Hen approached my geri chair, where I lay with my lower lip trembling. I was crying big tears, snot coming out of my nose, choking. I just couldn’t control my feelings. I was so ashamed. I didn’t want him to feel still worse. It felt like someone stuck a spoon in my heart and twisted it. Hen always looked after me. He knew me since I was little. We were solid. He gave me a hug and said, “Don’t you worry about a thing, sugar britches. Everything is going to be all right.”

I said the same stupid thing to him I always said after dialysis. “See you later, alligator.”

The ultrafilters on my machine took three liters of water out of me after that. I can’t urinate; the machine does it for me. Losing all that water at one go is a shock to your body. I had cramps, my knees hurt, and I itched everywhere, but I put on my winter coat and staggered to the bus stop. Dixie and Vera T. Bailey, who is slightly retarded but nice, offered me a ride home. I should have taken it. I should have gone back to the clinic. People actually get angry with you if you don’t ask for a stupid ride. They all seemed like mechanical people to me. Machines and robots like the damn Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz, who was so fake he wrecked everything in that movie. What a bozo.

The next day Mickey and I bought a four-gallon BiOrb aquarium at the Goodwill. It looks just like a crystal ball. It came with a filter, bubblers, air stone, and magnetic algae cleaner. It was just too cool for words. I was so happy, I couldn’t wait to get home and fill it.

Mickey said, “Looks like Seven Cent got him a fifty-five-dollar crib.”

I hugged Mickey and kissed him until some Goodwill shoppers told us to “go get a room.”

“We don’t need a room, what we need is a mortgage,” Mickey said.

Ha-ha.

The BiOrb was the talk of treatment; at the clinic, twelve midnight to four A.M., I went on and on about it. Finally Dixie said, “Most of the stuff you get for Christmas is crap you don’t want, just stuff you have to get rid of, a used piano or something. An anvil.”

Ha-ha.