By Omar Nabil Metwally, MD

This is a work of satire and fiction.

I arrived at the Quaternary Health Emergency Department with an overnight backpack and nowhere else to go. They took me for a football for the first 16 hours. Someone tucks you under an arm, runs you a few yards down the hall, and fumbles. Then the next humanoid takes a turn.

Then the first one felt me ticking.

I should be clear that I am not a grenade. A grenade is somebody’s decision. I am a medicolegal landmine: I just lie there, patiently, being documented, until someone steps wrong.

So they passed me. Triage to resident, resident to attending, attending to Risk, each holding me a little less long than the last. By the upper floors, they had stopped making eye contact. The second-to-last person, a vice president of something, had me for under a second. I don’t think his fingers closed.

At the end of the hall stood the Head of Legal. All my buddies in the Emergency Department ask about him. Nobody has seen his face or heard his name, and nobody knows what he makes, though the guesses are reverent. He turned out to be a fat man in a good suit, waddling toward me with his arms out, the way you would catch a baby.

It took his head clean off. I want to stress how clean. Not a mark on the grinning face, the body, or the suit.

Quaternary wastes nothing. The body went to the cafeteria, where the interns had blubber soup through the end of the winter. The night nurses took the back, which was extraordinarily hairy, and made furs and moccasins against the cold on the floors.

I found the Head a week later, rolling around a stairwell, unsure whether it was above ground or below. It had never needed to know. I picked it up, tucked it into my overnight backpack, and took it home.

It is a stress ball, a soccer ball, a companion, and a friend. It talks constantly: “without admitting,” “to the extent that,” “at this time.” So I put it on mute, pull it in closer between my knees, and we watch television.