As part of my post-Acomplia therapy, I rang the foreman down at the factory. He said they were keeping my old job for me. In fact, truth be told, he said they were missing me. The younger kids couldn't hack it at all when it came to the kind of work I could do in my sleep, so the sooner I got back to work the better for everyone.
I told him I'd do my best to get back in another month. I was bored to tears and needed a rest from all this sickness. He told me he'd seen a piece in the paper about Acomplia, but before he could start on about it, I told him I was all lined up with prescriptions for it. He laughed and said they would miss me standing outside in brass monkey weather just to get my fix of nicotine.
It was odd that people outside were talking about Acomplia. I'd thought it was just a doctor thing but, when I asked the nurses, they laughed and said the French company that makes Acomplia was laying it on thick. They were cracking on it was the dawn of a new era. Too much weight? Take Acomplia. Want to quit smoking? Take Acomplia. Scared to quit smoking 'cause you'll put on weight?
I got the message. We were all being programmed to run round to the doctors to beg for this new wonder drug. The NHS was really gong to catch a cold on the bill for all this Acomplia.
But they said doctors had already been primed not to write prescriptions like confetti. No matter how good this Acomplia might prove to be (and they all seemed to think the jury was out on that one), doctors were only going to give it to deserving cases like me. They can really take the piss.
Apparently, there's this thing called the BMI which I always thought was the British Motor Industry, but it turns out it's to measure how fat you are. You take height and weight, shake it all about and it comes out as a number. If you're like me - they looked a big embarrassed but, after a quick huddle, told me I was nearly a 28 - I get to take Acomplia because I've had heart attacks.
They said that like I should be proud. Not everyone has heart attacks and lives to tell the tale. In America, do they give survivors a purple heart? Turns out that the NHS has said you should be at least a 30 before you get Acomplia, but they're making a special exception for people like me who are more at risk of dying young. Actually, they said I was old enough to die naturally and didn't need the heart attacks to help me on my way. Like I say, they can really take the piss.
But these nurses are good for me. Since Molly started rattling the bars of my Acomplia cage, I'd been feeling a bit down. Joking around with these girls was good for me. Having talked to the foreman, it looked like I was planning to keep on living. Now it was all going to come down to the mixture of fear and to see whether I could hack it or not.
In the meantime, the girls were banging on about whether I was cuddly. They seemed to think that love handles were all well and good, but it was knowing which of all mine they might hold on to. Instead of a six pack, they were counting a couple of dozen bottles in there.
