Diminutive

Diminutive
By Sara Spring


Rosa bustled around the warm kitchen preparing dinner as she recounted excitedly to her husband the personal conflicts of all her  co-workers, a conduit of information, the gossip bubbled out of her for all to hear. Endless drama was created by Rosa, and Roberto found himself growing weary of answering angry phone calls or opening the front door to discover people in distress. He sat back in his chair and watched her dimpled fleshy arms roll out fresh tortillas, her curly black hair frizzy from the humidity and the smell of good cooking growing thick in the evening air. While they ate dinner Roberto watched as Rosa’s fat lips moved, sucking in food and drink to regurgitate words.

As Rosa washed the dishes, Roberto retired himself to the living room for some telemundo.  The sun had set and the stucco house no longer cast a shadow in the street, mosquitoes buzzed around the front porch light and as he settled into his pea soup colored chair the sagging weight of his frame caused the joints of the furniture to whine. One of these days maybe Rosa would learn to keep her mouth shut, he thought, but she never did.
The commercials flicked by one by one as he looked for a show to entertain.  His eyes began to close and the channels changed with the occasional twitch of his thumb. In the background he could hear Rosa bustling around getting ready for bed. The lights ticked off in the house as he floated into dreams. A woman’s voice crooned softly, luring him back to the present with an offer a new device that kept a person up to date with all news. The procedure was simple; you go to a doctor’s office to have a thin container inserted in the side of your head. The container floated under the skin holding a small receiver which picked up a broadcast. In an instant you would know everything going on in the world. There was a limit of one per customer and you could call the number on television for a screening appointment today. He dismissed the commercial as a joke. No one would want such devices stuck under the skin of their head; he turned the television off lumbering off to bed.

The next day as he sat in his car driving home to grade a stack of papers, he listened to the muted sounds of the radio disc jockey trying to make the commute home in traffic bearable. His rotund belly rubbed against the steering wheel and the hot sun beat through the window.  A man’s voice came excitedly over the radio waves speaking about a new procedure. All you had to do was go to the doctor and get a chip implanted under your skin to hear all the latest news. Imagine knowing your family was in a plane crash or that a terrorist just seized control over your husband’s work tower. You could leap into action immediately rather than waiting for phone calls and messages. Fast and convenient there was no down time for the surgery. Roberto was pulling the car into the garage when he realized what the product was, dismissing the commercial he went inside setting the student essays aside for grading after dinner. It had been a long day filled with whining teenagers and students that didn’t want to take their academic careers seriously. The day weighed on his mind and as he listened to Rosa drone on and on about news and gossip he found himself growing mildly irritated with her.  Maybe if she got one of the new devices she would stop all of this nonsense, he wondered and before he knew what he was doing- he’d suggested the procedure as she was piling a second helping of green peas onto his plate. Rosa listened and when he was finished she asked how much it would cost. Roberto shrugged; he hadn’t paid that close attention, perhaps they didn’t mention it.  Rosa offered to look into it.

In a surprisingly short couple of months the two found themselves sitting in a doctor’s office with their check book in hand. Roberto watched as she went into the doctor’s office to emerge with a couple of stitches, slight tenderness and swelling around a new incision. As they walked to the car, Rosa could faintly hear the musings of every headline. By the evening, she was feeling overwhelmed and the two went to bed early. As Rosa lay awake on her back listening to the white noise and wondering how to make it all go away, tears formed in the corners of her eyes as she grew frustrated. Focusing on the ceiling trying to meditate, she eventually nodded off into a restless sleep and in the morning when she rose she left the newspaper on the stoop and instead started breakfast. Coming into the kitchen Roberto noticed that the paper was not on the table, irritated he fetched it from the stoop. As he settled back in his chair Rosa started asking him what he thought about the headlines and stories he hadn’t read yet. Her questions irritated him further and putting down the paper he watched moodily as she bustled around the kitchen preparing food. He’d have to read the paper some other time.  As he watched her it occurred to him that her mannerisms had changed, she was not as animated and excited as usual and neither did she bounce around the room in a happy state following her own conversation.  Instead she moved lethargically about the room with her hands working in a slow robotic manner as she spoke in a matter of fact tone. Roberto watched her in horror, as he realized the empty vacant expression on her face. What had he done to her? She wasn’t his wife anymore. Slapping his hand angrily on the table, upset at himself for having mentioned the idea, Rosa continued to mindlessly perform tasks around the kitchen. The smell of the cooking in the kitchen was not so consuming anymore.

After two weeks, her personality had still not changed. Frustrated Roberto loaded his wife into the car and stood before the doctor, asking to have the device removed. He watched as the doctor scratched his chin and without hesitation shook his head in refusal stating that Roberto should be more patient, suggesting that perhaps it would be wise to wait another couple of weeks for Rosa to adjust entirely to the implant. Dissatisfied, Roberto went to another doctor asking for the implant to be removed who refused as well claiming he did not have enough knowledge on the subject and did not want to risk causing further damage. After asking several more doctors, the husband still did not find any one willing to remove the implant. Seething with anger Roberto snapped and the usually calm man’s voice grew quickly with velocity as he hollered in the lounge that they were murderous thieves. Pointing his finger accusingly at the staff, he ranted that they’d taken his money and murdered his wife. As Roberto slammed his fist on the counter he cursed them for performing a procedure they knew nothing about. Security came to escort him outside to his car.

Full of sorrow he broke down in tears on the steps outside the office, his heavy body crumpling to the ground. Holding his grief stricken face in his hands he let the tears stream down his fat cheeks. What had he done? She was dead. Looking up in the early afternoon light he watched as his wife sat in the car with an emotionless face staring straight ahead at the street. She was nothing of what she used to be, just a living carcass. His heart wrenched in agony and his mind spun into self reproach. He may be stupid and gullible but he never wanted to hurt his wife.

Another couple of months passed and things had not improved, Rosa was still monotonous and absent. The grief of losing his wife caused Roberto to slip into depression and drink heavily. Every night he sat in the living room watching late night medical shows sipping on tequila when the thought occurred to him through a haze of madness that the surgery performed was extremely simple. All the doctor had done was cut a small slit in her skin to insert the device and then sutured it up. It couldn’t be that complicated he thought. When sobriety washed over him the next day he could not rid himself of the simplicity of the surgery and so out of curiosity he began to read books about sutures and began practicing stitches. He read about pain in relation to trauma, layers of skin, muscle and fatty tissues when he found himself starting to think about how he could remove the device himself. All he had to do was cut a little slit, remove the device, then suture the wound and she would be herself again by morning. He was determined to become sober again in order to save his wife’s life.

After a couple of months with nothing to drink in his system, he went to the store and bought latex gloves, some needles, gauze and scissors. Bribing a local dentist for Novocain injections he set about his procedure at home.  Roberto led Rosa to the table covered with a sterile cloth and instructed her to rest her head. After injecting her with Novocain he used a sterile scalpel to start the procedure, cutting gently into her scalp and blotting the blood. Rosa did not seem terrified or upset; she just rested her head as he had asked her to do. He pulled back the skin to show tissue covering the device, as he gently scraped it away from the device, it began to move. Injecting more Novocain, he held the device with one tenderly with one finger and continued to scrape away. The procedure took a while longer than he expected but eventually, he was able to remove the device entirely and putting it in a bowl on the table, he tenderly attended to stitching his wife’s scalp closed. A feeling of peace surged through him; she was going to come back to him! When he was finished, he dressed the area with a bandage and laid her to rest and heal next to him in bed. He watched her sleep until his eye lids closed themselves. In the morning, he eagerly turned to his wife. She was still sleeping it seemed but when he touched her she felt cold.

When his story hit the press it was picked up and heard all over the world. He was a hero and he was a fool. As Roberto sat in prison his story brought to light that more often than not the procedures killed the patient within a few months. The press relentlessly attacked the fact that since it was an optional and experimental procedure patients had to waive their rights and were not able to bring the companies and doctors to justice. Protests from the victim’s families exercised their right by marching. A reporter met with Roberto and clips of the interview were played regularly during these protests. His voice preached loudly against the procedure from his small cell and when the masses caused a small riot he was at the pinnacle of it! Holding the recorder to his face, at one point in the interview he felt his lips turn themselves into a smile that morphed into a sneer and he felt the rage well up inside of him. Letting out a scream of agony towards the ceiling, the whole world finally heard his anguish and anger. The media rolled the tape of his agonized cry again and again, with the questioning title: What could do this to a man? Story at 11. Novels, movies, songs and laws were created as he sat in prison day after day. 

When the media circus died down occasional protestors and supporters gathered outside of his cell but through all of it, he missed his wife terribly. Her bubbly talk of gossip and the way she bounced about the kitchen preparing hot meals for him. The way her hair was alive with color and movement. Her skin had always had a glow and he missed the warmth of her body.  Late at night he dreamt that she was laughing and as he kissed her his heart pounded with happiness; the pain did little to awake him as he felt so much love for her it hurt.  In the morning he was found dead in his cell.

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