Donna changed her grip shifting most of the weight from her right hand to her left. She left the plastic shopping bag hanging from her right wrist hoping to balance the weight more evenly. It had been a long walk from the parking lot. The vase and bag, which both seemed so light when she first picked them up, were now causing her arms to cramp.
Peering out through the bouquet, she carefully makes her way down the long hallway toward room 204 and her co-worker, Richard.
Donna doesn't mind bringing the flowers. She didn't mind collecting the money, shopping for the card or any of the other trivial tasks needed to show Richard how much he was missed at the office. It would have been easy to go online and order flowers to be delivered but she liked delivering them personally. Truth be told, she liked Richard.
The money she collected paid for the flowers and the card. There was even enough left over for her to purchase several bags of individually wrapped treats. She had called ahead and spoken with the floor nurse; Richard was not on a restricted diet. In addition to the bags of dried fruit, nuts and granola that she had purchased, Donna added several Saran Wrapped packages of her secret-recipe brownies - Richard's favorite.
"Knock, knock," she said standing in the doorway and hiding her face behind the flowers.
"Donna, how sweet!" Richard, who had always been healthy and active, looked old and tired.
Donna looked around for somewhere to put the vase and noticed that there were no other flowers or cards in the room. "Everyone at the office misses you. They all send their best and John said to tell you that he knows how much you enjoy them so he's saving all of the receivables for when you get back."
Richard tried a hearty laugh but quickly broke down into a series of hacking coughs.
Uncomfortable just standing there watching him cough, Donna pulled over a molded chair and sat down in it. She expected it to be hard and unyielding and was pleasantly surprised at how well the chair conformed to her shape. She assumed that the decision to use a solid surface chair rather than a cushioned fabric was for health reasons: this chair could be disinfected with a wipe.
The sound of Richard's coughs combined with his sallow complexion worried Donna. She wanted to know what was wrong with him, she wanted to help, but she didn't want to appear nosy. "Is there anything I can do for you?" She knew that Richard lived alone and had no family in the area. "Is someone looking after your place and checking your mail?"
Richard thanked her and indicated that his neighbor was looking after his place.
Looking over at the card and the bag of goodies sitting next to the flowers, she wondered if she should give them to him now but ended up deciding that she would wait until she was leaving as it would give her the opportunity to hold his hand or possibly give him a quick kiss on the cheek.
Donna tried to keep the conversation light and moving but after a few minutes it began to drag. She fidgeted with the parking pass, absently bending it backward and forward. When she realized what her hands were doing she stopped. She didn't want to crack the pass and causing herself an unnecessary delay getting out of the lot.
After an uncomfortably long pause, Richard started talking. "It's funny, you do everything right: you eat right, you exercise, you don't drink or smoke, and you still wind up in here."
Donna wanted to ask about his condition but thought it best to just let him talk.
It took a minute before he started speaking again. "Two weeks in ICU. It took them that long to figure out what the problem was and to get it under control. And do you know what it turned out to be?"
Donna said nothing, just shook her head.
"Plastic."
"You're allergic to plastic?" she asked, amazed that she had never heard of anyone with a similar ailment.
"No, not allergic, deficient. Turns out that I don't have enough plastic in my system."
"Are you sure?" The words were out of her mouth before she realized how they sounded. She tried to soften them a little, "I've never heard of that before."
"It's called hypo-plastoma and it's not as uncommon as you might think."
Richard explained his condition and the treatments.
"So, the tube under your nose is delivering gassified plastic not oxygen?" She had no reason to doubt him but it was hard to believe what he was telling her. She wanted to know more about his condition but she didn't know what questions to ask.
Sensing her discomfort, Richard explained further. "Turns out that humans can evolve pretty quickly. In just two generations we have been able to alter our basic physical makeup to include elements in our environment. Some people, like me, evidenced the shift quicker than others. This is probably because, like me, my parents were health conscious and always drank bottled water. The bottles were leaching plastic gases into the water. Our bodies took it in these foreign compounds and assimilated them into bone, muscle and tissue structures."
Richard broke into another fit of coughing that was more violent and longer lasting than the first. When it subsided, he continued, "Once they get the level of plastic in my system properly adjusted I will just need a daily supplement and annual monitoring."
Donna didn't know what to say. She considered Richard's condition and her own use of bottled water.
She mentally reviewed all of the things she ate and drank every day, the things she used, even the things she wore.
Everything was either made from or packaged in plastic.
The ring of her cell phone interrupted her thoughts. She reached into her pocket and silenced it without looking at who was calling.
"That's the other thing that got me." Richard was pointing at the pocket with her cell phone. "It probably wouldn't have been so bad for me but at the same time that I stopped drinking bottled water I had broken my cell phone. Seems that our bodies have also become dependent upon cell phone frequencies."
He pulled open the top of his robe open exposing a small incision on the right side of his chest. "They inserted a frequency generator so I will never have that problem again."
Richard paused a moment, thinking. "It's amazing," he said, "twenty years ago they wouldn't even have been able to detect these diseases."
