The doctor was showing me the guy’s charts. He was six feet– almost seven feet –tall. His Drug tests had come back negative, clean.

  “He has a resting heart rate of twenty,” said the doctor. He was an old man, with a white beard, and liver spots. “Do you know who has a resting heart rate of twenty?”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “No one Mr. Alvarez, no one.”

  I pretended to look shocked. The man’s unnatural physique was why I was there.

  “How about this, do you know what the lowest ever recorded BPM in an athlete was?”

  “No clue,” I said, “enlighten me.”

  “It was a long distance runner from England. Twenty-seven beats per minute! Twenty seven! Your man has beaten that long standing record by seven whole beats.”

  “Astonishing.”

  “It’s more than astonishing Mr. Alvarez. It’s uncanny. The man has a body from out of this world!”

  The doctor chuckled to himself and walked over to a board with black sheets clipped to it. He flipped a switch and the sheets revealed themselves to be brain scans. They were top and profile views. A noticeable dark spot could be seen near the frontal lobe in both pictures.

  “When he first arrived, we feared that his amnesia may be due to brain swelling, as brain swelling can be a side effect of steroid abuse. Once you see him, I’m sure you’ll understand why we suspected steroids. Anyway, we didn’t find any swelling.

  “Now,” continued the doctor, pointing to the dark spot on the brain scans. “What we did find was evidence of a removed glioblastoma. I know what you’re thinking, but no, the glioblastoma was removed from the motor cortex, not the hippocampus, it does not appear to have anything to do with his memory loss.”

  “I see,” I said, scratching my chin. “Is that all?”

  “More or less, yes, Mr. Alvarez. The extra tests your charity had us run did not reveal any other abnormalities. His pituitary gland was healthy, and growth hormone production was within normal.”

  “Great, our guy is completely ordinary, besides his amnesia and the fact that he could out-bench God.”

  The doctor laughed. “Precisely.”

  He finished his debrief, then led me through the hospital, stopping at a door with a file holder hanging on it. There was room for six folders, but there was only one just then. In a plastic slide underneath the folder was a slip of paper that read “John Doe”.

  The doctor grabbed the folder off the hanger and opened the door to let us in.

  Inside, sitting on a bed, was a man in a stringy tank top, and gym shorts. The tank top was black, with red and green stripes that went down until they lined up with matching stripes on his shorts.

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  Besides his clothes, the first thing I noticed was his height. He was taller than me, but whoever had taken his height had either been blind or using a bad measuring stick. He was definitely six feet and some change, but nowhere near the seven feet that had been written on his chart. There was also a green tinge underneath his skin, like he was holding back his stomach, or just about to fall ill.

  “Mr. John Doe,” said the doctor, “meet Mr. Fernando Alvarez, he’s the representative from the charity that’s taking you in.”

  “Hey Bro,” said the gentle giant, rising to greet me.

  “Hey,” I replied, taking the hand he offered.

  He had a firm handshake, and a kind face, there was a softness to it somehow, despite the hard lines of his chiseled jaw. Actually, the whole of him was chiseled. He looked like a marble statue.

  “It’s nice to meet you Fernando. Can I call you Nando?”

  “Sure.”

  “Nice,” he said, then he started scratching his head, suddenly finding something interesting to stare at on a nearby wall. “Uh… I’d give you my name, but…”

  “I know. Don’t worry, we’ll find your name. In the meantime it’s nice to meet you, John Doe.”

  The big guy smiled, and his cheeks flushed red, as if being an amnesiac was something to be embarrassed about.

  The doctor must’ve read John Doe’s expression as one of anxiety, because he moved to put a hand on one of his massive shoulders and put on a comforting coo.

  “Don’t worry John, Mr. Alvarez’s people were very thorough, no expense was too great when it came to finding the root of your amnesia. I’m sure you’re in good hands.”

  “In the spirit of being thorough,” I chimed in. “Doctor, would you mind if we took his height again? It might just be me, but the man on your charts was supposed to be nearly seven feet tall. John is tall, but not nearly seven feet as reported.”

  “Hmm,” hummed the doctor. “I don’t see why not.”

  The doctor had a nurse retake John Doe’s height. In the meantime I took the opportunity to ask about the pallor of John Doe’s skin. The doctor claimed to not see anything off about the color, and the nurse, when she returned, agreed that he looked healthy.

  “Six feet and five inches,” said the nurse, returning with her new measurements. “Huh…”

  The doctor checked his charts and raised an eyebrow. “That’s six inches short of what I have written here,” said the doctor, addressing the nurse, “you were the one that took his height when he arrived. Weren’t you?”

  “I was…” said the nurse, growing unsure. “I’m sorry, I don’t know how I could have gotten that so wrong. I must’ve been tired. Again, sorry.” Her apology was sincere, I think, but so was her confusion. She doubted the mismeasurement.

  “Hmm,” hummed the doctor, “let’s not let that happen again.”

  The doctor turned to address me.

  “You’ll have to forgive us Mr. Alvarez, I assure you such mistakes are anomalies at our hospital. To err is to be human, yes?”

  “I suppose it is,” I replied. “What about his skin? You’re sure it seems fine?”

  The doctor and nurse both nodded their heads and reaffirmed that they believed he looked well.

  “We’ve been attending to him ourselves this whole week,” said the doctor, “if anything was amiss with him we’d have noticed it by now.” That or it came on so slowly you didn’t notice.

  “Yeah,” chimed John Doe. “I feel fine bro, really.”

  The nurse’s confusion weighed on me. I wasn’t assured, on either front, about the height or the faint green beneath his skin, but there was no arguing with the group’s consensus.

  John Doe was released to me with a clean bill of health, and an amendment to his medical charts.