“We are only as sick as our secrets,” said Peggy, the group facilitator, as she waved everyone to a chair around the table. “What is that ringing? Does someone have a cellphone?”
Carter cleared his throat. “I’d like to share, if that is okay.”
Peggy laid her clipboard on the table in front of her and clasped her hands with an air of active listening. “We are here to help one another heal through the loving power of group support. Please, Carter, tell us about your affliction.”
A muffled ringing came from somewhere close by. Peggy looked around at her five patients with a frown marring her smooth forehead. “I’d like to remind everyone, we have a policy of no cellphones at group.”
Carter held up his hand. “It’s me. I recently had sinus surgery, and somehow the doctor left a small alarm clock in my sinus cavity. So far, they haven’t been able to retrieve it.”
“An alarm clock in your head? That’s nuts,” said Nash, tugging on the hood of his jacket. He sat to Carter’s right. “Like, how long does it ring?”
“Ten to twenty seconds.” Carter slumped foreward and put his head in his hands. “There it goes again.” A distant ringing commenced. After about twelve seconds, it stopped.
“And that goes on all the time?” Peggy asked, putting her hand gently on Carter’s shoulder.
“Night and day,” Carter sighed. “They say they might have some medication to tone it down a bit, maybe even get it to stop. I used to be able to get it to stop by putting my head in a bucket of warm water, but after a while that didn’t work anymore. It just gave me mild electric shocks.”
“We wish you health and healing,” Peggy said. She straightened up. “Who else would like to share?”
Nash raised his hand. “I guess I’ll go.” He shrugged back the hood on his head to reveal a lumpy pile of hair. “I have something kind of similar to Carter.”
“What is that thing on your head?” asked Thang. He pointed with a gnarled finger. “It looks like an old-style telephone.”
Nash nodded. “It started growing a couple years ago. I wish I could blame a surgeon! Apparently, I have a certain gene that causes communication problems. For a few months, I wasn’t able to speak except through a karaoke microphone. Thank God that went away. But then I grew this telephone.”
The lone female member of the group, Bernice, crossed her arms and clacked her teeth together a couple times before she managed to say, “That don’t look like any phone I ever seen.”
Thang laughed. “That, young lady, is a rotary phone, something like a dinosaur compared to today’s modern cellphones. May I?”
Nash shrugged. Thang stood up, dug into Nash’s hair, and lifted up a shiny black receiver. He held it to his ear. Then he giggled. “I got a dial tone.”
Everyone wanted to hear, so one by one, they got up and stood over Nash’s head, holding the antique phone to their ears and listening to the ancient sound of an open phone line. Even Peggy had to take a turn.
“Can you, like, dial someone on it?” Carter asked, listening to the dial tone in wonder. Then he froze and stared off into the distance as the alarm clock went off.
Nash shook his head. “I get calls sometimes, and I can talk to whoever is on the line, but the base of the phone hasn’t grown yet, so I can’t make outgoing calls.”
“What’s your number, let me try you,” Thang said.
“I don’t know my number, ” Nash said glumly.
Peggy tapped the table gently. “All right, let’s get back on track. Nash, we wish you health and healing. Who is next? Thang, would you like to share?”
Thang settled back in his seat. “I can relate to Carter’s problem. I have a condition called Typewriter Tinnitus.”
“What is that, a hearing thing?” asked Bernice.
“An audiological condition and a content-creation illness, both together,” Thang said. “I have a typewriter in my brain. While we’ve been here this evening, my brain has typed two-hundred and forty three pages of a book about protons and neutrons.”
“Are you like, a scientist or something?” Bernice said with more respect.
Thang shook his head. “I have no idea what I’m typing. I go to bed at night with a blank page in front of my mind’s eye, and by morning, I have a complete novel, written in Times New Roman 12 point. Double-spaced.”
Peggy’s eyes were wide. “That’s amazing.”
Thang looked a bit smug. “I know. The problem is, I haven’t found a printer that can access the material. So I have these files of useless content in my head, shelved according to the Dewey decimal system, which doesn’t really exist anymore. Sometimes I can pull down a book and read some pages, but mostly it seems like I’m channeling academic journal articles and the occasional dissertation. I don’t understand a word of it. I’m a janitor, not a scientist.”
The last member of the group to speak raised his hand. “Hi, I’m Phil, and I think I might be able to help you.”
Peggy turned her attention to Phil. “Welcome. Tell us about your affliction, Phil.”
“They tell me I swallowed a fax machine when I was a kid.” He burped and wiped his lips. A few wisps of paper fell onto the table. “After some years, it became clear it wasn’t a fax machine at all, which is good, actually, because fax machines have gone the way of the rotary phone!” He smiled in Nash’s direction. “No, it’s actually just a cheap dot matrix printer, lodged somewhere where a hiatal hernia would be.”
“You kidding,” Bernice snorted.
“No. I wish I were.” Phil let out a long belch. A stream of printer paper clattered out of his mouth. He tore the sheet off at a perforation and held it up. “Blank, see?”
“Maybe you and Thang can get together for coffee,” Peggy smiled, seeing the group beginning to coalesce around a solution. “We wish you health and healing! Let’s see. Bernice, we haven’t heard from you yet. Would you like to share?”
Bernice clacked her teeth together. “Sure, whatever. A few years ago when I was doing a temp job, my jaw morphed into a stapler.” She leaned her head back and opened her mouth wide so everyone could see.
“Swingline,” Phil said with appreciation. “Good brand.” He looked at Bernice more closely. “Say, do you think . . . ?”
“Maybe you could buy me dinner?”
“Wait, what’s going on?” Carter said, and then froze as the alarm clock went off. The group waited politely for fifteen seconds for the ringing to stop. “Are we allowed to date group members?”
Peggy shifted a little in her chair and shrugged her shoulders. “Sometimes group members have compatible afflictions. We help each other, right?” She looked around at the group, smiling with satisfaction. “Phil can help Thang, it appears.”
“And I can help Phil,” Bernice said with a shy glance at Phil. “You know, manage the paper and such.”
“What about me and Carter?” Nash said. “A phone and an alarm clock don’t have much in common.”
“No, I suppose you are correct,” Peggy said. She patted Carter’s shoulder as the alarm clock went off. “But keep coming back. You never know who will be here next week.”