Marcellus announces he now weighs sixty pounds and prepares for his examination, which begins, as always, with the yellow bucket. Dr. Santiago removes the tank top and lifts a bucket holding seven scallops to the rim. She nudges his mantle with a net, though Marcellus would have entered willingly for fresh scallops.

As the anesthetic seeps through his skin, Marcellus’s limbs still and his eyes close. He recalls first encountering the bucket on day thirty-three of captivity, when it alarmed him, and how he has come to prefer the bucket’s total nothingness to the overwhelming everything-ness.

Dr. Santiago carries him to the table, where his arms trail on the concrete, and folds him onto a plastic scale. She gasps, “Whoa, big boy!” Terry asks about the weight, and Dr. Santiago reports an increase of three pounds since last month.

Dr. Santiago questions whether Marcellus’s diet has changed. Terry says not to his knowledge but agrees to double-check. Dr. Santiago calls the gain abnormal and requests a review. Marcellus, privately self-satisfied, considers himself a special case.