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.

Hagfish

 The next day when I get to work, I check the calendar of deliveries for the following week. I knew it was going to be busy, but Monday in particular seems like it’s going to be bedlam. I call the wound care clinic but no one answers –I remember them saying Bree was going to be off- so I leave a message canceling  Monday’s appointment.

A little while later Agnes calls back, but I’m in the middle of something so she leaves a curt message saying I need to call and reschedule, or else go in to the emergency room and have my cast cut off on Monday. “If this is going to be a problem, you need to rethink this whole thing,” she says. I feel my simmering anxiety start to bubble. I call her back immediately, but of course no one answers, so I just leave another message. She does not call back. 

All weekend I try to both relax and stay busy to distract myself, but I feel waves of panic rolling beneath everything like an underground sea that might burst through the crust at any moment. 

Monday morning is indeed crazy at work, but fortunately I’m in between shipments when Bree calls. She says it’s really important that I come in as soon as possible. I’ve already decided that if I need to, I’ll just call in sick, so I ask if she has any openings the following day. She says she has a 12:40 and I say fine and she says are you sure and I say I’ll be there. 

I’m exhausted when I get home that night, and after supper I collapse into sleep and don’t wake up until 5:30 in the morning. It’s gorgeous out, only slightly chilly, so, keenly aware that such opportunities are going to be in short supply in the approaching wet season, I wrap myself in my housecoat and have breakfast on the balcony. Even though I’m exposed out here, I always feel invisible. During the warmer months, I sat out here in my underwear. If anyone really wants a show that badly, they’re welcome to it.

Our manager told us long ago that we should call him if we aren’t coming in, but no one else seems to do this, so I just send him a text. He does not respond, but no one from work calls looking for me, and a few hours later I see that he has adjusted my schedule. II will get through this one stab of anxiety at a time. 

It’s nice to have a morning off, and despite my coffee I end up dozing off for a while, waking up with plenty of time to get ready and catch my first bus. The bus schedule works out so that I’ll either be very early or slightly late, so I opt for early, and when I arrive at the hospital I spend some time drawing on a bench in the shade. It’s warm but there’s a strangely refreshing breeze blowing, more like a wind. 

I check in and head up just as they’re finishing their lunch hour. Vicki comes out to get me and tells me to go to room two, where a young woman I’ve never seen before greets me. 

“I’m Karen. I don’t think we’ve met before,” she says.

 “Oh, you’re the other Karen. I’ve heard a lot about you,” I say. This is not true. All I know about her is that her name is Karen.

“Good things, I hope,” she says. She is young, as blank-faced as the other Karen, only brunette, and skinny. My attempts to engage her in conversation teach me only that she recently moved here from Omaha. 

Vicki stands by and watches closely as she saws the cast off, and answers the many questions she has. She seems kind and attentive but the whole process is very slow, and when she finally cuts the cast, it still won’t come off. Even Vicki is baffled why. “I’ve never seen this happen before,” she says. I tell her that’s not something a patient ever wants to hear their nurse say. She doesn’t laugh. Eventually by ripping out great handfuls of padding, they manage to yank the stubborn cast off. It hurts. 

As Karen takes measurements, I hear Taggert yelling on the other side of the curtain. 

“So do you want this half bag of mouse paper I have?” she asks. “It’s enormous, I hate to waste it.”

“Is it wood chips?” a man’s voice asks. 

“It’s paper,” she says. “Mouse paper.”

“Does it come with mice?”

“I hope not, though it’s been in the garage a while so who knows. We used it for guinea pigs.” She says something about snakes but I can’t make it out.

The wound on my foot is slightly smaller, and the one on my knee is completely gone. When Dr. Taggert arrives she seems relatively pleased with the progress. “You’re using the wheelchair, right?” she says. 

“No,” I say, confused. Agnes slips in through the other side of the curtain, her eyes narrowed over her mask.

“You’re not supposed to be walking on this,” she says. “It’ll never heal up. I had a patient in a cast for a full year and it wouldn’t heal because he kept walking on it.” 

“I guess I’m confused,” I say. “I thought I could walk on this. I thought that was the whole point.”

“We’ve had this exact conversation numerous times,” she says, visibly frustrated. Have we, though? 

“I guess I didn’t understand,” I say. “Maybe I didn’t want to?” I add, trying to placate her.

“So what are we doing here?” she asks. “Are we going forward with the cast?”

I say yes, and explain again that it’s just difficult for me to fit it with my work schedule. “I am trying so hard to balance this with my job,” I say. I’m not yelling but I’m not exactly whispering either. “I don’t want to have to go on leave again, it’s horrible. But I just don’t have any weekdays off, and you aren’t open nights or weekends. It’s incredibly stressful but I’m doing the best I can.”

When Taggert finishes debriding the wound, she asks me what shoe place I use. I tell her Evergreen, and she says, “Oh that’s great. They make visits here, you know, so you can get measurements made for new shoes while you’re here. I keep getting told I can’t write any shoe prescriptions because I’m not a GP, but you know what, that turned to be wrong with the home nurse thing, so what the hell, I’m going to try it with these shoe people. And if I’m here to coach them, maybe we can finally get you a pair of shoes that actually work.” I don’t allow myself to get my hopes up, and choose to assume she is not, in fact, implying that I will actually be able to walk in these shoes, just wear them. A pair of perfect shoes to stand and and pivot in.

She makes a quiet exit and New Karen is joined by Old Karen. “Doesn’t this get confusing?” I ask. They say yes in unison. 

New Karen prepares my cast, while Agnes coaches her, swinging wildly between bossy and supportive. It makes me a little seasick. She pokes the flesh below my kneecap.

“You’re all swollen,” she says, as if I’ve just kicked a puppy. “Why are you so swollen?”

“I’ve been walking on it, remember?” I say tartly. 

“Are you propping it up? You need to prop it up. Go home and prop it up for an hour.” I tell her I’m propping it up every day. 

“I told you my boyfriend and I split up, right?” she says. “Well I just moved into my new place and unpacked a box of letters from old patients and I found that drawing you made me, of all the hyperbaric merchandise you want to sell. It’s so good, I put it on my fridge.” 

As she puts on the cast, Taggert asks if I heard about the big crash on the 205 early this morning.  “A drunk driver hit a tractor trailer full of meat and seafood. You know me and protein, I felt like I should drive over there and scoop it all up and hand it out to all my patients.”

“Fill your trunk with it,” I suggest. “Drive around town, handing out meat to all the starving children of Portland.”

I ask if they remember the truck full of live hagfish that spilled its slimy load in the southern part of the state some years back. “Four tons of eels flopping all over the highway,” I said. New Karen looks like she’s going to be sick. 

At last they release me, not commenting on the fact that I am, in fact, walking out, just like I had walked in without them saying anything. I look at the glamor shots of all the nurses hanging in the vestibule. I look for KC’s portrait. It doesn’t look anything like her. I make note of her last name, then chide myself; what am I going to do, internet stalk her? What good would that do?

It’s still only the middle of the afternoon, and I do a few errands on my way home. I figure I will continue to hobble around at work –they wouldn’t let me anyways without a note- but I resolve to behave myself the rest of the time. Once my knee skin gets stronger, I will be able to use the scooter again; until then I’ll stick with the crutches or the dreaded wheelchair. 

Any why is the wheelchair so dreaded? Because every time I think of it, I think about the single time I used it to go across town. It took me all day, and my arms are so weak that I could barely get on the bus and was stymied by even the slightest incline. I know that with time I will get better at it, but I think back to that afternoon, when I found myself physically unable to pull myself up onto the curb in front of my building, despite the access ramp. I sat there, stuck in the gutter on the corner, just a few dozen yards from my front door, and cried. 

I end the day the way I began it, sitting on the balcony. It’s warmer than it was this morning, and the wind has died down. A few stars manage to elude the clouds. I pour myself a juice jar of wine, placing it on the little wooden end table I keep out there for my coffee. I read for a while, a delightful novel about old people in Florida. Not one of the characters in the book is wheelchair-bound; old as they are, they walk around town and mount the porch steps without thinking about it. They are all old but suspiciously healthy.

Eventually I put the book down and look out at the lights scattered across the dark hills. In some of the nearer apartments, I can see tiny people going about their business. Making supper, playing video games. I feel like James Stewart in Rear Window, sitting with his broken leg, watching the world go on without him. Watching and waiting for something terrible to happen. A slap in the face, a knife in the bag, or maybe just a slimy spill on the highway.

I suddenly think of Agnes, 27 going on 70 and tough as rope, cutting open carefully-taped, neatly-labeled boxes in her new apartment. I feel exhausted by her vacillating between soothing and scolding. Pushing my little table further away, I prop up my foot and resume my reading.

Ice Cream Truck

 

To show their appreciation for all our hard work, the museum hires an ice cream truck to serves us free ice cream. Everyone who walks past my desk asks if I’m having any, and I tell every one of them that I shouldn’t eat ice cream. It shouldn’t bother me –there are just not many things considered “treats” that are diabetic-friendly- but it does. 

My appointment is an hour earlier than usual, and on a Thursday rather than a Wednesday. It’s nice not to have to use the scooter on the bus. 

As I’m waiting to check in, three security officers suddenly start running like mad down the hall as one of them yells, “Clear a path! Clear a path!” I realize the woman at the desk has been trying to get my attention and I apologize for being distracted.

I head upstairs and have only sat for a few moments when the door opens and a woman I’ve never seen before calls my name. She’s older, with fried red hair and huge bangs. Her name is Bridget and she leads me to room three, which I’ve rarely been in. It’s tucked back in the corner and cramped. A sticker of a smiling octopus with the word SUCKER is slapped on the glove dispenser. “Code gray room 221, Code gray room 221,” a voice on the intercom says. 

Bridget is friendly and chatty. She’s only been here a few months but she’s worked in wound care for ten years. “I worked with KC at Vital,” she says. Vital is apparently a clinic that specializes in helping people get off respirators. “Everyone’s in pretty rough shape there,” she says. 

She draws a line along the cast then saws it in two, only it doesn’t come apart, so she goes back over the line again and again and eventually goes to get Shelley. Shelley immediately sees where the cast is so thick it needs extra cutting. It still takes a long time to cut it off. Bridget apologizes and says they didn’t do casting at Vital. 

She changes my bandages and says that the doctor only does debriding once a week. She gets the casting and water bucket ready and I can tell that she’s preparing for the finicky Dr. Thompson. 

True to form, when the doctor comes in she immediately adjusts my chair and complains about how tiny the room is. As she wraps the cast material I ask where she’s traveled to lately and she says Thailand. I try to get her to talk about it but she just asks, “Is that ninety degrees?” meaning my foot. I tell her it’s as close as I can get. 

She doesn’t splash as much as usual, and when Bridget drops a fifth roll into the water, she looks at it and says, “You know, I think this is big enough.” My foot does, indeed, look huge. Bridget apologizes for wasting the roll but the doctor tells her not to worry about it, then fishes it out and throws it into the trash bin. 

 Once the cast is dry I put on my shoe and hobble over to the reception desk to ask when my next appointment is. “8:00 Monday,” says Bree. I tell her that was this week, and she looks annoyed. “It’s every Monday and Thursday.” I tell her I thought this was only once a week, and really can only get out of work in the late afternoon. 

“It’s twice a week until your wound goes down,” says Shelley. “They should have told you that.”

“I’m going to have trouble making that,” I say, feeling a wave of anxiety rising up. It was hard enough to convince them to let me have this Monday morning off, now I have to go through this every week, for how many weeks? 

“If you can’t making it we’ll have to skip the cast,” says Agnes, passing by. 

I feel sick to my stomach when I leave. I’ve been trying so hard to balance things in a way that will make my life bearable, but I see now that I am failing. Whatever hope I had of being able to live even a moderately normal life has been shattered. I’m exhausted from trying to take care of myself. What’s the point when the only reward is extending the finish line a few extra hobbled steps? My life is miserable. I should have just said to hell with it and gotten in line with all my healthy, non-diabetic coworkers and ordered a big cone of lavender salted caramel.