“Franklin, your paintings are absolutely lovely. The textures are fantastic and the subtle hues that you’ve used here are just marvelous.”

            All around my room were hung a dozen or so paintings. Paintings I had made. All of them, paintings of poinsettias; scientific name Euphorbia pulcherrima. The Aztecs called it Cuitlaxpchitl, literally meaning “excrement flower”. Ironic considering they also regarded the flower as a symbol of purity. Just goes to show you what little they knew about true cultivation.

            “Tell me Franklin, why poinsettias?”

            Dr. Telly was not your ordinary doctor. She didn’t wear a white coat, no stethoscope around her neck, no fancy charts or expensive pills. She was one of those New Age healers. She said a little creative expression could help cure any disease. As I fall deeper and deeper into old age, I am under increasing pressure to receive more medical care. Last January, I underwent surgery to replace the weakened joints in my left knee; I was stuck bedridden for weeks after. Next came my spinal fusion surgery. Six months and a few thousand dollars later, I was able to walk with only a cane. I grew tired of crippling myself over what surgeons told me was my “best option”.

            When my son-in-law recommended I see a different kind of doctor, a doctor like Dr. Telly, I thought of the horror stories I’d heard. Mrs. Perkins lived across the street from me. She went to a New Age healer and ended up poisoning herself into even worse health than she had been in before. Too much quinine or some homeopathic bullshit. Even professionals will tell you that while the results are dramatic, the consequences of an overdose are worse. Sure, it’s all natural, but so is cyanide.

I was tired of failed surgery attempts, so I searched the phonebook for the nearest alternative healer.

That’s how I found Dr. Telly.

            “Have you ever done art before Franklin?” she asked on my first day to her home-office. “Studies have shown that any artistic release can benefit the body as well as the mind more than any synthetic medicine can.” Picasso was nearly 92 when he died, she said. Michelangelo lived to be 89 and Giotto to 70, both during a time when life expectancy was only 35. “Historically, artists have led the longest lives of any profession.”

            That’s how I started painting.

            There was a popular story that spread in 1919 that told of a young boy, an infant, in Hawaii who died after eating a poinsettia leaf. Every Christmas since then, newspapers across the country have featured articles regarding the toxicity of the plant. The truth is, while ingesting a poinsettia leaf may cause some vomiting or diarrhea, the amount necessary to kill a man would be far greater. For a man my weight, it would take about 1,500 leaves.

            At an average 0.0025 pounds per leaf, that’s four pounds of poinsettia leaves.

            “Ever since I was a boy”, I said, “I’ve had an affinity for poinsettias. Every Christmas, my grandmother would lay out poinsettias of every color and height all around her house. It may sound corny, but they really speak to me. They have such natural beauty.” That was a lie. “They’re really the only things I can paint.” That wasn’t a lie.

            “Frank, I think you may have found your curing muse. It’s only been two weeks of painting and you already look so much better. Don’t you feel better?”

            “Honestly, I do.” Honestly, that was another lie.

            I continued painting the same thing over and over again for nearly a month. Some were in watercolor, others in acrylic, and a few in oils. Dr. Telly continued to comment on the excellence of my work and my excellent health, even though a doctor of her kind does not believe in diagnostics. Then, one day, the painting stopped. I didn’t paint a single leaf the entire week.

            This concerned Dr. Telly.

            “Why Frank? Why stop now when you were healing so well?”

            “I just don’t feel like it. I don’t feel inspired anymore.” That was a half-lie, I never actually felt inspired.

            “I’m worried about you Franklin. Already your health seems to be deteriorating. Help me out here Frank and tell me, what can we do to make you better again?”

            I told her how my vision of my grandmother’s old house with its forest of poinsettias in every room, my fake grandmother and her fake obsession, had ceased to excite me anymore. I told her that my muse had become old, faded, wrinkled.

            “Ah yes”, she said, “All the artists, even the greatest of them, lose their inspiration at some point. Working so diligently on one subject can become very taxing on the mind. Clearly, we need to reintroduce interest in your subject.”

            It was, in her professional opinion, necessary to try and recreate the magic that I felt walking through my grandmother’s house. My fake grandmother’s fake house. So, as an act of charity, Dr. Telly offered to buy however many poinsettias, easels, and paints I would need to renew my artistic spirit.

“There were a lot of flowers”, I fibbed to her, “at least 100.”

The very next day, Dr. Telly surprised me at my ranch home with 150 blooming poinsettias in every color, shape, and size. Just like make-pretend grandma’s house. They were set all across my home; the bathroom, the living room, the kitchen, and my bedroom.

“What do you think Franklin, will this be enough to make you healthy again?”

Yes, I told her, and that to begin my recuperation, I would need to be left alone until I contacted her. I would need time to create, I said. I made all the necessary phone calls to my family and then unplugged the phone line. To get better, I would need complete seclusion.

I promptly began my work in the bathroom. Plucking the first flaming red bract, I was ready to take health into my own hands for once. Evolutionary theories state that the ability to taste bitterness was developed to alert the senses to poisonous substances. The first bite was awful and the second was no better. One leaf down, 1,499 to go. They were horrible to say the least, but by the time I was done eating every leaf in the bathroom, the taste had become more of a nuisance than anything.

Next came the kitchen. It was about this time that swallowing became difficult. I was starting to feel the effects of the toxins and throwing up seemed imminent. Now, my quest had become a race against time. I stopped taking bites and switched to swallowing entire handfuls. Before long, my body began rejecting the toxins in the form of bile, the gooey clear substance that gives vomit its distinct texture. It dripped out of the corners of my mouth, accumulating quickly on the floor. Still, I kept chewing.

The leaf count being somewhere near 800, I realized how foolish I was being. Eating the leaves was a waste, liquefying them would be much easier. I grabbed all the leaves I could in both hands and ran to the blender to make a poinsettia cocktail. Not the white wine and cranberry juice kind, but the deadly poison kind.

Just as my finger depressed the frappe button, my body couldn’t take it anymore. My stomach felt like it was going to blow up or rip apart. Collapsing on the floor, I spewed out vomit beaded with chunks of red, yellow, white, and pink foliage. I passed out some time shortly after and my bowls emptied shortly after that.

I woke up here in the hospital, the last place I ever wanted to be, with Dr. Telly sitting to my right.

“Frank, thank God you’re alive!”

Dr. Telly arrived at my house moments after I passed out, realizing she had forgotten to give me my paints. Of all the preparations to forget, how could I not think to close the blinds? If only I had, she wouldn’t have seen me lying there with shit in my pants and my face covered in rose-colored vomit. I could be dead right now. No more doctors, no more pills, no more hospitals. It would have all been so perfect.

Then the real doctor walked in. “Well Mr. Wiler, it was close but we’ve saved you. We pumped your stomach of what your friend here tells me were poinsettia leaves, is that right?”

I had nothing to say to this dick, but Dr. Telly did.

“Let me explain. I’m his alternative health care professional. Frank here was just trying to absorb himself in his subject. It’s entirely fault, I pushed him too hard.”

Not the answer I would have given, but it seemed pretty solid, so I followed along with it.

“Regardless of how it happened, we’ll need to keep you here Mr. Wiler for observation to make sure all the toxins are out of your system. Also, you’re severely malnourished, so we have a synthetic protein mix injected there in your wrist.”

He went on telling me how long I would be incarcerated here, living in a bare-ass bathrobe and shitting in a bedpan.

           No more doctors, no more pills, no more hospitals. It would have all been so perfect.