The Body Chapter

No page of any protocol fixes a body that changed. This is the chapter that did not fit in the notebook.

It is reference, not a programme: find your decade in the table on page six, read your row and then read his, and most of what you are about to recognise is in those two rows.

Eighteen pages, four parts. What the second shift actually changes and in what order, and the four mechanical problems sitting behind almost all of it. Dryness and pain — the causes, the answers, and what to ask for by name, because the appointment goes differently when you can. His body in the same decade: what changed for him, what he has not said out loud, and the four sentences that are safe to say. Then five corrections, the practical hour, and the worksheet.

One rule runs through all of it: take the mechanical reading before the emotional one. In twenty-six years of files the mechanical reading is right far more often — and it is the only one of the two with an answer you can buy in a chemist.

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