Stephen King – Stationary Bike
Stationary Bike
I. Metabolic Workmen
A week after the physical he had put off for a year (he’d actually been putting it off
for three years, as his wife would have pointed out if she had still been alive), Richard
Sifkitz was invited by Dr. Brady to view and discuss the results. Since the patient
could detect nothing overtly ominous in his doctor’s voice, he went willingly enough.
The results were rendered as numeric values on a sheet of paper headed
METROPOLITAN HOSPITAL, New York City. All the test names and numbers
were in black except for one line. This one line was rendered in red, and Sifkitz was
not very surprised to see that it was marked CHOLESTEROL. The number, which
really stood out in that red ink (as was undoubtedly the intention), read 226.
Sifkitz started to enquire if that was a bad number, then asked himself if he wanted to
start off this interview by asking something stupid. It would not have been printed in
red, he reasoned, if it had been a good number. The rest of them were undoubtedly
good numbers, or at least acceptable numbers, which was why they were printed in
black. But he wasn’t here to discuss them. Doctors were busy men, disinclined to
waste time in head-patting. So instead of something stupid, he asked how bad a
number two-twenty-six was.
Dr. Brady leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers together on his damnably
skinny chest. “To tell you the truth,” he said, “it’s not a bad number at all.” He raised
a finger. “Considering what you eat, that is.”
“I know I weigh too much,” Sifkitz said humbly. “I’ve been mean ing to do
something about it.” In fact, he had been meaning to do no such thing.
“To tell you more of the truth,” Dr. Brady went on, “your weight is not so bad, either.
Again, considering what you eat. And now I want you to listen closely, because this is
a conversation I only have with my patients once. My male patients, that is; when it
comes to weight, my female patients would talk my ear off, if I let them. Are you
ready?”
“Yes,” Sifkitz said, attempting to lace his fingers across his own chest and
discovering he could not do it. What he discovered—or rediscovered, more properly
put—was that he had a pretty good set of breasts. Not, so far as he was aware, part of
the standard equipment for men in their late thirties. He gave up his attempt to lace
and folded, instead. In his lap. The sooner the lecture was begun, the sooner it would
be done.
“You’re six feet tall and thirty-eight years old,” Dr. Brady said. “Your weight should
be about a hundred and ninety, and your cholesterol should be just about the same.
Once upon a time, back in the seventies, you could get away with a cholesterol
reading of two-forty, but of course back in the seventies, you could still smoke in the
waiting rooms at hospitals.” He shook his head. “No, the correlation between high
cholesterol and heart disease was simply too clear. The two-forty number
consequently went by the boards.
“You are the sort of man who has been blessed with a good metabolism. Not a great
one, mind you, but good? Yes. How many times do you eat at McDonald’s or
Wendy’s, Richard? Twice a week?”
“Maybe once,” Sifkitz said. He thought the average week actually brought four to six
fast-food meals with it. Not counting the occasional weekend trip to Arby’s.
Dr. Brady raised a hand as if to say Have it your way…which was, now that Sifkitz
thought of it, the Burger King motto.
“Well, you’re certainly eating somewhere, as the scales tell us. You weighed in on the
day of your physical at two-twenty-three…once again, and not coincidentally, very
close to your cholesterol number.”
He smiled a little at Sifkitz’s wince, but at least it was not a smile devoid of sympathy.
“Here is what has happened so far in your adult life,” Brady said. “In it, you have
continued to eat as you did when you were a teenager, and to this point your body—