Hi, my name is Toe Jam and I am an addict.

Toe Jam wanted a thin wife. Supermodel, hot and thin. He wanted to save money on groceries and spend it on boob jobs and lip filler and framed cover issues featuring his super-hot-super-model-super-thin wife.

Have you ever wondered what it would feel like to be in a coma? You’re a child in a car on your way home from your grandparent’s house pretending to be asleep, hoping your mom will tell your dad how much she loves you and he’d respond by saying maybe it’s time you got a brother. Then, when you get home, he’ll carry you to your bed and save you from the walk from the car to the house. 

Toe Jam knew it wouldn’t be like that because he would pretend to sleep in the car and his mother would say how she wished he was never born and his dad would slam on the brakes to make sure he was awake to get himself in the house. Toe Jam wondered what it would feel like to be in a coma. He wanted his supermodel wife to hold his hand and cry her super tears and tell him she loved him.

His wife wasn’t a super model because he had spent his high school years with undiagnosed and untreated anxiety while his parents went through a divorce where neither parent wanted him so he got pinned on his grandparents who didn’t want him either. High school was spent pinching his eyelashes between his thumb and his pointer and tugging at them so they’d pull his eyelid from off his eye, the hair would slip, and the lid would make a satisfying popping noise against the wet of his eyeball. He’d repeat this over and over until he had ripped out all of his eyelashes. Eyebrows were next. Then he moved to his scalp where he worked the hairline back. Little piles of hair would collect in the corners of his desk in class until he graduated with bald patches. In a couple of years, he became 21 with a toupee that he didn’t know how to put on correctly. 

Toe Jam married Jane and Jane said she liked to hike.

Have you ever wondered what it would feel like to be in a coma in the woods? 

She hadn’t gone on a hike since she was a freshman in college and her doctor had told her she was overweight prediabetic and if she didn’t start working on it soon, it would progress into type 2 diabetes. She was too embarrassed to go to the gym or walk on the outdoor track by her house. In the woods, the only thing that could see her were deer and the round nodules of trees that sometimes looked like eyes. Jane hiked twice when she first got to campus, and she didn’t make it past the second marker either time before she got too tired and had to turn around. The weather started to get cold and she told herself she’d start again in the spring when it was warm again, and for now, she’d focus on her diet. But, first year, first semester as a fat girl made her crave nothing but empty carbs and the college put fruit in the cakes sometimes and said they were vegan, so they must be at least a little healthy, right?

Toe Jam married Jane in his late 30s because he thought he was running out of time. Her dating profile app was a headshot from her senior portraits even though by the time she made her profile and Toe Jam found it, she was 12 years out of college. Toe Jam thought she looked like she could’ve been a supermodel. They dated for six months and he proposed to her in the canned food aisle of the supermarket. A storm front was moving in and Jane was the type of woman who liked to prepare for every sprinkle by buying 50 dollars worth of canned food and bottled water ‘just in case’.

The packaging on this delivery looks nice. I think I might keep it and reuse it for Christmas this year, or maybe a birthday, or maybe I could use a part of it for a page in a scrapbook, or tie it to be a ribbon for a young girl’s hair. Toe Jam, we should have a baby together!

Clearance from the doctor: Toe Jam’s attempt at stalling reproduction. The world didn’t need more of Jane’s genes, he thought. She kept her grocery lists, the bags they came in, and the coupons the little machine printed when you were finished checking out that most people leave on the machine. She said they were tied to memories. This one was the time we bought bananas to make bread.

Did we ever make that bread? Did we ever eat those bananas? Honey, there are flies in the kitchen and it smells like something has died behind the cans of corn – the corn by the sink, not the corn by the kitchen table. 

The doctor gave Jane clearance to call her insurance company and beg them to cover routine insulin. She had gained 47 pounds since her doctor had marked her as a risk for type 2 diabetes and she had stopped hiking. She stopped moving for the most part. Sometimes, Toe Jam thought, she smelled like the dead thing behind the corn by the sink. 

Insurance covered one vial of insulin a month, even though Jane’s doctor had her on a plan that called for closer to two vials, but she was unemployed and Toe Jam wasn’t making enough to afford prepackaged gallons of water bottles, 10 for 10 soup deals, and their oven was covered with the dishes from the last times they had cooked because their sink was filled with the rotting food in Toe Jam’s attempt to contain the mold. They had to eat out most nights, and Jane thought that every McDonald’s burger wrapper would make good origami paper if you wiped the mustard and ketchup off and ignored the beefy scent. 

Hypodermic needles punctured every hoarding mound. Toe Jam couldn’t walk barefoot anymore unless he goes outside. 

A guy at work has a diabetic daughter. Type one. He tells Toe Jam she’s eight now but he’s worried about what will happen when she’s older. She’s the type to go to parties, and a drinking diabetic is a dangerous diabetic. She was high last night, he tells Toe Jam, but her new pump alerts me and my wife. We got it all under control. High was a word Toe Jam reserved for altitude and drugs, and he never thought of his wife’s injections as drugs even though that’s all they really were.

Have you ever wondered what it would feel like to be in a coma? Try 20 units, Toe Jam, and you’ll find out! You’ll hear mom and dad in the front seat, and maybe this time they’ll want you. 

Jane’s diabetes is getting worse. She needs two bottles a month, she’s getting less than one. Toe Jam has gained 15 pounds in the past month. Who needs money for a boob job when insulin gives him one for the low price of his wife’s foot?

Doctor Consultation 2: Amputation. 

There’s an infection on her foot. 

Mr. Jam, how often is she moving around? Do you ever take her for walks? 

No Doc, she says it hurts too bad and takes too much energy. 

You really should walk her. 

She’s not a dog, Doc. 

Toe Jam understood why Jane wanted to keep the Mcdonald’s wrappers and the designed delivery packaging when he was taking her insulin. Their needle infested, maggot breeding grounds took a different light when he was high. He thought it was unfair that his coworker’s 8 year old daughter got to do this whenever she wanted to, and Jane did too. She should share more. He has had to move out of their bed, his side is covered in needles and defecation. Try 30 units, maybe even 40, whatever it takes Mr. Jam!

Sleeping on the couch didn’t work. It smelled like mildew and when he turned on his side, among the piles of wrappers and cans, he would see his wife’s severed, swollen foot. It spoke to him sometimes. Mr. Jam, you did this to me. You did this. This is YOUR fault. When he was awake, he would hear the foot thumping around, knocking things off boxes, its infected toes flapping against anything it could trying only to get Toe Jam’s attention. 

Have you ever been in a coma? Toe Jam has. 

His wife couldn’t get out of bed, but he wasn’t answering her hollers and it was time to redress her amputation. Quick dear, I don’t want another infection. She has a phone next to her bed, one of the old land lines that don’t have a screen for caller ID. She called out a few more times before calling 911. 

It’s not an addiction to the drug, I’m addicted to the feeling. I wanted to be in a coma. I wanted that foot to leave me alone. With the things Jane had to go through, I felt powerless.