Dolly

    The old bus shelters in downtown Portland huge bulbous ovals with translucent bubble roofs, all brown, seventies retrofuturism at its zenith. A few years after I moved here they replaced them all with minimalist slabs of glass to keep homeless people from huddling inside them. Aside from having no character, these new bus stops are no protection at all from the rain, especially the way it’s raining today, driving sheets blown sideways by the wind. By the time my bus arrives, I’m drenched. Amazing to live in a world that hates homeless people so much it’s willing to make everyone else wet and miserable in its efforts to shoo them away. 

    I attempt to doze on the bus without much success. I disembark, roll down the hill, and stop outside the hospital to peel the thick layers of gluey leaves from my scooter wheels. 

    I get the usual woman at the counter and spew out my name and date of birth before she can say anything. “You didn’t give me a chance to guess,” she says. 

    “Next week,” I promise.

    Karen opens the door for me immediately, looking cozy in a fuzzy pink Columbia jacket. Rogue wisps of hair curl out from her pulled-back hair. She asks me how my trip was and I tell her and she says, “Hoo boy.” 

    My blood pressure is high but she says she’ll retake it when we’re done. She unwinds my poorly-wrapped bandages and says, “Huh. This looks…” She pokes at the bottom of my foot a bit then calls, “Shelley? Can I borrow your eyes?”

    Shelley comes in and says that it looks healed over. “I thought so too,” says Karan. “I can’t tell what’s under there though, so I’m going to wait for the doctor before I enter anything.” Just as she smears the Lidocayne on the foot, Dr. Thompson pokes her head in. She’s wearing her Baby Yoda cap. She asks how my trip was and I tell her and she shakes her head. 

    She leaves and the shoe guy appears, surprising me. He holds my new insert in his hand. “I just wanted to double check where the hot spots are,” he says. He holds the insert up to my foot, takes it away, makes some marks on it in pencil. He shows me how he’s made the arch extra high to take more of the weight off the front. He says he’ll see me in a week or two and vanishes as suddenly as he appeared.

    The doctor comes back in, followed by Vicki and Karen. She wipes off the Lidocayne and starts carving carefully at the callus. She tried to blow a crumb of skin off the end of her knife, bust since she has a mask on, nothing happens. She laughs. “What was I thinking?” 

Karen laughs too, and says she worked in a respiratory pediatric ward for a while, and the kids would blow out their birthday candles by undoing their tracheotomy tubes. “There’s lots of footage on TikTok if you want to see,” she says. I don’t really want to see.

The doctor cuts slowly and cautiously and says, “It’s hard all the way through. There’s no wound here.” 

    “Hooray!” says Vicki. Karen beams. 

    “So what did we decide to go with, football?” the doctor asks Vicki. 

    “Football,” she confirms. 

    “I know I was skeptical at first,” the doctor says, “But I’m glad I let you guys talk me into doing these. They really are better than those stupid soft casts.” She tells me she doesn’t want to cut too much callus because the skin around it is so raw, so she’ll to the rest next week. “I don’t want to leave it there too long though, it’s like having a stone in your shoe.”

    “Are the footballs new?” I ask Karen when the doctor leaves. 

    “Yeah,” she says, preparing the cotton batting. “We’ve only been doing them for a couple of omnths.”

    “What was wrong with the soft casts?” I ask. 

    “We hate the soft casts,” says Jenny, poking her head in. I ask her what was wrong with them but she just asks me how my trip was and I tell her. “Well whatever you did back there healed your foot up,” she says. She talks about her daughter’s new cat, and then her own cats, and then we talk about my cat. I ask Karen if she has a ny pets and she says she has a Daschund with alopecia named Dolly. 

    She finishes the football and fetches my scooter. Before I get on, she says, "Oh wait, your blood pressure." She takes it again and it's perfect. I don’t feel elated about the good news- I’m  not sure I’m capable of elation at this point- but I do feel good about it. It’s not even four but it’s nearly dark outside as I make my way up the hill in the rain, trying to avoid the sticks and acorn caps, accumulating a fresh skin of wet yellow leaves as I roll along. 

The Microphone

  We drive to Reading along route 222, just like we did countless times when I was a child to visit our grandparents. A lot has changed along the highway, of course -there are now a number of traffic circles meant to ease congestion, but so far have done nothing but cause a lot of accidents- but the basic landscape looks the same. Old farmhouses and barns stand surrounded by fields of corn, all very pretty and timeless, with rolling wooded hills in the distance. I can feel this scenery in my marrow, and I try not to get upset by the inevitable housing developments and warehouses devouring it.

Despite the signs pleading not to, my stepfather tailgates everyone who isn't going fast enough for him, which is everyone. I try not to look at the tremor in his right hand, which has not gotten any worse since the last time I visited, but has also not gotten any better.

We pass the old water park and the hill where people used to hang glide. We pass where Sittler's mini golf course used to be, with all the safari animals; I always wanted to stop there but we never did. We pass where our car broke down once and we had to wait by the side of the road for help. We pass my friend’s house, where a car drove right through her living room wall. We pass the turnoff to the discount grocery store where Jasmine and I went once, returning with a trunk weighed down with dented cans and mysterious foreign brands. 

When we get to Reading, we head to a part of town I've never been before. The care facility is at the end of a cul-de-sac lined with dilapidated row houses. There's no parking lot so we park between a dumpster and a motorboat that looks like is has not been on the water since the eighties. We're the first ones there, and we watch as cars squeeze into spots along the street. A number of people who look much too old to be my relatives get out. There are my mother's remaining three sisters and their partners, along with two of my cousins and one of their wives, and that's it. Aside from some other cousins and their kids, this is all that is left of the family. 

After the usual greetings and hugs we all file into the care facility. The staff lines up in the main room to introduce themselves and offer their condolences. I never once came here to visit my aunt. I tried to remember the last time I'd seen her. It was at the last family Thanksgiving I had attended, which I promised myself would be my last. That was nearly a decade ago. I’ve kept my promise.

We are led to the back of the building, where there is a small chapel. I'm startled to see my dead aunt there in the wide-open casket, looking very serene. Nestled in her arms is a stuffed toy of the girl reindeer from Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer. I hear my mother say our grandmother insisted the coffin be oak.

I sit down in the back of the room and lean my crutches against one of the walls, which are lined with stained-glass windows with images of various saints. My brother comes in, which surprises me; he had to work and I thought he wasn't coming until later. My mother and my aunts all take turns to say goodbye to their sister. They greet the priest as he comes in and strides up to the coffin. 

"Stacie! So good to see you!" Father Pham tousles my aunt's carefully-combed hair, grips her hair, and continues to talk to her as if she was alive. He turns to face the sisters. "You know what I will miss the most about Stacie is when she would see me and yell, FADAAAA!" Everyone laughs. He beams. "FADAAAAA!" 

Father Pham goes up to the alter and invites the family to help tuck Stacie in, which her sisters do. “I just want her to keep warm,” one of my aunts says. A younger, harsher version of myself would crack a joke about there not being any doubt of her being warm where she’s headed. But the current, aged version of myself sees the value in keeping his mouth shut around his family. 

Eventually they close the lid and wheel the casket into the middle of the aisle. Everyone takes their seats and the staff wheel in the other patients from the facility; there were only five, including my aunt, and they are all wheelchair-bound. A woman who looks remarkably like Stacie is parked next to me. She grips a giant purple ring in her mouth, I assume to keep her from grinding her teeth. I smile and say hello but she just stares into space.

The priest starts the Mass, and an enthusiastic man named Keith calls out in a gravelly word after every few sentences.

"My English here is as bad as Keith’s," the good Fadda says, “But they know I am here. Most of them are very happy. They know only that Father is here, not what he is saying." 

"Amen!" shouts Keith. 

These days I only go to Mass when there’s a funeral attached, but I attended church every week when I was a child.  My parents spared me from Catholic school, but made me go to catechism classes for years. I served as an altar boy all through middle school. But while I may still know all the prayers by heart, I have never seen a service quite like this one.

Keith barks out the first gospel reading, assisted by one of the attendants. They lean the bible on the casket as they read. My mother tells me later that Keith has known Stacie since they were children and had been in and out of many of the same programs over the decades. 

The attendant does the second reading. “Even though I walk in the shadow of the Valley of Death…”

“You got it Mama!” yells Keith.

During his homily, Father Pham goes on at length about suffering, though due to his rough English it’s difficult to grasp much of what he’s saying. “Where soul? I don’t know. Heaven. Suffering, suffering. She used to sit right there. She used to say, ring the bell, ring the bell!” He pauses, looks down, then looks around. “There’s nothing good in the present. Eating, sleeping, suffering. Look at them. Look at them.” 

When he finishes the homily, he begins the ritualistic consecration of the host. As the priest raises the thin moon of the wafer, Keith screams “Ring!” The attendant rings the bell. 

After the mass they wheel the coffin out through a side door, then everyone else files out to the main room for lunch. I wait until everyone else has gone, then take a seat on the end so I can get up easily. One of the staff helps me carry a plate of food from the kitchen. There is spaghetti and pizza but I just take some meatballs and salad. My brother sits next to me and my mother sits across from him. Across from me is a very pretty young woman. My mother talks to her as if she knows her and the woman starts to cry. My mother squeezes her hand. This woman loved my aunt more than I did. All of these people had more meaningful relationships with her than I ever did. 

Most of the people who stand up to eulogize her are caregivers, with the exception of my uncle, who gets up twice. He repeats the line I keep hearing my family say, which is that they didn’t expect Stacie to live past nine. The truth is that people like her with Rubinstein-Taybi syndrome tend to have a normal lifespan, provided they get good care. My aunt was born just a few years after the disease was first named. 

I try to think of some anecdote I could share, but my memories of my aunt, while vivid and intense, would not make for interesting stories. Should I talk about how our grandfather would bring her along as he led us in long walks around the neighborhood, or hikes through the local suburban woodlands? About how the two of them would take naps on the bed together after the family’s epic junk food banquets? Because that is how I picture her. Should I get up and describe in detail her room, where my brother and I spent many hours when we were kids, with its John Davidson and David Cassidy posters, the stuffed Muppets, the innumerable Barbies? Should I describe her belting out Frank Sinatra songs into her Donny and Marie microphone? I can picture that microphone perfectly, can feel its weight in my hand. Is this all a life is? An accumulation of meaningless, idiotic details?

A slight man in a black suit gets up and introduces himself as Bibi. He sings a gospel song, then launches into a long, meandering eulogy, much of which is incomprehensible. I find myself distracted by two very attractive women in miniskirts who are hanging out in the kitchen, eating cheesecake with plastic forks from Styrofoam plates. Just when it seems he will never stop, Bibi sings another gospel song, then suddenly sits back down. I assume he's a patient but it turns out he works there. 

The crying young woman offers to show us Stacie's room, which has not been cleaned out yet. The walls are covered by a mural of a magical fairyland, complete with a castle and a princess who has my aunt's face. The bed is completely covered in Beanie Babies. 

My brother offers to drive me to the cemetery, where they lower my aunt into the ground next to my grandparents. A few feet away is a fresh gravestone for a Korean War veteran who died a few weeks ago, just shy of his hundredth birthday. 

On the way home I tell my brother that I found the whole event surprisingly moving.

"The staff seems to genuinely care for her," I say. 

"Well sure, they don't have a choice, they're all Christians," he says. 

"I don't know, I think there’s more to it than that," I say.

"Nope," he says. 

The GPS takes us home by a different route because of a horrific accident that happened hours before. A car crashed head-on with a Jeep and was then struck by a tractor trailer. A teenaged girl and a toddler were killed.

"That priest was really something," I say. 

"Oh yeah he was amazing," my brother says. "But that food was awful."

Football

 “You want the ramp?” the bus driver asks. 

“Naw, I relish the struggle,” I say. It’s not really much of a struggle; I’ve become such a pro at this I barely have to pay attention to what I’m doing. 

“I know, but last Friday you said you were pooped and needed the ramp,” she says. 

“Well I’m feeling better today,” I say, plopping down onto a seat. I’ve never seen this woman before in my life. 

The streets downtown are bustling, but not with the murderous hordes of Antifa that the administration claims are burning the city to the ground. The only wars here are being fought against Fentanyl and steadily rising inflation. The vacancy rate of the office buildings downtown is up to 15% with no signs of relief. The majority of the shop fronts are empty. But the city remains quiet and peaceful. Blank walls are papered over with posters with the latest symbol of resistance, the Portland Frog, saying DON’T OBEY.

The driver does lower the ramp when I get to the hospital, so I can trade places with another man with a knee scooter. “You’re in a Cadillac compared to mine,” I say to him. He chuckles.

The woman at the counter is the same one as the last few weeks. “I know I promised I’d remember your name…” she says. 

“But you don’t,” I say sadly. 

“I remember your birth date because it’s the same as my mother’s,” she says. “Just remind me of the year.”

When I get to the elevator, it’s full. The next car that arrives is going down, so I wait again. Only one of them seems to be working. I eventually make it upstairs, where Bridget opens the door to greet me.

“Now you won’t be here next week, is that right?” she asks as she leads me into the big room. 

“That’s right. Or the week after that.” 

“So we obviously won’t be putting you in another cast. Are we giving you a football? Do you want one?” 

“I would love a football,” I say. “I mean, really, I was hoping you would ask. Also, what’s a football?” 

I take off my shoe and Karen wheels in the saw with a glint in her eye. “You’re probably an expert at these by now,” I say. 

“You can call me Saw Master,” she says, and proceeds to slice the cast off smoothly and easily. She peels off the wrapping and inspects the padding for drainage. “Looks like it slipped again,” she says. “But it didn’t do any harm. This looks much better than when I saw it last.” Bridget agrees, and enters the numbers as she measures. It’s nearly half the size it was last week. 

“We don’t need to take a picture this week, but I’m going to take one anyways, so you can see,” Bridget says. She hands me the phone. The wound looks horrifying, but I have seen enough of these awful photos by now to know that she’s right, it really is looking much healthier. 

She turns her computer screen to show me what a football is. It’s just a huge ball of cast wrap wound around the foot, kind of a less-intense version of the total contact cast. 

Jenny pops her head in. “Actually Doug, the guy in the next room, loves them, and he’s pretty cranky, as he himself will tell you. I’m putting on him right after you. It’s done wonders for him.” I tell her I think I may have had one and she tells me I haven’t.

There’s a spot of red showing through the foam bandage on my knee, but underneath is nothing but a huge scab. Karen takes a tweezers and gently tugs it off. “Are we calling that one closed?” asks Bridget.

“Closed,” says Karen, peeling off a few stray scraps of scab. I imagine how satisfying it would feel to pick it off but she doesn’t leave me any scraps. As she writes some notes on the white board, I look down shamelessly at her ass, not because it’s amazing or anything, but because it’s there. She’s wearing bright purple pants and a lilac sweatshirt for Zion National Park with some poorly rendered mesas on the front.

Dr. Thompson comes in and is extremely pleased. “Would you look at that. Just look at that. Stunning. Are we doing a football? Good, you’re going to like that. You still need to stay off it as much as possible though.” I file “as much as possible” away in case I need it. 

 She shaves some callous and says she’s taking next week off as well, to study for her recertification. When Rachel asks her why, she says she wants to be a missionary. I’m curious but I don’t want to distract her from concentrating. 

 When she’s done, she tells me I’m to wear the football for ten days, then take it off and cover the wound with a small square of Hydrofaera, a foam dressing I’ve used before. I tell her I think I’ve also had a football before, but she also says I’m wrong. 

“We’ll see you when you get back,” she says, leaving Bridget to do the actual footballing by herself. 

She immediately hits a snag; she doesn’t have enough cast wrap. The entire department is out. “I thought you called down to supplies,” she says to someone. 

“They said they didn’t carry that barcode,” a voice I don’t recognize says. 

“That’s ridiculous. We get it from them all the time,” says Vicki. “They must mean they’re just out. I’m calling down there now.”

“We need enough for Doug too,” says Jenny. 

“Code Gray in ER room 5,” says the loudspeaker. “Code Gray in ER room 5.”

“But I’m right here,” I joke.

Bridget starts the football anyways, measuring out lengths of wrap then winding it tightly around my foot and ankle. “I’m half a roll short,” she says. She opens all the cupboards in the room, then leaves to scour the rest of the office. When she comes back she asks, “Would you mind if I run downstairs for a bit to try to track some down?” And here I had assumed this would be a short appointment.  

She’s gone for what feels like a long time. When she returns the whole office cheers. 

“Where’d you find it?”

“Well somebody told me maternity had some, so I went there first, and they looked at me like I was crazy. So I went to the OR on three and they had a ton.”

“I don’t know what they’re doing down there in supplies,” grumbles Vicki, “But they better get their act together.” 

“Let’s get a move on. I don’t have all day here,” says someone I assume is Doug.

“I thought you liked spending time with us,” says Jenny.

Bridget finishes binding my foot, then covers it with layers of that stretchy beige wrap I love because it sticks to itself in s satisfying way. She pulls a thin stocking over the whole thing and Karen, perched on a stool outside the open curtain, says, “Aw, what a cute foot. It’s so little.” It’s true; even with the bulging bandages, which do somewhat resemble a football, my toeless foot appears oddly petite, no doubt because i've grown accustomed to how huge it is when swaddled in four rolls of Fibreglass casting. It feels so light, and I can move my ankle, which feels wonderful. 

Bridget gets me a new cast shoe and I’m finally free to go. I text my friend to let her know I’m done; she’s driving me home so I can give her the keys to the apartment so she can feed the cat while I’m gone. I leave out the side entrance and sit to wait on the bench where I sat so many times while I was receiving hyperbaric treatment. It’s a bleak view of the busy street and narrow parking lot. A house directly across the street is for sale; I can only imagine how noisy it must be to live there, between the traffic and the sirens. 

I take out my phone and arrange for a car for the airport tomorrow morning; I’ve always taken the train, but I really don’t feel like dealing with it this time. I’m nervous about flying, especially with the government shut down and the shortage of air traffic controllers, but otherwise I’m excited about my trip. If nothing else, two entire weeks without a single doctor visit sounds like a hell of a vacation. 

Born to Run

 I feel like I’m sleepwalking -or sleeprolling, rather; trapped in this rigid routine, getting through the day one revolution of these chipped and brittle scooter wheels at a time. I’m only paying as much attention to the world around me as is necessary to keep from getting creamed by a truck. Where is my mind through all of this? What am I thinking about? Even I don’t know. It’s like I’ve locked my consciousness in a kind of purgatory to protect it from becoming damaged. More damaged.

Monday morning rolls around and once again I don’t die in my sleep –my record is perfect so far. I guess I must make it to the bus on time, because I suddenly find myself at the hospital. The metal detector in the lobby is once again roped off. I scoot upstairs to find the waiting area empty aside from some cleaning workers. Eight o’clock comes and goes with no morning prayer. I was looking forward to finally deciphering its mumbled incantation.

Jenny calls me in and leads me to room two, where she takes my vitals then sits at the computer while Vicki removes my cast. We exchange the usual banal chitchat about our cats and how we spent our weekends. Vicki starts talking about an episode of Sixty Minutes about gender affirming care for children. “It’s all too woke for me,” she says. This isn’t something I feel like exploring this early in the morning, but I don’t have the energy to change the subject so I just let her drone on. Jenny says she doesn’t care what gender her kid wants to be, she would love them no matter what. Vicki has trouble cutting through the thick layers of the Thompson cast.

 I hear Shelley announce that Michael, the bedraggled man from the past two Mondays, is here. "Who wants Michael?" she calls. I don’t hear his cries of agony so hopefully he’s in better shape this week. I say “hopefully” but right now I don’t care about him or anyone else. Certainly not myself. I look around the room but I don’t really see any of it. The curtain, the whiteboard, the cabinets, the sink; they’re all still there, presumably; solid objects occupying space. I have no more interest in them than I do in Michael’s pain or Jenny's kitties or Vicki’s ideas about what constitutes "wokeness." 

Taggert comes in but for the first time doesn’t do the weekly debridement. She doesn’t even look at the wound, though Vicki tells her it doesn’t look too bad, with only moderate drainage. “Pretty soon you’ll be down to once a week,” she says. This should register as good news but I don't buy it. She sounds more low key than usual as she does the casting. I don't see her do it, don't feel a thing. I just look down and my leg is suddenly encased in Fiberglas. 

It all takes less than an hour, and I realize that if I hurry I can catch the earlier bus downtown. I race up the hill as fast as I can,  and make it with minutes to spare. I wheel aboard and close my eyes, and when I open them it’s Thursday afternoon and we’re heading in the other direction, back toward the hospital that I left just a few minutes ago.

The woman at the counter remembers my first name but not my last. She laughs and says she should know them both by now. I tell her not to worry, that she’ll be seeing me for a long time to come. 

I’m not late, but feeling a sudden surge of energy, I dash upstairs as fast as I can, speeding along the carpet of the first floor to the tiles of the fourth. Shelley opens the door before I can even sit down and ushers me into room one. Bridget joins her to do the data entry. 

Shelley takes my vitals and is excited by the results. “One forty-seven over seventy-seven,” she says. “And your temperature is ninety-seven. All these sevens!” She sounds delighted by this. 

"I should go to the casino," I say.

“What’s your pain level?” asks Bridget.

“Seven.” 

Shelley saws my cast in one go, then congratulates herself for doing such a clean job. Her tone immediately changes when she sees the inside of the cast.

“Oh no! It’s all wet. What happened? Did this seep all the way through?” She unwraps the cotton dressings, which are totally dry. “This makes no sense. Did something drip into your cast from outside?” 

She untapes the bandages on my wound. 

“Oh my gosh, this looks wonderful,” she says. "Look how nice and pink that is."

 “But it looked so bad last week,” I say, dazed by the whiplash.

“That’s how it is sometimes,” Shelley says. “Sometimes it just all of a sudden decides to get better… look, this is a bridge of healthy skin right here.” Bridget leans in to look and coos in admiration. She takes the measurements and sure enough, the wound, while still not small, has shrunk significantly.

“I didn’t do anything differently,” I say. 

Shelley shrugs and leaves and New Karen takes her place. Dr. Thompson comes in, followed by yet another young doctor. 

“This is all really good skin,” she says. “I like this a lot. What was the drainage like?” Bridget tells her it was barely moderate, and she says, “I think we’re ready to go down to once a week.”

“Wow, really?” I say. “So just Thursdays from now on?”

“Just Thursdays,” she says. 

Just Thursdays means that I will no longer have to bear the hectoring of Doctor Taggert. Of course, I also won’t get the chance to pretend I’m not flirting with KC, who has off Thursdays.  

The doctor also surprises me by having the young doctor do the slicing and scraping. It only takes a minute or two. Thompson watches him but not very closely. 

She leaves and Vicki and Jenny come in to congratulate me. Jenny talks about wanting to see the new Bruce Springsteen biopic coming out. “My husband’s the biggest Springsteen fan, and he got to see him live for the first time this year. He played three hours, it was incredible. Seventy-five and he’s jumping all over the stage.” 

“Shit, I’m only fifty-two and I can barely walk. But then again, I’m not The Boss.”

"No, and you can't afford the drugs The Boss can afford."

New Karen -I suppose it's time to stop calling her that, I rarely see Old Karen- materliaizes. As Bridget wraps my leg back up she asks her questions every step of the way, even though it’s clear that she knows what she’s doing. I almost make a joke about being afraid of being at the mercy of the two newbies, but instead I say, “You’re such pros, it’s like you’ve both been here for years.” They both look pleased. Everyone hseems pleased with themselves today. 

And I admit, my own mood feels lighter in the face of the surprisingly good news. Unlike Disassociation Monday, today I find myself trying to focus on every word and every action the nurses make. Bridget’s hair glows more burgundy than ever, and Karen’s dark eyes shine with a kindly attentiveness. The cast prep materials seem as carefully arranged as a Dutch still life. I hear a patient’s voice droning on about a recipe for chicken pilaf. Through the crack in the curtain, I watch the dry erase marker in Shelley’s hand as she crosses out a name on the daily patient board. I want to take in everything, the good, the bad, and the boring. I want to carry the entire fucking world inside me. 

I watch Dr. Thompson closely as she applies the cast, her legs splayed wide on the low stool. I look at the tight black and gray curls poking from beneath her cap, her blue-gloved hands sticking out of her yellow paper gown as she slops and splashes and rubs the cast vigorously. When she’s done, she examines her handiwork and says, “I’m pretty happy with that.” As I roll out of the office, she looks at my scooter and says, “I need to bring you a bell for that thing.”

I once again miss the earlier bus by a few moments, but it’s a nice day and I’m not in any hurry to get anywhere. The lovely woman with the long hair from last week has been replaced by a girl in a black skin-tight bodysuit decorated with a skeleton of pink sequins. It’s extremely low-cut but I am strong and do not stare too long. Life and death, fecundity and decay. The creator and destroyer encapsulated in one curvaceous figure, holding a cigarette and never once looking up from her phone.

Claw Machine

 “Hey there, are you alright? You need help?”

“Just taking a little nap.”

“Okay, I just wanted to make sure you were okay. Take care.”

I had noticed the enormous man lying on the sidewalk by the bus shelter, but unlike this good Samaritan, I hadn’t even thought to check if he was okay. It’s horrifying how easily we grow numb to the cruelty around us.

The bus is early, but luckily I got out of work on time. Mumbling something, an old man moves his walker to make room for me. 

“The situation is hopeless but not serious,” he says, staring straight ahead. I wonder if he might not have it backwards. He takes out his phone and starts scrolling. “5,496 views on YouTube. Blog has 593. I don’t want to be an influencer, I want to influence. Get the right information to the right people.” He tucks his phone into his backpack and gets off a few stops later, maneuvering his walker with some difficulty. 

His seat is taken by a young man in a plaid shirt and cowboy hat. He carries a thick, gnarled walking stick, and his left foot is sheathed in a big gray walking cast identical to the kind I used to wear. He takes out a paperback book called Claw Machine and starts to read. I don’t think I’ve ever tried one of those claw games; it seems like a foolish gamble for a disappointing prize. The claw is designed to let almost everything slip out of its grip. 

 There’s something unsettling about this guy, and after a while I realize that he never blinks. 

In the hospital lobby, I’m surprised to see that there are two security guards standing behind the metal detector, a tall Black man and a tiny white woman. I put my bag in the bin to be x-rayed and skirt the machine . 

“I didn’t think you used this anymore,” I say, holding my arms out so the woman can run the wand under my armpits. 

“We do when we have the staffing,” the man says.

The wand beeps frantically.

“Do you have an artificial hip?” the woman asks.

“Not yet,” I say. 

The woman at the desk says, “I’ve seen you before,” she says. 

“I’m here twice as week,” I say, trying not to sound irritated. She asks me to spell my name three times then says I’m all checked in.

Jenny comes out of the office the moment I sit down. “You’re in big trouble, mister,” she says.

“Please help me,” I say to an old woman in a wheelchair. She stares at me. “I’m begging you,” I say. “You don’t know what she’s going to do to me.” The woman opens her mouth and lets out a raspy, toothless laugh.

“Don’t listen to him, Eleanor,” says Jenny. “He’s just being a baby.”

She leads me to room one, which also has a new chair, though a very different model than the one in room two. This one is brown and looks like it was built in the seventies. 

She takes my vitals then saws off the cast with some difficulty. She asks how I am and I say feisty. “We’ve all been feisty today,” she says. “Must be something in the air.” 

Shelley comes in and says she can’t wait to get home and have some wine. She giggles, but turns serious when she measures the wound; in the past three days it has gotten wider and deeper. 

“Why?” I ask. “I haven’t done anything differently. There’s no reason for it to be bigger.” 

She says she doesn’t know. “It’ll start to get better,” she says. “It’s not as wet as it was last time.” The wound on my knee is also bigger. 

Dr. Thompson comes in and she says she likes my hat. I tell her I got it at a junk shop. “You don’t strike me as a junk shop kind of guy,” she says. What the hell is she talking about? My entire wardrobe is from thrift stores.

She starts to scrape at both wounds. “This is too pale,” she says. “I don’t like this at all. Not healthy flesh.” She chops and slices and keeps having to wipe the blood from her knife.  “That’s much better. Now we can start fresh.” She leaves and Shelley holds gauze against my foot to staunch the bleeding. She pulls her hand away then immediately puts it back. The blood is shockingly bright, like strawberry syrup.

“I am never going to get better,” I say. “This will just keep happening and there is nothing I can do about it but do like Taggert says and stop pretending I’m ever going to walk again.”  

Vicki comes in for a while, then Karen. Agnes even steps in to lob a few snarky comments, which I ignore. Everything is melting together. “My brain is starting to crack,” I say. Or maybe I yell it. Have I been yelling? I can’t tell. I feel like I’ve been yelling but everyone seems calm and normal, so maybe not. Maybe I’m just screaming inside my skull. 

Dr. Thompson comes back with some printouts for me. There are photos of various knee scooter cushions. 

“These are from Amazon, but they might help with the knee. And, this is saying too much maybe, but I got one of those Temperpedic beds and it didn’t work, so they brought me a new one and told me to throw out the old one, so I took all the foam out of it and used some of it for a dog bed. I still have a lot left, I can bring some in if you like, you can use it for padding.” 

She goes to change into her yellow paper “ball gown,” and comes back and asks how she looks. She has rolled up an extra set of scrubs and draped it across herself like a sash. Maybe I’m not the only one whose brain is cracked. 

She puts the cast on, splashing and rubbing and complaining, “Why isn’t this sticking? Is this defective?” When she’s done, it’s the fattest cast she’s ever wrapped me in. I can barely pull my pants down over it. 

I don’t even try to make the bus, and plop myself dejectedly on the wide concrete slab of a bench to wait.  For the next one. A woman at the other end of the slab has her back to me. Her shoulders are shaking as if she’s sobbing but she’s not making a sound.

In the bus shelter sits an attractive middle-aged woman with long blond hair who i’ve seen here on and off for over a year; she dresses like a hospital administrator. I smile at her and she smiles back; a warm, gentle smile. When the bus arrives, I get on and she follows, sitting in the very front. Her shapely left leg disappears into a walking cast. I’m seeing these things everywhere. I want to say something but she doesn’t look my way and anyways I’m sure she’s tired of creeps like me trying to chat her up.

 If only some hand would descend from the heavens to take mine, or at least clamp itself around my head and lift me from the glass box of my misery, save me from drowning in this sea of plastic eggs and cheap plush. 

The woman gets out after just two stops, like always, and waves to thank a truck for stopping for her as  hobbles across the street. She carries herself with a kind of damaged grace. I close my eyes and for a moment allow myself to imagine what it would be like to hold someone like that, to be held by someone like that, and then I open my eyes and shake away that asinine and stare out at the hard, bright world speeding by.

Unintelligible Prayers

 When I wake up Monday morning, for some reason I feel nervous about making my bus connection, so I decide to take the earlier one.

I get dressed and grab my lunch and scoot down the hall to the elevator. I press the button and nothing happens. I press it again, then put my ear to the door. I don’t hear anything. See, I think to myself, this is why I wanted to be early. 

I slowly make my way down the stairs with my scooter. The elevator is on the first floor, and out of curiosity I get in and press the button for five. It lurches to life like it’s supposed to. Did I just not press the button hard enough? Cursing my stupidity, I wheel out the door, just in time to see my bus speed past. So much for being early.  

The check-in woman is perky, and reads off the questions without waiting for an answer. “No COVID symptoms no changes to insurance no travel outside the country oKAY you’re checked in have a nice day.” 

In the waiting area I find the same man as last Monday, Michael. He doesn’t have his wheelchair or any of his possessions. He groans loudly and I ask if he’s okay. “I’m in so much pain!” he moans. “My foot got wet over the weekend and the bandages got all wet and now it hurts so fucking much.” He’s wearing a pair of New Balance sneakers, so if his foot is bandaged, it must be really crammed in there.

When eight o’clock arrives, I hear the morning prayer, or inspirational reading or whatever it is. It’s a different woman this time but she is equally impossible to understand over the background noise of the hospital. 

A minute later Vicki opens the door and calls my name. KC is standing just inside, smiling, as if welcoming me home. She is wearing deep blue scrubs with a long sleeve chartreuse shirt underneath. The contrast is striking. 

I’m even more anxious about catching my bus back than I was getting over here. I tell myself I have plenty of time, and that even if I’m late, it’s not the end of the world, but I can’t shake the anxiety. Despite this, my blood pressure is good. 

Vicki cuts off my cast effortlessly, then leaves. KC runs in and stands close to me to tell me about the show she’s watching about the Gunpowder Plot. “There’s lots of torture,” she says, making a face. Before I can make a joke about how much she secretly likes seeing people in pain, there’s a scream from room one; the man from the waiting area. He screams for a while then is suddenly silent.

KC shows me a photo of Catherine; I forgot that she’s a tuxedo just like my Olivia. “She’s a little porker,” she says. “14 pounds. When she sits on my lap too long I can’t feel my legs.” I ask how her weekend was and she says she spent it with a friend who’s breaking up with her loser boyfriend. She looks lovely. My fondness for her melts my anxiety a little. And then she’s gone, saying she’ll be back. 

I hear a clamor of voices. “Oh he’s here for Seann,” Shelley says, and a minute later a man with salt and pepper hair says, “Knock knock,” and pulls aside the curtain. He introduces himself and asks if I’ve had diabetic shoes before, pressing a catalog into my hand. 

“Is that Evergreen? I want to talk to them!” screeches Dr. Taggert, and she comes tearing in, followed by a bearded young man who I gather is another doctor she’s showing around. She and the man from Evergreen start talking about shoes. “I preach the gospel of the diabetic shoes to all my patients!” cries Taggert. “This is my religion!” I want to say that I’ve had diabetic shoes for years and they haven’t done me much good, but I’m back to being worried about getting out on time and can’t seem to focus on anything else. 

“He wants to be able to walk,” Taggert keeps telling the man, and she sounds like the very idea is some crazy whim and that she’s just humoring me until I come to my senses. I hate her tone of voice when she gets on this kick. I hate all of this. I want KC to flounce in here and rescue me. My dreams have become so diminished. I once longed to fall in love with a creative soulmate. Now I just want a pretty nurse to hold my hand.

They discuss options for various types of shoes, and then he presses both of my feet into pink foam molds. “If this doesn’t work, we may end up having to make custom shoes for you. They’re not stylish, but it might be our best option if you want to keep walking.”

Eventually he leaves and she debrides my wound, saying that that Dr. Thompson will be doing so during my Thursday visits from now on, to save me time in the morning. Vicki prepares my cast, then Taggert wraps me back up. I ask what happened to her young doctor and she says she doesn’t know, that he wandered off somewhere. She talks about shoes the entire time but I’m not really listening. “He really wants to walk.” I feel her words sink deeper and deeper into the murky dishwater of my soul. 

On the bus there’s a guy in a hot pink wheelchair, with fading green hair, multiple piercings and tattoos everywhere, including a pentagram and a bat-winged skull on his cheek. His clothes look like designer versions of a punk costume, all leather and black denim with Danzig and Subhumans patches attached with a calculatedly slapdash array of safety pins. I think about the basement punk shows we used to go to; definitely not wheelchair accessible. Do kids still put on shows like that? Do his fellow punks carry this guy down the stairs, toss his body around like a rag doll in the mosh pit? 

As the bus crosses the bridge, and I see that I will only be a few minutes late for work, I start to shift from jittery to morose. I wish I felt grateful for what mobility I still possess, but all I can see is how trapped I am by my limitations. I used to want to travel the world. Now, I just want to be able to walk to the convenience store without wheels, without crutches, without a cast. It’s a modest wish mumbled to myself, muttered under my breath. It doesn’t seem like too much to ask. But. of course, it is. 

Aretha

 When the relief at knowing I’m finally taking care of my health wears off, I console myself with the prospect of continuing to document the saga. I enjoy writing about my experience, and relish the idea of getting a book out of the process. 

But as the weeks drag on, the routine starts grinding me down, and I start to wonder if I’m up to the challenge of transforming such dull material into something worth reading. Maybe I need to take a break from writing.

Fortunately, I have a break from nearly everything coming up. After much agonizing, I’ve decided to fly back East for two weeks. I haven’t been there –or anywhere, aside from an occasional overnight at the beach- since my sister’s wedding two years ago. It will be a nuisance having to travel with Harvest Lightning again, but I’ve done it twice before so I know I can manage it. If nothing else, it will be good to have a respite from this pitiless routine. 

But I don’t leave for three weeks, so in the meantime, the pitiless routine continues. 

Something different does happen when I check in at the counter on Thursday. I get a desk clerk I’ve never seen before, an old woman with uncannily smooth, pale skin and white hair. I wonder if she’s an albino, but her eyes are nearly black. She takes my information then tells me I owe a copay. I’ve never had a copay for any of these appointments, and it rattles me. She says I can have it billed but I take out my card and pay it and head upstairs, nearly getting run over by the old man driving the people mover, which is festooned with autumn leaves cut from construction paper. 

The office is unnaturally quiet. “You’re the only one here!” cries Shelley, ushering me into the big room. The seat feels harder than usual, and when I comment on this, she asks, “Do you like it? We just got new ones. Well, not new, they’re from another office that closed up.”

“What, since Monday?” I ask, and realize that despite all the times I’ve sat on these chairs, I’ve never paid any attention to them. She says yes and that everyone else seems to like them. 

“Yes but you know what a sensitive princess I am,” I say.

“I do know,” she says. “Oof, I don’t like that blood pressure. Let’s try again in a few minutes.”

She cuts off the cast and says the drainage isn’t too bad. “It’s definitely getting smaller,” she says. I don’t say anything. I’m weary of the whole process, and don’t feel up for pretending otherwise. 

Dr. Thompson comes in before I’m fully prepared for the cast. She looks at the stopwatch on the glove dispenser and tells Shelley, “I know you can do better than that.” Are they timing everything they do now? 

While she applies the cast, the doctor and Shelley talk about some Netflix show I’ve never heard of called Blood of my Blood, a prequel to another show I’ve never heard of called Outlander. “It’s kind of a chick flick,” says the doctor, and my mind drifts as they heatedly discuss some intrigue between three of the characters, who are possibly nurses, or time travellers, or maybe time travelling nurses. 

As I’m leaving, the doctor looks at the piece of foam I’ve taken to placing on the seat of the scooter. “Is that helping?” she asks. 

“Oh yeah, it’s making a huge difference,” I say. It really is.

“When I hurt my leg I found this lambskin knee pad that worked really well. I got it on the internet, I’ll send you the link if I can find it.” I tell her thanks, though I couldn’t care less. I don’t care about anything right now. I don’t even care that the bus is a half hour late, or that a woman at the stop asks everyone angrily if they have a cigarette, and when they say no, screams “You’re what’s wrong with the world!” She keeps wandering out in front of cars to ask people on the other side of the street for a smoke.

“She not even looking. She gone get hit,” a woman in a hospital gown says. The other woman wanders back onto the safety of the sidewalk.

“Got a cigarette?” she screams.

“Do you even know who I am?” the woman in the gown asks. “I’m Aretha Franklin.” 

“You’re not fucking Aretha Franklin,” she cigarette-less woman snarls. 

“I am too Aretha Franklin, and just for that I ain’t giving you no damn cigarette,” she says, and shuffles off in her paper slippers. I put my arms on my handlebars and bury my face in them and close my eyes and pray that when I open them again I’ll be back at home, and four days away from having to do this all over again.