The Helper 1

CW: Pretty significant slob

 I knocked on the door and I heard a voice through the window. "Hey. Over here." I turned and through a lighted window I can see a hand beckoning through a curtain. I walk over to it. "Here." It says, in a breathless female voice, and offers me a key. "Let yourself in. Just turn right off the hallway when you get through the door." A little confused I return to the door, unlock it, and make my way in carrying my delivery. I started delivering for a delivery app a few weeks ago to make some extra money. I'm trying to save up enough money to quit the dead end job I hate and move. With two jobs though, I'm pretty tired. Since delivering food I've seen plenty of overweight people, men and women both but nothing prepared me for what greeted me when I entered the living room of the narrow prefab house.

The first thing I noticed was the smell. An overpowering level of body odor, and piss. Next is the bed. It's the widest hospital bed I've ever seen and it's right next to the window the hand came through. It's back is to me and I can just see a head. I walk through the room and the next thing I see is the woman.

She is far and away the fattest woman I've ever seen, or ever imagined. Greasy hair frames a massively round face. A double chin jiggles as she breaths audibly through an open mouth. Her nose, practically swallowed in her fat cheeks is being fed oxygen through a tube but apparently it isn't helping. She's pulled a sheet over herself, it used to be white, now it's stained with food and... other fluids. Below the sheet, a massively pale white belly, covered in stretch marks and pockmarked by scabs, falls onto enormous thighs that push her legs away from each other. Huge hips are near the edge of the bed. Motionless feet are practically swallowed in swollen calves, one of which is covered in a compression bandage. She looks about 50 but she's probably only in her early 40s, her body is barely recognizable as human. "I don't bite." She says, when I freeze. Her voice is thick and weak, as if her windpipe is constricted and talking is difficult. I blink and then I walk forward, crossing the old floor that sticky in places. "It smells delicious." She's eying my collection of bags with glee. She takes a deep breath and then coughs a few times clearing her throat, and she passes gas at the same time, adding to the smell of the room. She glances up at me. "I'm sorry." She said. "But I lost the ability to control that a long time ago." She gestured around. "I haven't walked in five years certain things become unimportant. Now, dinner?" I offer her the bags and she wheezes as her breathing speeds up. It takes me a second before I realize she's excited. "See that table on wheels?" I look at it. There's an identical one in front of her, with a laptop, box of kleenex, and two liter bottle of Orange Soda. She takes the bottle of soda and I gingerly move the other table, before, piling them on the empty one. As soon as it's within reach, she's pulled over her left thigh with a grunt and a wheeze. She takes one of the boxes, opens it up, and starts to demolish a chicken strip, chewing with her mouth open. "Thanks." She mumbles.

I turn to go. "Wait." I turn back around. She's paused in the middle of ripping apart a bread roll. "Are you able to stick around? I'll pay you. $100 if you help me with a few things. I'll need you to toss the garbage when I'm done. That kind of thing" I blink. "Oh. Sure." She waves towards a chair. It's a normal recliner type chair, and probably the cleanest thing in the room. I take a seat. "I'm Jeff." I offer.

"Michelle." She replies. "Don't talk, I want to eat." She's machine like, it's unreal. The chomping, slurping, grunting... It reminds me, a little uncomfortably, of the time I fed the pigs at a school trip to a farm. She eats rapidly, jowls bouncing as she chews, everything washed down with swings of orange soda. I look around the room. There's a TV mounted to the wall, muted, with a rerun of Cops playing on it. A grey box is humming and seems to be feeding her oxygen. A large 55 gallon trash can is across the room. There are shelves of medical supplies in plastic totes or cardboard boxes, each labeled in marker. Some are words I've never run into before. "Chux Pads, Cannulas, 5x9s, Elastic Bandages." Others are recognizable, or at least I can guess. "Gloves, Wipes, body powder." There's a small rolling cart near the bed, just out of her reach with four drawers. On top is a small white plastic tray. They're also labelled "Morning, Noon, Night, PRN." I can see pill bottles inside. I can see a grey cart, like those used in warehouses. There's a bucket on the bottom of it, and the top has a box of gloves, two large stacks of blue/white fuzzy things, and a plastic tub. It takes me a minute to realize it's a plastic baby wipe container. There's a belch and I look back at her. I can see her face, it's almost dreamy. She farts again and doesn't seem to notice it. I notice the smell, it's absolutely rancid. She's over halfway through her meal, and it's going in record time. I thought I was picking up a dinner for a family of 6, and a hungry family at that, but she's showing no signs of slowing down.

After about 15 minutes she lets out a belch that rattles the light fixture. "That's better." She pants. I wordlessly start collecting her trash. I move the table out of the way, dropping everything into the large trash can. "Would you get me a second bottle of soda?" She asks. "In the kitchen? Oh, and I guess... could you also bring the clear pencil case in there? Not the pink one, the clear one." I make my way to the kitchen. It's almost sterile and completely untouched. The fridge hums loudly in the corner. I open it up. The entire bottom shelf is nothing but two liter bottles of soda. There are two pencil cases on the top shelf. The pink one says "Eyedrops" and the Clear one says "Insulin." I take a bottle of soda and the insulin into the other room. She's pulled the old sheet up a bit and I can see more of her belly. It's in two huge obese folds that almost, but not quite, swallow a cavernous belly button. A large adhesive bandage, stained, is on her left lower fold, and a couple bandaids are on her upper belly folds, one on each side. "I'm going to need the little white tray that says meals... There's a little cart with wheels somewhere..." I take the white tray. Sure enough it says "Meals." I step close to her. This close I can really smell her. Even her breath which I can smell as she pant/breaths through her open mouth stinks. For a couple minutes there's a pause as she uses her phone to check her blood sugar on a little white disc embedded in her fat upper arm. I notice how the fat droops down, hanging over her elbows. She takes a hand wipe and cleans her hands and drops it back in the tray. Her hands aren't fat, if anything they're rather on the small side, even for a woman. She takes an alcohol pad and rubs it on the top fold of her belly. It comes away stained dark and she repeats the process three more times till the pad comes away clean. "Will you help?"

"Sure." I reply, "But I don't know anything about injections."

"I'll do that. I just need you to put the bandaid on, it's hard for me." I nod and open one up. She takes the insulin pen and pokes herself with it. There's a click and she removes it. Instantly watery blood starts to pool up. I press the bandaid down over it and I immediately see why it's hard for her. Her belly is almost fluid, it's... it's got to be like trying to patch a water bed. My hand sinks into it but I get the bandaid secured. I collect the garbage and return the tray to the small table. "While you're there, would you just hand me the one that says "night?" She asks my back. I hand it to her. There's a collection of pill bottles in there. She starts taking them as I toss the garbage, and return to the kitchen to put the insulin in the fridge. I returned and collect the tray of her nighttime meds and return it to the little cart. "I'm paying you." She says. "I promise."

"Thanks." I mutter, feeling awkward. I don't hear her pass gas this time but I can smell it. "I appreciate it. I need the money."