Stitches: A Memoir Versions of Reality Quotes

Or, you know, kill you. But that's almost like curing… er… never mind.

The fetuses on the shelf in the hospital where David's dad works are arranged in order of size and stage of development. In this frame, David sees the largest fetus open its eyes and look at him. Small child alone in hospital at night, being stared at by dead fetus = lifelong nightmare fuel.

When the fetus climbs out of the jar and chases David—it can run surprisingly fast for a fetus—David makes a mad dash to the elevator before the fetus can catch him. However, he was sock-skating in the empty hallway when he discovered the fetus, and he forgets his shoes. He returns to reality when, in the safety of the elevator, he looks down at his feet.

In his hungry, bed-without-supper nightmare after losing his shoes, David dreams of falling into a vortex, pulled in by the evil fetus. Other objects in the vortex include a key, a string of pearls, and a cowboy doll. The vortex looks a lot like a trachea with no vocal cords.

David's response to his brother showing him gross pictures of tumors is to escape into a fantasy world. In this panel, we see him getting the yellow towel that becomes his long hair when he pretends to be Alice in Wonderland.

The most immediate physical difference six-year-old David sees between himself and Alice is her long, blond hair, which he assumes is a source of power. Towel on head: problem solved. (Don't you wish it really were that easy? We'd have giant beach towels on our heads all the time up in here.)

David rests his head on his drawing and gets sucked down into it. He slides down a big esophagus into a giant stomach full of cartoon characters, which look like early Disney drawings. As David slides down to meet them, his face turns cartoonish like theirs, and his ears turn into mouse ears. If he can't fit in with the kids on the playground, he can fit in with a stomach full of happy creatures.

In David's dream the night his grandmother scalds his hands, he sees his own funeral. His grandmother is there, but it's the Jesus on the crucifix who hangs over his casket and repeats her words. Like all the other adults who populate David's world, Jesus looks angry and sinister.

As David stands in the bathroom looking at his neck in the mirror, he sees that the shape of the growing lump looks similar to a pregnancy. He imagines the dead fetus growing in there, and it gets clearer with each panel, until it's just about to open its eyes again.

After David sees his stitches for the first time, and then sees his mom after seeing his stitches, he dreams of a little bat who sees an umbrella and thinks it's his mother. But when the bat opens the umbrella, it's broken, and he's alone and wet.

In the preceding panels, teenage David sits in his first therapy session with his arms crossed, scowling. We don't see the therapist at first; we just see his words intruding on David's panels as speech balloons. In panel 4.21, we finally see him—and he's the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, setting his stopwatch to time the session.