Pat stood before the steamed-up mirror. His face was gray, minus his nose, which had turned bright red at the tip. Can’t shave. He had acne and a staph infection on his chin that was irritated and wouldn’t close, and his skin felt too raw, thin, and dried out. He combed his hair, his scalp riddled with dandruff and itching madly. He blotted the condensation off the mirror and looked into pink, rheumy eyes that ran dry and then too watery. A small sty was forming on the lid of his left eye. His left leg was bad this morning, way too stiff, like it had fallen out of its socket at the hip. The instep of his left foot was pulsing with something called plantar fasciitis. His neurologist had sent him to a podiatrist, pretty sure it wasn’t part of the MS, and the foot doctor explained it to him by talking about the silver skin on a raw chicken. It wasn’t just the foot; the sheathing of his heel, ankle, leg, and torso were all either too loose or too tight. Strung out or worn away. Pat leaned into the mirror, studying his dark, desiccated pores. He reached into the drawer for a Q-tip and dug at his ears, which were clogged with wax the color of soot that cracked like rocks on his eardrums. He brushed his teeth gingerly; his mouth was full of canker sores, and his tongue looked like it was smeared with white paint. Too painful to Listerine. He spat out the toothpaste—when he wasn’t drooling and sucking spit into a swallow, his throat had a dry catch to it. He toweled himself off, his underarms and sides rashed from the starch in his shirts. He held the towel in a trembling hand with skinned knuckles. Don’t remember how I did that. There had been too many falls lately. A wave of nausea crashed over him as he bent down to dry himself, his head like a weeble wobble that took forever to right itself. When he stooped over there was a sharp pinch in his gut. Like my appendix is about to burst, or something, probably my liver. Feels untucked. His stomach rumbled, but he had no appetite and for the past week had had watery, unpredictable bowel movements that would suddenly swell within him and result in panicked, hobbled dashes to the toilet before he lost control. Pat stood still to regain his balance, his hands flush against the sink to stop their shaking. Gripping things all the time to stop the tremors made him realize how weak he felt. He had just taken a lukewarm shower and his body temperature was unable to calibrate. Sweating and shivering at the same time. The towel slipped off, and he couldn’t catch it before seeing all of himself in the smudges of the defogging mirror. Can’t remember the last time I got him up. And when he tried he found himself holding his breath for so long he nearly passed out. So he just gave up, his thing limp, blue, and shriveled, his jock itching with the same staph infection from his chin, and he had to rub calamine through the crack of his ass, his taint, and the crevice between his leg and his gut. He tried to clear his head with a cleansing breath but came up hacking, a lingering bronchitis that wouldn’t go away and produced dirty brown phlegm.