"It's just too bad," folks would often say. At first, I thought it was just their way of coping; of merging their sickened condition into the general malaise of life. But what I know about this town now could kill.
It was the kids that went first.
They started wasting away. Failure to thrive, that's what Dr. Benway called it.
Despite being next to a pork processing plant and an Walmart, and being fed off a highly caloric breakfast of bacon and Mountain Dew everyday, the kids started to lose weight.
Nobody ever suggested it could've been something in the water, because in this backwater town, kids were not raised on water.
But Dr. Benway kept on doing his diligence as a family Doctor, and kept on watching these kids wasting away.
It was three weeks after a third of his pediatric patients had their rib bones protruding from the chest when he decided he had to speak to the city council.
There is something amiss going on in this town. There is something medically incorrect.
And they searched, looking through the toxic waste dumps, looking for medical records, looking for anything that could substantiate the claims.
They found nothing.
No matter how hard they searched...
There was nothing left to find...
So Dr. Benway continued to draw more blood, always looking for an answer.
Just a little bit more, I might need this to find a cure
He was always so gentle, with those little ones...
And their parents would complain of being tired.
Dr. Benway would offer to draw more blood,
Telling them:
I just need a little bit, and then I can do tests, to see why you are so tired...
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