The Backup

Soren was sitting up in the hospital bed when Maya came in, holding a jar of pickles like it was flowers.

"You look terrible," she said.

"They took a piece of me out," Soren said. "I get to look terrible."

She put the jar on the tray table and sat in the plastic chair. "Which piece?"

"Appendix. It got infected. The doctor said it was the useless one." He shifted, wincing. "She actually said that. She said, don't worry, it doesn't do anything, we all have one we don't need."

Maya unscrewed the pickle jar and offered it to him. He shook his head. She took one and bit it.

"That's a weird thing for a body to keep," she said, chewing. "A part that doesn't do anything."

"That's what vestigial means. Leftover. Like the tailbone."

"The tailbone anchors muscles," Maya said. "That's not doing nothing."

Soren looked at her. "Okay."

"I'm just saying, every time somebody tells me a part does nothing, it turns out it does something and they hadn't looked hard enough." She held the pickle up, examining it. "Why is it there, though. In a spot where it just gets infected and tries to kill you."

"Bad design."

"Bodies don't do bad design for hundreds of thousands of years. They lose things they don't use. You don't have gills." She pointed the pickle at him. "So it's still here. It's still costing you. Which means it was paying for itself somehow."

Soren reached for his notebook on the tray table. His hand moved slow because of the stitches. He opened it and wrote appendix / where is it / what's around it.

"It's tucked onto the big intestine," he said. "Little dead-end tube. Off to the side."

"Off to the side of where all the bacteria live," Maya said.

He stopped writing.

"The gut's full of bacteria," she went on, faster now. "Good ones. The ones that help you digest. My mom takes those pills when she's on antibiotics because the antibiotics kill them all." She sat forward. "What happens when you get sick, Soren. Really sick. In the gut."

"You get diarrhea."

"Which is your body flushing everything out. Everything. The bad bacteria and the good ones. Rinse the whole pipe." She was gripping the pickle jar now. "So after, your gut is empty. Wiped. How do you get the good ones back?"

Soren looked at the ceiling, thinking. "You'd have to grow them again. From whatever's left."

"From whatever survived the flush," Maya said. "And what would survive a flush?"

"Something off to the side," Soren said slowly. "A dead-end. Where the flushing doesn't reach."

They looked at each other.

"A little tube," Maya said. "Tucked away. Full of the good ones. Protected."

Soren's pen was moving. He wrote reservoir. Then he underlined it.

"It's a backup," he said. "It's not leftover. It's a backup copy."

"When the storm hits and washes out your whole gut, the appendix is the one closet the water didn't get into." Maya set the jar down. "And after, it opens the door and lets the good bacteria back out to spread everywhere again. It's a seed bank."

Soren stared at the wall for a second. Then he pressed the call button clipped to his blanket.

The nurse who came in was young and moved like he had eleven other rooms to get to. "You okay? Pain?"

"No," Soren said. "Question. When people get their appendix out, do they get gut infections worse afterward? Do they take longer to get better?"

The nurse stopped. He actually looked at Soren. "That's not a normal question."

"Is it a yes question," Maya said.

The nurse thought about it. "There's research on that. People without an appendix, they get certain gut infections come back more. The nasty recurring kind. They repopulate slower." He shrugged. "There's a theory the appendix stores good bacteria. Keeps a stash safe." He glanced at the door. "Nobody told me that in school either. I read it after. Weird organ."

He left.

Maya turned to Soren very slowly. "The doctor told you it does nothing."

"She said we all have one we don't need."

"She was wrong," Maya said. Not mean. Amazed. "A grown-up doctor, holding a knife, was just wrong about what she was cutting out."

Soren looked down at his stomach, at the bandage under the gown. "So it did do something."

"It did the most important thing. It kept the backup safe." Maya's voice got quiet. "Every time you were ever sick, really sick, and then you got better and felt normal again, that was it. That little tube reopening. Sending the good ones back out. "

Soren was quiet. He put his hand flat over the bandage, gently, the way you'd say goodbye to someone.

"I'll be okay, though," he said. "People are fine without it."

"Slower," Maya said. "You'll get better slower now, from the gut stuff. Your body will have to rebuild from the leftovers every time, without the closet." She picked the pickle jar back up. "But it'll still rebuild. That's the wild part. There's more than one backup. There's bacteria on everything. It just won't have the good clean copy anymore."

"I had a clean copy of myself," Soren said. "And it's in a jar somewhere in this hospital."

"In a much worse jar than my pickles."

Soren laughed and then grabbed his stitches and stopped laughing.

Maya set the pickle jar on the tray table beside his notebook, screwed the lid on tight, and slid it toward him.

"For after," she said. "For when your gut needs the good ones back and you don't have the closet anymore."

Soren picked up his pen and wrote, under the word reservoir, one more line. Then he turned the notebook around so she could read it.

It said: what else did they say does nothing.