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. 

Rebel Yell

 It's the first day of autumn and the man sitting across from me in the waiting area asks me what the date is. I tell him and he goes back to eating a moist pastry with a knife from a carton. He finishes that and opens another carton full of what look like apple slices, and finishes his meal with a cup of chocolate pudding, which he also eats with the knife. Before him sits a wheelchair laden with bags and plastic milk crates. 

Over the loudspeaker comes the morning prayer. I've only heard this once before, and couldn't make out what was being said. I can barely understand it this time as well; though the woman's voice is loud, it's not clear. "Our biggest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure," I think she says, though I can confidently state that this is not, in fact, my biggest fear. "We were born to manifest the glory of God within us." 

The nurse whose name I can never remember comes out, and tells the man with the wheelchair they're ready for him. "Do you have a paper shirt I can wear?" he asks.

"A paper shirt?" she asks.

"Yeah like something disposable. This one is all wet with sweat. I mean with water. Sweat. Water. Not water." He continues to mumble and the nurse says she doesn't have any shirts.  He follows her into the office, pushing his wheelchair. I can tell by the way his sneaker bends upwards that, like me, he has no toes on his left foot. 

A few minutes later Kaitlin comes for me. I haven't seen her in a while. She was one of the first people who treated me here. After two years all I know about her is that she loves horror movies, 80s pop music, and fantasy novels. Oh, and she possesses an impressive wardrobe of seasonally-themed scrubs, which today showcase woodland creatures romping in an autumnal forest. She saws the cast in one go, and much faster than Thompson did, straight and clean. then takes my measurements and enters them in th computer without any assistance. She is probably the most capable nurse here.

I ask how her weekend was and she says she saw Billy Idol and Joan Jett at the fair. I suddenly remember that I saw Joan Jett years ago, in the late eighties, playing at some other fair. That woman's been playing fairs for a long time. 

Taggert enters, followed by a spectacled young man she introduces as Dr. Stevens, whose parents were probably children when White Wedding was on the charts. I tell Taggert that the shoe place called and said they will visit during my appointment next week. She's ecstatic. "They took my referral! They really took it! I can't believe it!"

She does a quick debriding then leaves so Kaitlin can prepare for the cast. 

“Things will be better once you get the new shoes,” she says. 

“Yeah but I've been through this before,” I say.

“Well if it gets bad again we'll just patch you back up like we always do.” She starts singing that old Pearl Harbor song, We Did it Before (and we can do it again). 

I laugh. “How do you even know that song?” Unlike me, she’s not into weird old-timey stuff. It occurs to me that this old patriotic song was forty years old when Billy Idol’s smash hit Eyes Without a Face came came out…forty years ago. I feel a little dizzy. 

“You know that's going to be in my head all day,” I say. 

She immediately starts to sing a song I don't recognize. "He’s still got it," she says, and I gather it’s a Billy Idol song. I don’t tell her that I find Billy Idol obnoxious. 

I hear a man with a booming voice announce, 

I’m here!"

"Hello Robert, we're all full up, why don't you wait in the lobby," says Shelley.

"Tell them to hurry up!" he bellows. “I haven’t got all day!”

Doctor Taggert returns with her young charge, "We approved you for a skin graft," she says. "The only catch is, you haven't met your deductible yet so you'll have to pay for it."

I sigh. “Any idea how much…”

"192 dollars per application," says Kaitlin. 

"And how many applications do I…?" 

“We do an assessment after four,” says Taggert, “And if it’s helping, we continue until you’re healed up.” She sees the look on my face. “You can change your mind at any time.” She starts wrapping the cast as the young doctor watches quietly over her shoulder. 

I get out just in time to make it to work by ten, like I had hoped. On the bus I see that my boss has called me asking me where I am, and if I’m okay. I text him saying I was at a doctor appointment and should be there shortly. I’m certain I asked for the morning off but now I’m nervous. I’m so paranoid about pissing them off, asking for too many favors. 

"Why is it so goddamn hot in here!" the person across the aisle screams, then leaps up and opens all the windows. "This is how people got COVID!" I close my eyes and try to relax but that stupid song keeps ricocheting around in my head. Not the Billy Idol one, thank God, but the other one, written the day after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, which the songwriters laced with anti-fascist sentiment, which we could sure use more of now. 

And even though it may take a year, 

or two or five or ten, 

we did it before, and we’ll do it again.

God I really hope it doesn’t take that long. 

Dave

After my talking to the other day, I take the crutches to my appointment. I still haven’t been using them at work but I’m using them everywhere else. As I’m sitting in the waiting area, I hear the dull thunk of a bell being run again and again. The door glides open on its own and a large man in shorts hobbles out on his cane. I tell him congratulations and he tells me it’ll be my turn soon, huffing as he labors toward the elevator. 

My little subterfuge works, and Shelley praises me for finally following instructions. Both her and New Karen agree that the wound doesn’t look bad, though as I point out to them it’s only my been two days since I was here last. 

Shelley is an especially cheery mood, and tells me about all the money she made at Comic-Con a few weeks ago, where she and her husband sell cosplay props he makes using a 3-D printer. I assume she means swords and shit, but I don’t ask, just incase cosplay props are something more intimate. 

Karen is also in good spirits, and though it’s only been a few days she seems confident as she draws the cutting line on my cast. But as she readies the saw, Dr. Thompson swoops in. 

“I’ll do it,” she says. 

Both her and Shelley are taken aback, and scurry out of her way, even as Vicki and Bridget poke their heads in to watch what is apparently an unusual occurrence. 

“I’ll time you,” Shelley says eagerly, grabbing the digital timer clipped to the globe dispenser. Thompson takes the saw, nudges everyone out of her way, adjusts my leg, readjusts my leg, and turns it on.  “You want it on high?” Shelley asks, gingerly reaches in and presses the correct button. The loud buzzing turns into a roar. 

Richmond cuts while everyone watches like spectators at a sporting event. I ask if they’ve got some kind of contest going but no one answers me over the noise. Fiberglas crumbs fly everywhere. Her cutting is smoother and more even than Karen’s was, but even so, when she’s done she has to go back and redo a few spots, which I can tell irritates her. She wields the cast cracker like Excalibur.

“Oh I love the cracker,” Shelley says.

“Me too,” says Vicki. 

“The cracker’s my favorite part!” yells Jenny from somewhere behind the curtain. 

“Shoot I forgot to time you,” says Shelley.

“I need to remember my earplugs next time,” the doctor says.

The cast comes right off this time. Karen washes my leg, which feels heavenly, then wraps my foot again, with a minimum of input from Shelley, who keeps proudly saying, “Look how good I taught you.”

She does such a good job that Dr. Thompson compliments her profusely. Both she and Shelley are floored. Karen has also prepared the chair and water just the way the doctor likes them. Her surgeon’s cap this week is covered in Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Just as Karen is about to drop the first roll into the water, Vicki calls to the doctor that the ER is on the phone asking for her. “Well that was lucky timing,” Thompson mutters, and leaves to talk to them. She’s gone a while, but try as I might I can’t hear what she’s saying. Someone over the loudspeaker keeps saying, “Testing one, two. Testing one, two, three.”

The doctor returns and pulls on a fresh pair of gloves and Karen drops the roll with a splash. As my foot is being wrapped, Jenny comes in to chat. It’s good to see her; I was too anxious to really catch up with her last one I saw her. I tell her they were pretty rough on me last week. 

“We’re only rough on you because we love you,” she says. 

“All this love is killing me,” I mutter.

As always I ask how the kitties are doing. 

“Oh, good,” she says. “Well, not Poppy. Poppy’s going through a very naughty stage. But Dave is as chill as ever.”

I laugh. “I love that you named your cat Dave. I love cats with non-cat names.”

“Me too,” she says. “Dave is like that guy at the bar you don’t really know but would have a beer with.”

 Karen laughs as well, a pleasant flyover state laugh. 

“I just have a dog,” says Dr. Thompson a bit forlornly. The others gush about how much they love her dog and she perks up a bit. 

Then it’s over, and I’m set free. Though it’s a nuisance, and I don’t think work is happy about it, I’ve resigned to coming back Monday morning, and then Thursday, and then Monday, and then…

It takes me a long time to get up the hill on my crutches. At the bus stop an odd young woman comes and sits next to me.

“Hello,” she says pleasantly.

“Hi,” I say. Her body is oddly put together, like all the parts have been assembled slightly askew.

“How are you?” she asks.

“I’m fine,” I say. “How are you?” She has a pleasant, if sort of lopsided, smile. 

“I’m good,” she says. A few moments pass. “Do you have a cigarette?”

 On the bus sits a huge woman with a soft cat carrier. The cat pokes its head up through a flap, a majestic mane of brown and silver fur.  I profess my admiration an she proceeds to babble on about cats and haunted houses until at last we mercifully reach my stop. As I stand up to get off, I ask her what the cat’s name is and she says Hope.

“I did’t name it though,” she says. “I wanted the Hebrew word for faith but I couldn’t pronounce it. There’s a story of Jesus blessing a blind woman at the…”

I gingerly lower myself off the bus and make my transfer and go home to my own furry companion, my chatty little Olivia, the poor neglected creature wasting away with only half a dish of kibble left to sustain her.