behind a hedge, not even the poorly manicured ones lining the hospital’s entrance. I can see the vipers are migrating to my noticeable veins, like tapeworms beneath my skin’s surface, certainly pluckable with a tiny hole and tweezers. Perhaps this is progress or growth. Maybe this is what healing feels like.