Jackdaws

I’m lying in bed, naked beneath a thin sheet in a small room with a yellow curtain pulled across the doorway. The curtain gets pushed aside and Dr. Taggert enters, lithe and pretty in a white slip. “Let me tell you what I’m angry about,” she says, and I am instantly filled with anxiety, even though I feel like I’ve been taking good care of my foot. She leans in close and whispers, “I don’t have a decent stock percentage here,” then kisses me, slipping her small, soft tongue into my mouth. I kiss her back enthusiastically then bolt awake. 

I immediate try to claw my way back but I need to get up and get ready for my morning appointment with the endocrinologist. It’s hard to believe five months have passed since that first visit. 

I catch my first bus with no problem and as I wait for my transfer, the streetcar glides by with its distinctive locust whine. An enormous ad for the hospital is plastered across its side. Why should a hospital need to advertise? And in a way that obstructs the view of the riders inside, no less? Why have we all decided that health is a luxury, rather than a human right? Why is the outrage so limited, so muted?

I get on the bus and a few stops later a well-dressed woman with wavy blond hair gets on. It’s the same woman with the warm smile from the hospital bus stop, only here she is, nearly thirty blocks away from where she always gets off. I try to make eye contact but she never looks up, and when we both get off at the hospital, she walks ahead of me, disappearing into the employee entrance. She carries herself with a kind of charming gawkiness.

The endocrinology office is decorated with paper snowflakes and snowman heads dangling from a garland of white pom poms. The previously empty display case now holds three candy-colored houses and a blue and white chain made from construction paper. 

An assistant comes for me almost immediately. She has me step on the scale and I’m dismayed to find that I’m almost ten pounds heavier than last time, which can’t be right. I don’t look or feel any bigger, and I’ve been eating pretty responsibly. How heavy is my coat? How heavy is that damn football? 

The assistant leads me to a tiny room and takes my vitals. I complement her shoes, which are metallic navy blue, and she beams and launches into a long, not very interesting story about them. 

She leaves and Dr. Miller appears. He says my blood glucose level is much better, though he’s concerned about the lows I’m experiencing in my attempt to compensate for the spikes. He tweaks my dosing formulas and tells me to come back in four months, though I will probably have to see the other doctor because he’s booked solid for the foreseeable future. I’m glad things are going ok but I also feel like beside the blood test, I could have done this over the phone. It’s especially annoying because I have to come back here tomorrow for wound care. 

The following afternoon, my coworkers once again forget that I’m leaving early, and once again I remind them. Once again I balance beside the time clock on my scooter, waiting for someone to finally relieve me. But at least it’s not raining, and the bus isn’t canceled, and the driver sounds like she sincerely wants everyone to have a nice day. 

An old man in a wheelchair sits with his wife in the waiting area. He tells me this is his second round, that the first time they had him in the hyperbaric chamber. I ask him what he thought of it. He looks confused by my questions. “What was it like? Did you like it?” 

“He watched a lot of TV,” his wife says.

“I watched a lot of TV,” he says. 

“Sorry but we’re running late,” Vicki says, poking her head out then quickly withdrawing it. I try to chat more with the couple but they’ve lost whatever slight interest they had in chatting with me. Karen wheels out an old woman I recognize from some months ago, then a woman in a hot pink jumpsuit and a cast on her left foot comes out and makes a beeline for the bathroom. Her hair looks like she just got out of the h beauty salon Esther than the hyperbaric chamber. When she comes out I point to her cast and ask how her foot is doing. She sighs and says she’s been in hyperbaric for 120 days, though not all at once. “This been goin on for fourteen months,” she says. I ask how she’s doing. “I’m tired, honey,” she sighs. “I’m so damn tired.”

They finally call me in and Karen unwraps my football. The look on her face tells me it’s not good even before I see the pink splotch on the gauze.

“Oh come on,” I say.

“Yeah it’s definitely… bigger,” she says. 

“A lot bigger?” I ask. She doesn’t answer. Last week it was just a slit. “What the fuck. I didn’t do anything different.” This isn’t strictly true. I did hobble to and from the car a few times when I was out with friends, but it shouldn’t have been enough to cause whatever is happening down there. I don’t ask to see and she doesn’t offer to show me. 

“I think it’s from all this callus,” she says. “Once she gets rid of that it’ll look a lot better.” She calls Shelley in for a second opinion. 

“Well that’s no good,” Shelley says. 

“That’s not what I want to hear,” I say. 

“I want to give you good news more than anything! But only if it’s true.”

“Fuck that. The holidays are all about lying,” I say. “We tell our families we love them. We tell our kids Santa exists. We tell ourselves we believe in peace on Earth and that people aren’t horrible trolls.”

She leaves without laughing and Karen takes my blood pressure a second time –the first time was high- and exclaims, “Well that’s even worse!”

“I wonder why,” I snarl. All week I have been so patient, so even-keeled, so positive –for me, anyways. Now I want to scream. It really is a never-ending loop. I’m stuck on a combination roller coaster/carousel, endlessly plunging and rising and plunging and rising around and around and around on the back of this burning horse. 

It would be so easy to wheel out onto the busy freeway. 

“I really thought it was going to look better today,” I say. 

“I know what will cheer you up,” says Karen, and shows me photos of Dolly in her new Christmas sweater. “Isn’t she cute?” She’s very pale for a Dachshund, and her beady black eyes seem more creepy than cute to me. 

We talk about the weather for a while, how much milder the winter is here in Portland than in Omaha, or South Dakota, where her sister lives. Then she leaves, and is gone for a long while. 

After twenty minutes she pokes her head and apologizes that they’re running so late. 

Ten minutes after that, Vicki pokes her head in and also tells me they’re running late. “I hope you weren’t in a hurry to get out of here,” she says. For some reason this comment infuriates me. When she leaves I close my eyes. It feels good. I want to sink completely into the bright darkness behind my eyelids.

I try to listen to the voices talking behind the curtain, but they’re too quiet for me to make out anything other than banal snippets. 

“How did you like the yoga CD?”

“I mean, if you’re going to be the one making my drink…”

“Well for my birthday in February, I’m going to…”

“Do you shave your legs every day, Seann?”

I can’t be sure if I heard that last one properly, but I don’t answer, and no one follows it with anything. 

Karen comes back in and says, “Boy, you could use some lotion for that foot.”

“Well I can’t put anything on it with the cast on,” I say. She starts brushing the dry skin off. Obviously enjoying herself, she starts to rub furiously. The tiny flakes fly all over the place.

“It’s snowing!” she cries. 

Finally Dr. Thompson comes in. I say hello as cheerily as I can, but she isn’t fooled. She asks Karen what knife she should use, as if she’s talking to a caddy. “I think a number three,” Karen says. 

“I didn’t do anything different,” I whine to the doctor. 

“I know,” she says. “It’s frustrating. I’ll put in for approval for skin substitute and a TCC.” I don’t say anything. None of it will work in the long run. “But for now, you up for another football?” I tell her I don’t care. She says we’ll see how it looks next Thursday. The Thursday after that is Christmas, and the one after that is New Year’s Day, so I’ll have to change my schedule to Wednesdays, which means I’ll probably get Dr. Taggert. I suddenly remember my dream. I close my eyes again. 

Bridget comes in and asks Karen if she needs any help. “Sure, you can chart for me,” she says, and rattles off everything we’ve done so far. 

“Whoa slow down there missy, I’m an old lady.” Karen repeats herself slowly, then re-measures the wound.

“Remember it has to be a centimeter to qualify for insurance for the skin substitute,” Dr. Thompson says, looking over her shoulder. 

“Okay well I’ve got… point eight. Make that point nine,” says Karen. 

“Hmm. It looks like a full centimeter to me,” says the doctor. 

“Well, it’s awfully close,” says Karen.

“Kind of hard to see for sure,” says the doctor.

“It’s probably a centimeter,” says Karen. 

There is a commotion on the other side of the curtain and everyone starts clapping. The doctor goes to join the celebration. A moment later the office is filled with the clanging of the cowbell. 

“Hey, she’s supposed to ring it herself!” Shelley says. 

“Her hands were full,” someone says.

“I want to ring that fucking bell,” I mutter. 

“You will,” says Karen. 

“Sure. In 2027.”

“None of that now.”

She wraps my foot and congratulates herself on a beautiful job. When she’s finished, she straps on my surgical shoe. 

“It doesn’t look quite so beautiful with that shoe on,” says the doctor. Sometimes I wish they’d all just shut the hell up. 

 I leave with five minutes to catch the bus, and I let my annoyance propel me up the hill, making it with time to spare. The driver greets me cheerily but I just grunt at her. My face feels locked in a tight scowl. 

A large woman in a wheelchair sits by a young girl with purple and black striped stockings. The woman looks around like a queen on a throne, and babbles imperiously to the girl. “Looks like we’ll make it home just before the murder of crows descends,” she says. “You know why they call it a murder. Those sounds they make are truly appalling. And the flapping of their wings sounds like paper. It gives me the willies. They used to say crows carry off souls. Or maybe that’s ravens. All the same family, in any case. Crows, rooks, ravens.. um...”

“Jackdaws,” says the little girl. 

“What did you say?” the woman asks sharply. 

“Jackdaws,” the little girl repeats. 

“I’m not sure that’s, I mean, I don’t know that…” The woman paws at her phone. 

“No, she’s right,” I say, pulling the wire for the only bell I’m permitted to ring. “Jackdaws are a thing.”

“They’re very small,” the little girl says, “compared to the other Corvids.” 

I transfer buses and as we pass the river, I see that on the far bank, the trees and the air above them are filled with crows, countless thousands of them, flapping and wheeling and screaming that murderous cry. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Turning the darkening sky even darker.

This Year

 Once again I find myself inside Revolution Hall, the high school-turned-concert-venue where I saw Henry Winkler talk exactly two years ago. This time I’m here to see beloved indie-rock legends The Mountain Goats perform. John Darnielle, the band leader, lived in Portland for a brief but potent time. Decades later his albums are still filled with references to the city.

It’s been pouring rain all day, and all the gutters between the bus stop and the concert venue are overflowing. I considered not using the scooter, but decided not to risk it. Not when I’m so close. 

So I cautiously wheel through the black puddles, moving slowly along the uneven sidewalks. Traffic is heavy and people are blasting through red lights and ignoring pedestrians, and by the time I get to the venue I’m soaked and exhausted and frazzled. 

I take the elevator upstairs and find that the woman at the door is someone I met years ago on a dating site. At least I think it’s her. I haven’t seen her in nearly twenty years, but she has a very distinctive body type –she has what I assume is a form of dwarfism- so I think it must be her. She doesn’t show any sign of recognition, and when she scans my ticket I tell her I have a seat reserved. She asks if I got an email confirmation and I say yes. She calls a man over and i give him my name and he leads me to a seat with my name on a sticker on its back. He says that tonight he’s seen the most special seating requests they’ve ever had. 

The accessible seats line both sides of the hall. I’m near the back, but it’s raised above the crowd, so I don’t have any trouble seeing. A rotund woman hobbles past me on a cane and takes the next seat over, unfolding a strange combination back brace/seat cushion to sit on. All through the show she waves and twists her manicured hands in front of her chest. Her shoulders are enormous, and covered with tattoos of stalks of grain.

The show is great - they play a bunch of songs off the new album, which I haven’t heard yet. It’s a concept album about three men shipwrecked on a desert island. Darnielle is as joyous as ever, playing as if he is exactly where he wants to be, doing exactly what he wants to be doing. The last time I saw him perform was six years ago, right after Jasmine died. I had sobbed uncontrollably when they launched into their trademark song. 

I am going to make it through this year

If it kills me

I don’t cry this time. Instead I feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude for being able to experience live music despite my limited mobility. A string quartet accompanies them -only at their Portland shows, he tells us- which provides extra vibrancy to the desperately defiant lyrics. 

I am going to make it

through this year

if it kills me

This time last year, I was getting patches of umbilical cord pasted onto my foot. The year before that, Henry Winkler was assuring me that I could do anything I put my mind to. I’d like to give him a piece of my mind. 

When it’s over I squeeze into the elevator with a family of fat, blissful fans, every one of them wearing Crocs and clutching an LP of All Hail West Texas. I cautiously make my way back to the bus atop, skirting ruts and bumping over uneven pavement slabs, skirting the deeper puddles, and nearly getting hit by careless drivers speeding recklessly through the night, thinking only of themselves and their own destinations, never considering the devastation they might leave in their wake. 

Raccoon

 It was one year ago today that Luigi Mangione shot and killed the millionaire CEO of insurance giant UnitedHealthcare. Luigi was arrested a week later, and is crrently awaiting trial. There have been no further killings of industry bigwigs yet, though insurance premiums are set to double next year as the malicious creeps in the White House work to destroy the entire health care system.

My co-workers once again forget that I need to leave at two, so I’m stressed by the time I finally escape work. I needn’t have worried; the digital readout on the shelter informs me that the 2:14 bus has been canceled and that the next one will arrive in a half hour. Just this week, Tri-met made the first round of what it warns will be a series of increasingly drastic cuts in service. It’s a wet, miserable afternoon and I don’t want to wait for a half hour in this poor excuse for a shelter, so I decide to take a chance and hop on the 12, which is due any minute, then transfer to the 20, which will get me six blocks from the hospital. 

I get off the 12 in a corridor of Neo-Brutalist high-rises that I can’t imagine anyone wanting to live in. I only have to wait a minute for the 20 to arrive. The driver asks me where I’m going, and he says he’ll lower the ramp for me when we get there. I tell him not to bother but he insists. “Oh and by the way,” he says, “You’re wearing two different shoes.” 

“What? Oh, no!” I cry.  

Over the weekend, my surgical shoe dropped off somewhere along my travels. I called around to a half dozen pharmacies but no one sells them, so I took one of my old shoe inserts and taped it to the bottom of my football so I would have something a little sturdier to walk in. I covered it with a black sleeve I cut from a sweatshirt to make it look slightly less shitty when I was at work. I felt like an idiot but no one commented on it. Now I’ve put a plastic bag on top of that. It does not look good, but a pretty woman sitting next to me smiles and says she likes my hat.

The six blocks to the hospital is up a very steep hill. I speed along as fast as I dare, splashing through puddles and keeping a close eye on the bumps and cracks of the unfamiliar terrain. At least this is breaking the monotony of my usual routine. I hit a stick and nearly go flying. Monotony does has its good side.

I decide to take a chance on the side entrance, even though it isn’t supposed to be open to the public any longer; going through the main doors will involve me going two blocks out of my way. Luckily a man in scrubs is leaving just as I approach the sliding doors, so I roll right in. 

Once upstairs, I go into the restroom and strip off my makeshift cast cover; I don’t want them to laugh at me. As I sit in the waiting area, an old woman in a wheelchair takes out a white comb and starts carefully running it through her enormous mass of curls, which I’m pretty sure is a wig. 

“I’m ready for you!” calls Shelley, flinging open the door. 

“Oh you think you are,” I say. 

“Uh oh, do you have something nefarious planned?” she asks. 

“No plan, I’m just going to wing it.” 

I wheel into the big room and make myself comfortable. My blood pressure is, unsurprisingly, high. As she cuts off my football, I ask Shelley how her Thanksgiving was. She says it was just her and her husband and the kids, who are at the age when they refuse to eat anything but mac and cheese. She asks how mine was and I say my cat caught a hummingbird.  

“Ew, gross. That’s… oh my goodness, this looks fabulous. Looks like you’ve been doing your homework.” I tell her I’m trying to be good. “I can see that. There’s barely anything here, just a slit. There’s a little bit of drainage but it’s dry. I’m not actually sure there’s a wound here at all but I’ll let the doctor determine that.” 

She doesn't comment on the fact that I obviously did not change my dressing myself two days ago lke I was instructed to. She’s positively ebullient, and even though I’ve been through this many times before, and I know how easily progress can be undone, even though I know that contentment is fleeting and any sort of stability in this world is delicate at best, I find myself laughing along with her. 

She leaves and I hear her call Dr. Thompson to tell her I’m ready. I wait for a long time; every once in a while Shelley pokes her head in to say she doesn’t know what’s taking so long. I stare at the words stitched forwards and backwards on the beige curtain. Peace. Speak your truth. Be gentle. And something I can’t quite make out… Something something spirit. I just can’t decipher what the other words are. The phrase is repeated a number of times, but always right in one of the ripples of the curtain, and always backwards. How can something be so close and yet remain unintelligible? I feel obsessed, that it is somehow vital that I figure out what that that no-doubt insipid phrase reads. ALong with the words, the curtain is also covered with prints of a fern, a flower, and a snail shell. I take it one letter at a time and finally I see it. Nurture something spirit. 

Dr. Thompson rushes in, wearing her Yoda cap. She takes one look at my foot and says, “Wow.” She scrapes a bit with the tiny blade. “You know, I’m not sure there’s even a wound here.”

“He’s been doing his homework,” says Shelley. 

“I can see that. Okay, I see now, there’s still a slight opening here. But it’s very close.” She scrapes some more. “Next week.”

“So another football?” asks Shelley.

“I don’t see any need for a hard cast at this point,” the doctor says. “How was your Thanksgiving, by the way?” I tell her it was quiet, and ask about hers.

“It was nice. Just friends. No family in sight.” She hurries away before I can ask if she read this morning’s Guardian article about hyperbaric therapy. It was an interesting piece about how the practice needs to be regulated to prevent more tragedies, such as a young boy who was incinerated when his blanket slipped off, causing a spark. The treatments are being prescribed more and more to treat all kinds of things, from ADHD to anxiety. Some people even claim they slow down the aging process and erase wrinkles. The malicious creeps in the White House are of course excited by this. I think we should encourage every one of them to take advantage of these wonderful devices, and not to worry too much about all that talk of needing a grounding wire. 

I finally see it. Nurture strength of spirit is what the curtain says.

Karen slips in as Shelley prepares the gauze for the football. “Just stealing some supplies,” she says, rifling through the drawers. 

“You’re like a raccoon,” I say. Actually she's more like a bunny.

“My littlest is obsessed with raccoons,” says Shelley. “She wants Santa to bring one for Christmas. I’ve got some bad news for her.”

“I hear things are looking good!” says Karen.

“He’s been doing his homework,” Shelley says yet again, wrapping and wrapping and wrapping my foot. 

“I’m not going to be able to get my shoe on that thing,” I laugh. “Oh and that reminds me; I need a new shoe.”

“Just one more roll,” she says, and chatters on happily about the holidays and demoing her kitchen.

When she’s done encasing my foot in the biggest football I’ve ever seen, I have four minutes to make the bus. Though I know I might be able to make it, I don’t feel like rushing, so I slowly make my way down to the lobby. They’ve put up the Christmas decorations since I was here last week. The tree towers over the metal detector. They should really put lights on the metal detector itself. On top of the tree is a gift box lit from within, topped by a ridiculously large red bow. 

It’s quiet and peaceful here, like waiting in an airport terminal at night. I am filled with what feels like an endless reservoir of patience. It’s a strange feeling. I take out my phone to look at the news but immediately think better of it and put it away.

Eventually I push my way up the hill in the near dark. A milky blue ribbon of oil floats on the surface of the water that runs along the gutter, skirting clumps of sodden leaves. 

Aside from the sound of the engine, it’s quiet on the bus. Everyone is lost in thought, reading magazines, staring at their screens. A strong, healthy-looking young man in an ocher jumpsuit unfolds a sheet of cardboard and starts to carefully print on it with a white paint marker. He concentrates hard to make sure every line of every letter is neat and straight. 

PLZ     HELP     I’M

He pulls the cord and folds the cardboard and gets off, thanking the driver. The doors close and the bus drives off, seeming to float as if carried along by a gentle current, keeping us cozy and warm as the storm rages all around us, scratching the windows with its claws.

Tofurkey

As I roll toward the front entrance of the hospital, I swerve to avoid a man who refuses to get out of my way. “Don’t run me over, speedster!” he yells.

“No promises,” I yell back.

It’s nice to not have to check in at the counter. This is my second and probably final Tuesday appointment, and like last week, I’m a few minutes late. I use the restroom then zoom into the clinic. Bree has the phone up to her ear but is not saying anything. Gladys is sitting close, as if she’s coaching her. Neither acknowledges me so I look at the wall of staff portraits. Interspersed with them are seven or eight copies of a black and white photo of the Eiffel Tower, presumably the photo that came with the frame, though I’m not sure why they left them in. Finally Gladys tells me to wait outside, and I wheel out and five seconds later she comes to get me. 

She’s in a chatty mood, and I wonder if she’s hopped up on gummy worms again. She struggles with the scissors as she tries to cut my cast off. I tell her to fire up the saw. 

She says she’s flying to her mother’s in California for the long Thanksgiving weekend. “I only wanted to go for a few days but she bought the tickets so I didn’t have a choice. She’s a real control freak. Don’t say a word.” She tells me how much she’s going to miss her cat. “It’ll be good to go home though,” she says. “It’s been a hard year.”

She says the wound looks pretty good, and takes a photo. She pulls up last week’s picture so I can compare them. It really does look better, having gone from a ragged hole to a clean, rather demure slit in just a week. I tell her I’ve been being good. 

“You sound awfully proud of yourself,” she says. 

“I am. I’m so impatient, it’s difficult for me to have willpower.”

“I understand completely,” she says, suddenly gentle. “I don’t know how you do it. I would be going completely out of my mind.”

“Have you been running lately?” I ask. 

“Did I tell you I ran the Portland Marathon?” she says. “And I did not die, even though I was pretty sure I was going to.”

“You sound awfully proud of yourself.”

Dr. Taggert is also talkative, and as she cleans the wound she asks if I’ve been liking the football. 

“The cast or the game? Because I love them both!” I say. 

“Oh will you be watching on Thanksgiving?” she asks. 

“Oh hell yes, I love that one team that will be playing that other team that I don’t like.” 

Taggert says she hates football because once when she was a little girl, her birthday fell on Superbowl Sunday and her family held a Superbowl party instead of a birthday party, bringing out her cake at halftime then going back to the game. 

She says she’s cooking a traditional Thanksgiving meal for her teenage daughter and for her parents, who live with them. She asks if I’m going back to the total contact cast next week and I say I have no idea. “Well we can put one more football on you, but you won’t be back until Thursday so you’ll have to change it yourself starting Tuesday.” 

“Dr. Thompson said they were good for ten days,” I say. 

“Nope. No more than a week. Do you have an insert for your shoe? Okay, we’ll make you one.” 

Courtney comes in to do the casting, wearing scrubs with a pair of garish turkeys on them. She covers my foot with a full sheet of Hydrofera instead of cutting a little patch. “That’ll never slip,” she says. “Guess I’ll just do this all by myself,” she calls as she lays out the materials. Gladys and Vicki are talking loudly. “Sure would be nice to have an assistant,” she says, as she measures out the underlying layer of gauze. Finally Original Karen sidles in and starts typing sluggishly on the computer. Courtney seems satisfied, though how this is actually helping her is unclear to me. 

She asks if I mind if she pulls the curtain open, and as she wraps my foot they all talk, though I’m starting to feel sleepy so I don’t pay close attention. As she works, a young man with a scraggly chin beard darts in and out of the room behind her, restocking her supplies. 

When she’s done Gladys comes over to look. “Wow, that looks… amazing,” she says. 

“It really does,” says Karen. 

“I think I did a pretty darn good job,” says Courtney. 

“So where’s the felt liner for the shoe?” asks Gladys.

There’s a moment of silence as they all stare at my foot.

“Oh fudge,” Courtney says. “I can’t believe I forgot.” She grabs a scissors and starts to cut. “This is what happens when you get us as the end of the day,” she says.

I’m confused as to why she has to redo the whole thing; the felt doesn’t go inside the cast. I guess she wants to make sure she marks where the wound is so she can cut a hole in it for offloading, but it seems silly for something I’m only going to be using two days, and not walking on much. But I know better than to question these women. Especially when they’re holding scissors.

As she’s destroying her masterpiece, I hear a familiar voice coming from around the corner. KC is asking Gladys about a difficult phone call she just had with a patient. 

“We were on for like a half hour and I’m not sure I told her the right thing,” she says, sounding exhausted. Gladys reassures her and says she would’ve told her the same thing. She comes around the corner, without a mask on –I’m the only patient left and they have all removed their masks- and I’m a little taken aback. She looks so much older than last time I saw her, which was, what, a month ago? No, a month ago I was in Pennsylvania, getting my own family obligations over with early to avoid the holiday rush. She is still lovely, but she looks haggard, her face pinched.  

  “What time should I be over for Thanksgiving dinner?” I ask. 

“I’ll be drinking my dinner,” she says. “My girl friend Cindy is going through a lot. I bought two boxes of wine.”

“Are you going to get one for her too?”

She laughs. “It’s going to be a whole lot of fun. Two ladies going through midlife crises. And she’s vegan so there will be Tofurkey.” She makes a face.

“No turnips this year?” I ask. It actually does sound fun. I tell her I’ll be spending the day alone and that I’m happy about that, which is kind of true.

Courtney hands me the felt insert for my shoe. “Don’t lose it,” she says. It’s just a piece of felt with a wedge cut out of it. I’m still not sure she had to redo the whole cast for this thing but I just tahnk her.

“This is probably the latest you’ve ever gotten out of here,” Courtney says as she brings my scooter. I tell her Dr. Richmond kept me here until close to six once but I can’t remember why. So many visits over the past two years, they all blur into one. Is this a dream, or is my life outside this office the dream? Where will I be when I wake up?

As I leave, they’re all talking about how Trump just declared that nurses are no longer to be considered professionals, which will make it harder for them to afford schooling. “Just wait until he ends up in a hospital,” says Courtney. “Good luck getting that bedpan changed. Sure hope those non-professionals don’t mix up your pills.”

I miss my bus by a minute, so I wait in the lobby with the people waiting for rides. An attendant is helping one man with his car service. 

“I’m sorry Miguel, it looks like your driver got mixed up and went to pick you up at home. He’ll be another ten minutes.” 

“Thank you, young man,” the patient says, struggling with a rolling suitcase. “Thank you very much. I waited this long, I guess another ten minutes ain’t gonna kill me.”

It’s completely dark out by the time I make my way up the hill, and I go slowly because I can’t see the sticks or ruts on the pavement. There is no room in the bus shelter so I stand with one leg propped on the scooter, my hands thrust into my pockets, and feel the rain on my face, cold and unrelenting and honest.     

The Accursed

 With the bus schedule, I’m going to be either a few minutes late, or a half hour early. I opt for a few minutes late, which will save me a half hour of precious sick time. 

The bus ride is fine. Check in is fine. I’m only seven minutes late. 

A man with no legs below his knees presses the blue button and speeds into the office in a fancy manual wheelchair. 

“Oh, you are remembering me? That is such sweet of you.” 

Courtney comes out and scolds me for being late. “From now on, don’t bother checking in downstairs.”

“But I thought I had to. You made a big deal when I wasn’t doing it.”

“Well, from now on just come straight up here and check in with Bree.” She wears scrubs covered with autumn leaves arranged thinner at the top and denser at the bottom, as if they’re falling in piles around her waist.

The appointment is fine. Courtney cuts off my cast with a scissors and says the wound doesn’t look too bad. I’m not paying full attention, like I’m only half there. I’m losing interest in this whole endeavor. It is, to be perfectly frank, all quite tedious. But where is the other half of me? Listening and hoping that KC swoops in to rescue me. 

But she doesn’t, there’s just Dr. Taggert, who is upbeat and says the wound doesn’t look too bad. 

“You were all healed up! You should go home more often! Whatever you do back there, you should do more of it!” I tell her it’s the healing power of motherly love. She doesn’t laugh, so I say some other things to try to make her laugh, and then she laughs. I forget what I say a moment after I’ve said it. She gives Gladys some advice about her 401K and slices off a bit of callus and flitters off. Oh I forgot, Gladys is there too. Gladys says things, Karen says things, Courtney says things as she wraps me up in another football. It suddenly occurs to me that they call it a football not because it resembles one but because it makes your foot into a ball. I also remember for no real reason that in the sport of football –association football, that is, or soccer- there is a kick known as a knuckleball, after the baseball pitch, which makes the ball wobble or move in an unpredictable fashion. This kick is also called the dry leaf, the dead leaf, or, in Italy, the accursed. I feel like my whole life is a series of knuckleballs. Or dead leaves. Or… you know. 

It’s none of those things, though. It’s not even cursed. It’s just a life. Even if it doesn’t feel like much of one at the moment. 

Goddammit, KC, I wish you were hanging on my arm blathering on about the Gauls, or Herculaneum, or Gilgamesh. I promise I would hang on every word. Or at least pretend to. 

Courtney shows me pictures of her dog, then says they don’t have an appointment for me next week yet, asks if it’s okay if Bree calls me tomorrow. When I leave I see that I only have six minutes to make my bus. I’m never going to make it. 

But surprise, surprise; I make it. 

The Light

The doors open and raucous laughter bursts from the bus as I haul my scooter aboard.

“It’s my favorite rider,” the driver who thinks she knows me says, continuing to laugh. “I’ve never seen anyone so stubborn. I never know what I’m going to get when I stop for you.” I need to reiterate that I do not have any sort of history with this woman, and that she must be mistaking me for someone else. 

“I won’t be on here anymore after Thanksgiving,” she says. I ask what line she’ll be on and she says the 72 and the 33. 

“Ugh,” I say.

“No I’m really excited. Three days a week, ten hour shifts. Four day weekends, baby!” She again erupts into wild laughter.

I ask what line she would drive if she had her pick. She thinks a moment, then says, “I really like the 2.”

“Oh you like those really big buses?” The 2 is the only line in town that uses double-sized buses. I love them myself, they’re really roomy, and they arrive every fifteen minutes. 

“Oh yeah I love those bad boys, even though –you probably can’t tell when I’m in the seat, but I’m really short. I mean, crazy short.” I ask if she sits on a phone book before realizing there aren’t phone books any more. She says she has a cushion. “My daughters are five six and five seven, though. My husband’s six two. Ex husband.”

We chat the entire way, insipid small talk about the various bus lines and the colorful characters who patronize them. We have to shout to be heard over the roar of the vehicle. She says her own car is a tiny, sleek Ferrari. “I have a really heavy foot,” she laughs.

 When I disembark, she once again explodes with laughter. “I’m not laughing at you, I’m laughing with you,” she says.

When I get to the admissions desk, the usual woman isn’t there, which disappoints me; I had been all set to practice flirting with her. A brusque woman asks me my birth date a number of times before it sticks. 

“Do you know where you’re going?” she asks. 

“I think I remember,” I say.

Bridget greets me in the waiting area. “I heard the good news,” she says. I wheel into room one and I lay my coat and hat on my scooter and she rolls it away. 

“Uh oh. There’s drainage,” she says. I sigh. I’m disappointed but not surprised; I walked a few blocks to the Schnitzer Concert Hall Friday night to see the Decemberists play with the Oregon Symphony. I took it slow and careful, but apparently not slow and careful enough. 

I feel myself start to sink into the earth, but then I think: No. It’s frustrating, but don’t let yourself give in to despair like you usually do. You don’t have to.

She wipes and prods the wound then says, “It’s very shallow. Now that it’s cleaned up it looks a lot better. I want a second opinion though.” She leaves and returns with Jenny.

“Well it’s definitely open again,” Jenny says. “That’s a bummer.”

“It’s my fault, I walked on it,” I say. “It was stupid, I know, but I thought it would be okay.”

“These things happen,” she says. “It’s not your fault.”

She’s kind of comfort me, but is really is my fault. I’ve been through this so many times that I know that I really need to take things extremely slow. How long did Taggert say it takes for the skin to be even three quarters of its normal strength? Six months, a year?

“I’m just so impatient,” I say, without bitterness. “I want to pretend things are normal, and they’re just not. They’re never going to be. I need to get this through my head.”

Jenny tells me her and her husband were at the Decemberists show as well. “It would have been so fun to see you there!” she says. She was happy they played her favorite song, Down by the Water. “I forgot how beautiful that place is,” she says. I usually find the Schnitz gaudy, but during one song they lit the walls deep blue, and I looked up toward the wedding-cake ceiling and saw that one of the balconies was lit golden yellow, with a huge sculpture of a woman’s face looking out of it. It looked truly magical. 

When she and Bridget leave I force myself to look at the jagged horizon line of where my toes once were. The skin is mottled and dry and I know it would be immensely satisfying to reach down and peel off some of the flakes. But I don’t. 

Karen pokes her head in and asks how the foot looks and I smile and give her a thumbs-down. “Aw,” she says.

Vicki and Bridget come in followed by Doctor Thompson who, having been appraised of the situation, she greets me warily, no doubt expecting me to be upset. I say hi and ask how she’s doing and she says it’s been a strange day. She takes the gauze off the foot and says it doesn’t look bad. “It looks like you had a blister,” she says. Bridget says the skin was very macerated. I ask what causes that and she says usually moisture. “Maybe you got it wet in the shower by accident,” the doctor says, as she carefully scrapes away the dead skin. “This is the fun part for me. There’s really no need for debridement, I’m just going to remove this so it doesn’t become a bacteria cafeteria. Ha, I rhymed!” I tell her she should make Schoolhouse Rock-style cartoon about wound care. That would’ve had Dr. Taggert howling but Thompson just asks me if I want another football or if I want to do a hard cast. I tell her if she thinks a football is enough then I would prefer that.

“I think it’ll be fine. This really doesn’t look bad.” 

As Bridget starts the football, Vicki reminds me that they’ll be closed Thanksgiving and the day after. “You actually get a four day weekend? Did you win that with the strike?” They laugh and I say “I’m glad you reminded me, I can’t come in next Thursday, it’s the grand opening of the new museum wing and my boss said I had to be there.” Vicki leaves to get Bree, who appears with a paper schedule. I make an appointment for Tuesday at 3:40, which will give me an extra hour of work. I realize I may be subjected to Dr. Taggert’s ministrations, but I also know that KC works that day. 

As she wraps my foot, Bridget keeps dropping things on the floor. “I guess I’m tired,” she says, throwing half a roll of batting in the trash. She asks how things are going at work and tells me her boyfriend works for Laika, the local stop-motion animation company. She says he does the lighting for their movies. “Coraline, Boxtrolls…it’s intense work, twelve hour days.” It must be fascinating, figuring out how best to illuminate all those little worlds with their tiny, incredibly detailed inhabitants.

When she finally finishes the cast, Bridget says, “This’ll be better by Tuesday.” I tell her I doubt it but she says, “No, it will.” As if there is not a shred of doubt in her mind.

Maybe. And maybe it will open up again, and close back up again, and open back up again, a light blinking on and off and on and off until it finally becomes burns out.

Unwilling to let myself get upset, but trying to make sure I’m not suppressing anything, I remain cheerfully dour to the end, and tell them all that barring any unforeseen incidents, I’ll see them Tuesday. As I head downstairs the floor does not open up beneath my wheels, the vortex does not swallow me up. I do fee that I’ve just missed my bus, but instead of being aggravated I do something I never do, and treat myself to an espresso at Starbucks. The place is aggressively festive and the staff is already dressed in Santa hats and sweaters. I don’t like their coffee but the caffeine gives me a pleasant lift as I sit in the lobby before finally rolling up the hill. 

An old woman sits beside me in the bus shelter, smelling of something rotting on the beach. When the bus arrives, I gesture for her to get on before me, and she smiles sweetly and says thank you. As we drive off, drops cover the windshield like a curtain of jewels. The sun tries and fails to break through the clouds, giving them a sickly yellow glow that is reflected in the windows of the houses and the cars, all painted blue with dusk. It’s eerily beautiful, and I want to cry because the world is awful and people are terrible and everything is going to be fine.

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.