I ate candy and potato chips each day, and watched all the best movies. I felt terrible. I went to see Doctor Bronner. I told him, “Sometimes when I start to cry I forget how to stop.”

Doctor Bronner picked up a clothing iron. Doctor Bronner hit me upside the head. I saw black.

I woke up in Doctor Bronner's basement. I was naked and strapped to an operating table. Doctor Bronner stood over me. He grabbed a fistfull of my hair and pulled so hard I thought he would tear my head off my neck.

He said, “This operation is brand new. It’s experimental. It’s dangerous.”

Doctor Bronner tore out all the hair on my head. My tender bald scalp burned. Doctor Bronner turned to the hair on my chest, arms, legs, groin. Using tweezers, he ripped them all out, one-by-one. With each hair, he listed off a new danger.

I might lose my ability to speak. I might forget how to add two plus two. My penis might stop working. My insides might turn to outsides.

Doctor Bronner strapped a metal device to my face that forced my mouth wide open. He held a little itty-bitty silver hammer and little itty-bitty metal pick. He set the tip of the pick against my top-front tooth. Doctor Bronner tap-tap-tapped the hammer on the pick. My top-front tooth cracked.

Doctor Bronner broke all my teeth. He said, “Way deep down inside every person is a tiny little sliver of something wonderful.”

Doctor Bronner stuck surgical tongs into my open mouth. He gripped my tongue. He yanked my tongue out of my mouth like a songbird with an earthworm. He said, “You let us hear hints of your wonderful when you laugh.” With a sharpie, Doctor Bronner marked a long black line down my chest to my stomach, its tip cold and wet on my skin. “We get a little tiny taste of your wonderful when you kiss. Your wonderful spills right down your face when you watch a very sad movie and can’t help but cry.”

Doctor Bronner pressed the point of a scalpel to the line on my chest. Doctor Bronner sliced. He opened up my torso like a curtain opening up at the start of a play, he opened me up like opening night. He said, “But you hide your wonderful.” Doctor Bronner took a bonesaw into my torso and carved. He worked hard. Sweat dripped from his forehead. “You are so full of hateful ugly thoughts they’re sprouting red from your pores like pimples. You see an old woman and you think old. You see a fat woman and you think fat. You see yourself in the mirror and you think hate hate hate.”

Doctor Bronner put down the bonesaw. Doctor Bronner slapped me, punched me, kicked me. He screamed, “You hide your wonderful. You are hiding your wonderful from me. I will find it.” Doctor Bronner reached his gloved hands into my open torso and pulled and twisted. Doctor Bronner yanked out both my lungs, shoveled out my stomach. He held my beating heart in his fist. He squeezed. My body deflated like a wet balloon.

Doctor Bronner worked all night long. Doctor Bronner gasped. He stuck a tweezer in my chest. Delicately, elegantly, joyously, a princess with a teacup, he lifted a shining bloody sliver the size of a toenail out of my ruined body.

They put my sliver on television. They put my sliver on every station. They broadcast my sliver via satellite all across the world. They wept at the sight. They strapped my sliver to a space probe and launched it on a tour of the solar system to show off to all the other planets. Look what mother made. Look what Mother Earth’s cooked up this time.

On a morning news talk show, when asked to explain his operation, Doctor Bronner said, “Way deep down inside every person is a tiny little sliver of something wonderful. But think of yourself. I can find your wonderful. I can show it to everybody. But think how much of you I’d have to cut. I take their teeth so they cannot bite. I take their lungs so they cannot scream.”

Thousands flocked to Doctor Bronner’s operating table. Like beautiful baby lizards from scaly eggs, slivers of wonderful climbed out of their shattered bodies. Radiant, and perfect, and they called it love.