“Well if you get grossed out you can always cover your eyes,” I tease her.
“Ha!” she scoffs, twisting sideways and flinging her arm out so she can start flipping through the controls on the TV. After a series of menu screens, the show begins with some predictably cheesy music and a dramatic narrator.
Though I wasn’t expecting it, the show is pretty interesting. It is all about how there had been a practice of surgically modifying people to stitch their organs into place. They thought there was a epidemic of organ displacement, resulting in fatigue, fainting, even heart attacks. Their solution: creating netting to arrange organs in a sort of internal trapeze.
Most of the show is voiceover and reenactment, with a lot of Victorian drawings and actors with waxed mustaches.
“This isn’t very gory,” I shrug, wrapping my arm around her as she wiggles into the space next to me.
“This episode isn’t,” she agrees. “But wait… there’s a twist.”
“The surgeries are unnecessary?”
“What!” she gasps, annoyed. “You’ve seen this one!”
I laugh, pulling her closer so I can bury my nose in her hair. She smells like flowers or something. Some kind of girly shampoo I noticed in the shower.
“No… I have just heard the story before. When people started using x-rays diagnostically, it appeared as if everyone’s organs had sunk from the places they were supposed to be.”
She squints at me suspiciously, a sly smile twisting her pouty lips. “Yeah, exactly. Because all their drawings had been done from cadavers.”
“Cadavers that were dissected while they lay on their back!” I finish. “Is it funny? I mean everybody made an assumption about what they thought they already knew. A new technology changed everything. It took a while to adjust.”
“Probably messed up a bunch of people’s lives,” she adds.
The garage door opens and closes, and Cass comes in, limping and grimacing. When he sees Libby, he straightens immediately, valiantly pretending that he wasn’t just acting like he had sprained his ankle.
“Hey, are you okay?” I call out, because I know it will annoy him to have to admit it.
He shoots me an accusatory glare. “I’m fine,” he growls. “Just a cramp. No big deal.”
“A cramp!” Libby calls out with an inappropriate amount of cheer. “I can help with that!”
He shakes his head suspiciously. “No, that’s okay. I just need to stretch it out a little bit.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she sniffs as she climbs off the sofa.
I stifle my reflexive resentment that Cass yanked her attention away from me. She skips over to him and jumps up to kiss him on the cheek, then bounces past into the kitchen and opens the freezer. I hear the clatter of ice cubes going into a bowl.
“Go ahead and sit down,” she directs him, pointing. “I’ll be right over.”
Cass limps dramatically in my direction. I swear he’s doing this for an Oscar.
“Guess you got to move over,” he smirks at me as he lowers himself onto the sofa, getting his sweaty legs in my personal space.
“Looks like you’re getting old. Maybe you should take it easy.”
“Really? That’s how you want to play this? I will kick your ass up and down the street to shut you up if I have to, and don’t you forget it.”
“I’d like to see you try it, gimpy.”
“All right, both of you. Knock it off,” Libby huffs as she returns, sitting in between us and pulling Cass’s leg gently onto her lap.
Curious, I watch what she does. She removes his shoe, her brow furrowed in concentration. Then she walks her fingers up and down the back of his leg until he winces like some kind of drama queen.
“Okay, there it is,” she announces.
“Don’t cry,” I suggest helpfully.