“I was always shocked when I went to the doctor's office and they did my X-ray and didn't find that I had eight more ribs than I should have or that my blood was the color green.”

“When the initial pain of shock wore off, I thought it strange I should feel the pain of his slap in my chest, but I did, and it hurt more than I ever thought possible.”

“I told a doctor once, "Doc, if you want to know what's inside of me, put down the x-ray and pick up my novel!”

“I guess that's what my dad did. Stopped agreeing with reality. I could do it for as long as it took me to get from my classroom to the office. He managed it for sixteen years. He must have had more mental discipline than me. Or maybe it wasn't that much of an effort to pretend that I didn't exist.”

“I wonder if I were to have an X-ray at the little hospital, would the machine see my grief? Is it like rust, arheum about the heart?”

“We really should get some X-rays,” the EMT said. “You just want to fondle my extraneous body parts,” I said to the EMT.”