Free The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison Page B

curious about what she was reading. My mind seeks the quiet hours—how this woman fills her life beyond the condition of infestation, as that beyond keeps getting smaller.
    Sandra has a theory about the fibers—not that the fibers are an organism but that the organisms inside her are gathering these fibers to make their cocoons. This explains why so many of the fibers turn out to be ordinary kinds of thread, dog hairs or cotton fibers. Their danger is one of purpose, not of kind: creatures making a nest of her body, using the ordinary materials of her life to build a home inside of her.
    Once I’ve squinted long enough at the shrimpish thing, Sandra brings up a video of herself in the bathtub. “These are way beyond fibers,” she promises. Only her feet are visible protruding through the surface of the water. The quality is grainy, but it appears the bath is full of wriggling larva. Their forms are hard to feel sure about—everything is dim and a little sludgy—but that’s actually what it looks like. She says that a couple years ago there were hundreds coming out of her skin. It’s gotten a little better. When she takes a bath, only two or three of those worms come out.
    I’m really at a loss. I don’t know if what I’m seeing are worms, or where they come from, or what they might be if they’re not worms, or whether I want them to be worms or not, or what I have to believe about this woman if they aren’t worms, or about the world or human bodies or this disease if they are. But I do know I see a bunch of little wriggling shadows, and for now I’m glad I’m not a doctor or a scientist or basically anyone who knows anything about anything, because this uncertainty lets me believe Sandra without needing to confirm her. I can dwell with her—for just a moment, at least—in the possibility of those worms, in that horror. She’s been alone in it for so long.
    I catch sight of Kendra watching Sandra’s cell phone. She’s wondering if this is what her future holds. I tell her that everyone’s disease turns out a little different. But what do I know? Maybe her future looks like this too.
    Kendra tells me about sushi last night. It was good. She had fun. She actually ended up buying a painting from the restaurant. She shouldn’t have, she says. She doesn’t have the money. But she saw it hanging on the wall and couldn’t resist. She shows me a cell phone picture: lush braided swirls of oil paint curl from the corners of a parchment-colored square. The braids are jewel toned, deeply saturated, royal purple twined with lavender and turquoise.
    I think but don’t say: fibers.
    “You know,” she says, voice lowered. “It reminds me a little of those things.”
    I get a sinking feeling. It’s that moment in an epidemic movie when the illness spreads beyond its quarantine. Even when Kendra leaves this kingdom of the sick, she finds sickness waiting patiently for her on the other side. She pays three hundred dollars she can’t afford just so she can take its portrait home with her. Whatever comfort I took in her sushi outing, it’s gone now. Like I said, disease gathers anything that will stick. Even art on restaurant walls starts to look like what’s wrong with you, even if you can’t see it—can’t see, but see everywhere.
    During the morning program, the conference organizers pass around a sheet of jokes—“You might be a morgie if”—followed by a list of punchlines: “You scratch more than the dog,” “You’ve been fired by more doctors than bosses,” “An acid bath and total body shave sounds like a fun Friday night.” Some jokes summon the split between the current self and the self before its disease: “past life regression means remembering any time before Morgellons.” Others summon the split between the self and others: “at dinner your family uses oil and vinegar on their salads while you dump them on your hair and body.” Some of the jokes I don’t even get: “You can’t use