“Hello, Fukuda, this is Helen, Dr. Schwartz speaking. Have you forgotten the meeting we have scheduled for our weigh-in analysis? I have a nice presentation ready, some snacks… You know I wanted to practice my spiel with you before going to the powers that be.”
“Oh, right. Been so busy it slipped my mind, sorry.”
“So can you find the time for it? Are you coming?”
“Certainly, I wouldn't want to miss it. I am on my way. See you.” Dr. Schwartz had her office on the same floor so it took Fukuda only a couple minutes to get there.
“Hello again, have a seat, have a bite,” there was a spread of snacks and sweets next to the reinforced armchair for the doctor's guests/patients.
Fukuda sat down, feeling a little lost in the double-wide chair, and sighed. “Oh, Helen, how many times did I tell you I am not one of your charges? You know these tricks don’t work on me, don’t you?”
“Sorry, sorry, force of habit, you know. You don’t have to eat anything, just leave it here for my next visitor.” Helen gave her an unrepentant grin, knowing that lately even the formidable Fukuda Hinamizawa started having a bite here and there. “Anyway, to my presentation. Errm, as you know we finally received results from the first weigh-in of our new school year.”
She pressed a button and the large screen on the side lit up. “First of all, the first-years. And new arrivals in general. The trend continues with newly enrolled students being slightly ahead of the curve, weighing some 15 pounds more than the average teenager of their age. This trend is especially pronounced among daughters of our alumni, with 41 excess pounds per girl, and the paying students, weighing in at 18 plus. Merit students, on the other hand, arrive with their weight 7 pounds below the norm. It is therefore recommended to increase the allocation of funds for ‘merit’ or scholarship students for the next school year to ensure a representative sample group.”
Fukuda chuckled. “Oh, just admit it, Helen, you want more pawns to play with.”
“I’m not admitting anything,” the portly doctor shrugged, “and my argument is perfectly legitimate. We do need a representative sample with enough girls to take all the new compounds as well as to make up a sufficiently large control group each year. So…”
She let the sentence linger before going on, as another graph appeared, “to our returning students. It appears even our run-of-the-mill products have improved their long-term lingering effects as even in the control group, only 16 percent lost some weight over the summer, 39 maintained their weight and full 44 percent gained, an improvement of 8 percent compared to last year.”
“Really?” normally Fukuda would be eagerly probing new statistics but today it felt just like another boring day in the office. How to enliven this? “Uh, can you show any specific examples?”
“Oh, sure. Wait a second,” Helen peered into the files before displaying before-and-after shots of a student. “This is Kayla Williamson, a sophomore, gaining 16 pounds over the summer completely unassisted – apart from off-the-shelf Yeng products she keeps eating – on top of 47 pounds she put on in her freshman year. A true success story.”
“Really?” this drew Fukuda's interest. “You swear you did not have a hand in it, by any chance?”
“Nein! I don’t have time to personally feed every girl at our school! Like I said, it was completely unassisted. Caused purely by environment and peer pressure.”
“Good. Uh, could you send the data to my private account? I mean, the raw data. I prefer to do my own… analysing.”
“Certainly.” Dr. Schwartz made a few clicks and hit enter. “And now to the compound testers. The formula Y-39Z, designed to increase cravings and assertiveness, did especially well; the group gained an average of 19 pounds. Your favorite Camela Mencia excelled, putting on full 28 pounds.” And without prompting she put the Latina lardball on screen.
“Huh… not bad.”
The plump doctor paused at that bland reaction and gave her a searching look. “Is anything wrong, mein liebchen?”
Fukuda noticed her host slipping into her shrink mode. She bristled, pushing her glasses up her nose. “Certainly not! Just… tired, that's all. I have too much on my plate.”
“I see…” Dr. Schwartz glanced at the open packet of cupcakes, now half empty. “Is that why you left Daven's Port, dear? Left the Yeng management to come here? Sorry for prying but we have never covered this so if you don’t mind me asking, why did you give it all up?”
“Excuse me? What do you mean?”
“You had a whole city, the whole world as your playground, why give it up and limit yourself to a single school?”
Fukuda hesitated. Maybe Helen did have a right to ask. After all, they had been working together for nearly two decades… Except they hadn't, not really. They had worked alongside, usually not at cross purposes, but seldom together.
Should Fukuda confide in her anyway?
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