Gilgamesh

     Going to wound care twice a week has become such a routine that I barely pay attention to what I’m doing. We become our habits so easily. 

    I don’t want to stop noticing things, though. I don’t want to take any of this for granted. But there’s a reason it’s called paying attention, and I definitely feel like I am paying. 

*

    I leave work and roll across the park and down to the bus mall and encounter the same goofy bus driver, the same motley gang of passengers, the same dangerous intersection at the entrance of the hospital parking lot, the same steep hill leading down to the main entrance, the same metal detector, the same gift shop the same  Starbucks the long hallway the other hallway the water fountain the green elevator the fourth floor waiting area. Day after day after day I smash the blue square button with a picture of a wheelchair and poke my head in and if it’s Thursday they tell me to wheel right in and if it’s Monday they tell me to wait. It’s Monday. I wait. 

    I take a seat beside an older interracial gay couple whose bodies seem entwined even though one of them is in a wheelchair. A large man lumbers out of the clinic and plops down across from us. 

    “Those ladies treat you pretty rough in there, don’t they?” he chuckles. 

    “Actually I find them to be quite nice,” the man in the wheelchair says. 

    “Oh they’re nice,” the large man quickly agrees. The older men look at the news on the phone, comment quietly.

 “Don’t know how you keep so thin, being in a wheelchair and all,” the large man says. “Don’t usually see that.”

    “It’s only my legs that are thin,” says the man in the wheelchair. “They’re paralyzed. The rest of me is kind of big.” I see for the first time that his legs are like sticks. 

    “I got a lot of friends in wheelchairs and they don’t want to do anything but sit around so they get fat,” the large man says. Just then Vicki comes out with a bottle of pills for him. She gives him detailed instructions which he clearly does not understand. She tells the couple they can come in, leaving me alone with him.

    “So what happened to you?” he asks. I tell him I had all my toes chopped off. “That happened to my best friend,” he says. “He takes good care of himself and everything, but he lost his toes, then his heel, then his leg. Then the other leg.”

    “Huh,” I say. He waits.

    “Yeah they’re burning my veins,” he finally says. “ Lasers. The Burning blood smells awful. They gave me laughing gas but it doesn’t make me laugh.” He laughs. “Makes me feel pretty good though.”

    Caitlin rescues me and saws off my cast with her usual efficiency. She says she and her husband are going back and rewatching the entire run of the X-Files, a show I never got into. KC waves from the gap in the curtain and says she’ll be in to help. Caitlin rolls her eyes and mutters something. 

    She unwraps the undercast carefully and says the blister looks okay. She bandages everything up without showing the doctor, which surprises me. Dr. Taggert doesn’t seem to mind though, just asks Caitlin if she looked at it. 

    “I mean, not really, I didn’t take it off,” Caitlin says uncertainly.

    “You can see through the screen! You didn’t take a peek? You didn’t see any big white globs of fresh new skin forming?” Caitlin says no. Taggert shrugs. “Dr. Thompson says it stays on for two weeks, so we'll see next week. I’ll be back for casting.” 

    Caitlin wraps my foot expertly, barely having to look at what she’s doing. She talks about What We Do in the Shadows, which I actually do find funny. KC bounces in and hangs on the arm of my chair and says she just watched a program about Mesopotamia. “I’m making myself smart,” she giggles. “Hey, have you heard of the Gilgamesh Project?”

    Before I can answer, Kaitlin says, “He’s a Hindu god.” KC looks confused so she repeats it. “He’s the Hindu god with the elephant head.”

    “That’s Ganesh,” I say. 

    “Oh right, of course,” she says. 

    “This is Gilgamesh. There’s a poem about him,” says KC. “The Epic of Gilgamesh, I don’t know why I keep wanting to say Gilgamesh Project.”

    “I love that poem,” I say. “It’s great. You should read it,” She seems unsure if I’m serious. 

    Dr. Taggert reappears in a blue paper gown and holds up her phone. “Look it’s hailing!” The entire screen is white with hail. 

Caitlin nervously checks her phone. “I’m going to skip the gym tonight,” she tells KC. She lives out in the gorge.

“Good, then I’m not going either. We go to the gym together,” says KC.

    Taggert looks at the bucket and rolls of casting and says, “Just the way I like it!” She starts singing “I Want it That Way.” She really is the Warbling Wound Care Warrior. 

     She laughs and wiggles around. “Backstreet Boys! I love it! Weird Al did a parody and made it about e-Bay. Don’t you love Weird Al? I love Weird Al! I’ve seen him twice. Once at the county fair! I don’t know about the long hair though, it freaks me out a little. I liked it back when it was poofy.” 

    “That damn song is going to be in my head all day,” grumbles Kaitlin. 

    "It's a real, what do they call it, ear bug," laughs Taggert, and sings some more.

    "Ear worm," says Kaitlin. She starts to sing a song I don't recognize to try to drown it out.

    "Hey, did you see there's a new hospital show out? It looks funny. It takes place in Oregon. Not Portland though." KC says. I feel like I’m on that show.

    Taggert talks about the tiny hospitals she worked in along the coast. "One had nine beds. Four in ER and four for patients, plus one for the doctor. It was a 24-hour shift. They'd bring you a tray of breakfast and make your bed in the morning. It was nice. Nothing ever happened." 

    While Taggert does my cast, KC shows me photos of her cat sitting in her lap. “We pretty much didn’t move from this spot all weekend,” she says. 

    The doctor finishes and Caitlin gives me a new plastic bag to wrap around the cast and I wheel out the door and up the hill. Ice clings to the roots of the trees and the edges of the grass, but the sidewalk is merely wet. I catch the 4:53 bus and tell the driver no I don’t need the ramp and make my connection and tell the other driver I don’t need the ramp and wheel across the bridge  and down two blocks and into the building and across the lobby and up the elevator and around the corner and down the hall and when I’m finally in my apartment I collapse into bed and wonder how many weeks I could get away with just lying here motionless before I had to get up.   

Dick Cheney

It’s a lovely morning, and I have a pleasant scoot to work. It isn’t until I’m in the locker room in the basement that I realize I’m only wearing one shoe. The post-op sandal that velcros over my cast is gone; it must have fallen off on the way. I wonder if I should go back and retrace my path –as usual, I’m 15 minutes early, I could get most of the way home and back- but in the end I decide to just go without, hoping I won’t regret it. I dig through the piles of detritus that have accumulated in the locker room during the construction, and find a black cloth bag that fits perfectly over my cast. It won’t help me walk but it may help hide my shoelessness. 

The annoyance I’ve been feeling about the museum lately does not abate over the course of the day. It begins by getting subjected to a long diatribe from a coworker about 9/11 being orchestrated by Dick Cheney, and it goes downhill from there. Probably because of my own missing shoe, I suddenly remember the time some guy threw a shoe at President Bush. What a shitty president. And yet look at where we are today. I’m relieved to be leaving early for my appointment. 

I get the same goofy bus driver I’ve had for the past few weeks. At our first stop, a woman with a horribly broken body crammed into a wheelchair gets on. He straps her in, and she seems to want him to lift her up and help her shift in her chair. “I don’t want to hurt you, ma’am,” he says, with a tenderness I hadn’t seen in him before.

At the hospital, the metal detector is back in service. A man standing behind an empty wheelchair is arguing with her. “This isn’t just for homeless people, sir. Everyone needs to go through this,” she says, clearly running out of patience. “We’re just trying to keep everyone safe.” She asks him to step aside for m. I toss my bag into a bin and wheel around the detector as the man stands there, still arguing. 

After a short wait, Jenny comes out to fetch me. It’s good to have her motherly presence after monday’s rather exhausting visit. She saws off the cast and as she’s pulling off the undercast, she accidentally yanks off the patch of green mesh that was covering the skin graft. She plucks it from the cotton batting and gingerly places it back on. “Is that going to affect anything?” I ask. She says she doesn’t think so, and that it already looks like the umbilical cord skin is working its magic. Vicki pops her head in quickly to see and she agrees. The blister, meanwhile, has pretty much disappeared. I’m cautiously brightened by this news.

We chat as she wraps a new undercast. Aside from Sjon slipping in to refill supplies, I don’t see or hear anyone else in the office until Dr. Thompson comes in. Instead of her usual African or Baby Yoda headgear, her cap is surgical green, and for the first tie I realize that these aren’t anything exotic. They’re just scrub caps. You can get them on Etsy. 

She looks at my half-wrapped foot and says, “So I don’t get to look at it?” She sounds annoyed. Jenny blushes and apologizes; we had been so busy talking she had forgotten to get her. Thompson shakes her head and says she’ll be back when everything’s ready. 

When she does return she still seems cranky. She can’t get the chair the height she likes, and she keeps telling me to inch forward, until I’m almost falling off the edge of my seat. “This isn’t right,” she says, partially unwrapping and rewrapping the strips. I keep quiet. 

We talk about the election for the first time. “We’ve all been pretty out of sorts,” says Jenny. She lowers her voice. “Well, most of us.” 

Finally Dr. Thompson says, “That’s better.” She sees to be in a much better mood by the time she’s done, and shows e photos of her greyhound encountering a tortoise. 

Before I leave, Jenny asks, “Okay where’s your shoe?” I had totally forgotten about it. I explain to her that I lost it. Her and Vicki laugh, along with Shelley, who has been lurking in the background this entire time, and she gets me a new one.

On the way home, I stop for cat food at Safeway, which continues to be the most depressing grocery store in Portland. The store seems especially chaotic today, the customers frantic as if there's a stowstorm on the way. As I’m leaving another shopper walks alongside me, talking about the time she broke her foot. Everyone has a story of themselves or someone they know hurting their foot or having surgery and wearing a cast, using crutches, riding a scooter. I usually enjoy hearing these stories, though they’re all pretty much the same.  This woman is lovely, in a rough kind of way, and we walk together until I skid on the wet leaves and she says she doesn’t want to distract me. 

By the time I get home I feel a little cheerier. As I approach my apartment, I see a dark shape on the carpet in front of my door. I figure it’s a package with the eye drops for my surgery, but when I get closer I see what it is. 

It’s my shoe. 

Taquitos

  I wheel into the lobby of the hospital a little too enthusiastically and screech to a halt. The metal detector is stanchioned off. No guards are in sight. A sign stands nearby reads

Providence is a place for healing.

No weapons.

No threats.

No verbal abuse.

No physical violence of any kind

I wonder if the sign makes people feel better. 

        It’s another busy Monday at wound care. I hear people laughing and talking loudly through the door. I have to wait a very long time before KC steps out and snarls “Get in here, you!”

        She leads me to room one. “I learned how to use the saw this morning,” she says. I could’ve sworn she she did this for me before. Maybe it was the soft cast. All these visits get blurred together. I’m swept up in her presence; she’s like a ginger whirlwind.

        Sawing like a pro, KC makes short work of the cast. I’m nervous; I have no idea what is happening under there.

        “Tan drainage, moderate,” she says, looking at the cotton batting before throwing it out. 

        “I was hoping for small,” I say. 

        “No maceration though,” she says. 

     “Hi,” says Sjon.

     “Get out of here, he’s mine!” barks KC.

     Vicki comes in and sits at the computer. “There’s some blood but it looks dry. The blister stayed closed. I’m calling this not a wound.” 

     KC measures the wound that definitely is still a wound. . “One by one three by point two. Are we doing pictures? I’m doing pictures.” She takes pictures. “Wanna see?”

     “Hmm,” I say. It looks exactly the same as last week.

     “What were his vitals?” asks Vicki.

     “I forgot. I was too excited about using the saw,” KC says. 

     While she’s checking my blood pressure Vicki asks if I’ve gotten an eye appointment yet. I start to relate the saga. KC looks at my blood pressure and says she’ll recheck it in a few minutes. 

     Dr. Taggert comes in and says things are looking good. “Did you use the scooter at work like I said?” she asks. I usually tell her the truth but I say yes. 

     She debrides contentedly for a while, then Kaitlin comes in with the skin graft. It comes in a box filled with sealed pouches and envelopes. The product is called Epicord and is made from umbilical cord tissue, rather than placenta like I’d been told.  I don’t ask how they get it. They all gather around, curious and excited, while Taggert reads the literature aloud. 

     “This product is a dehydrated, non-viable cellular human umbilical cord allograft intended for homologous use to…yes yes yes we know all that.” She sees my face and says, “don’t worry, we do lots of these. we’ve just never used this particular  product before,” she says. “You’re our guinea pig.”

     “The pieces are awfully big,” says Vicki.

      “Yeah I thought we could cut it down and use the other half later…”

     “But you can’t,” interjects Kaitlin. “Dr. Thompson wanted that as well but it says here that once you open it you can’t save any of it. It’s too easily contaminated.”

     “What a waste,” grumbles Taggert. She cuts the tissue down so she has a white square the size of a postage stamp. Since it’s being discarded anyways, she plays around with the excess piece. “It says it accordions out but when I pull on it, it just wants to come apart. It’s not like in in the video.” She turns the instructions over then hands them to KC. “It doesn’t want to accordion. I guess you just… put it on?” She pats it onto the wound. “Okay. Huh. I guess that’s how it goes on.” She taps it gently.

     “It says to hydrate it,” says KC.

     “Yeah but if the wound is already wet, that will probably be enough, right? We don’t want to overhydrate.”

     “It says you CAN hydrate it if you want to,” says Kaitlin. 

     “Okay, then I don’t want to. And… I think that’s it.” She steps aside and watches as KC carefully bandages both the wound and the blister. “I don’t know why it won’t accordion,” she mutters.

     “Maybe that’s why it was donated,” I say. “How exactly does this stuff work, anyways?” She explains it to me, but I don’t really understand. Something about collagen and dermal appendages. She may as well be chanting spells and smearing my foot with newt eye ointment. The clinic is weirdly similar to a coven. 

     The excitement over, everyone drifts away and leaves KC and I alone again. She prepares the undercast, complimenting herself on what a good job she’s doing of the herring bone technique. I finally ask how things are going with dating.

     “Oh I’m done with all that,” she says. “I went out with that guy three weekends in a row but I realized I’m just not willing to put in that kind of time and effort. He was cute and all, and I had fun, but I really just like being at home with my cat.” Jenny waves to me and I wave back. “Who are you waving to? Is that Jenny? Don’t wave to him!”

     “You’re really possessive today,” I say.

     She pages Dr. Taggert and stays to assist with putting on the new cast. Taggert is more chatty than ever. She talks about her three kids, two of them still in high school. Her daughter is going to a track meet in Idaho this weekend and she won’t be able to make it. 

     “I’m mostly relieved. There are going to be nine teenage girls –nine!- but I wish I could just make sure the food is done right because of her Celiac. But she doesn’t appreciate me anyways. Get this: I went out and got the girls those Trader Joe’s taquito chips she likes, and she got really mad because I only got two bags. I mean, I don’t know how many taquitos nine teenage girls can eat! And instead of thanking me she freaking yells at me!”

     I tell her to bring her daughter to my next visit. “I’ll talk to her. If there’s one thing I know about teenage girls, it’s that they really enjoy having some creepy old man with no toes lecture them about respecting their parents.” 

     She laughs. “Stop it, I’m going to mess up the cast!” KC is laughing too, and I’m distracted by how much she’s leaning against my leg as she passes the rolls of Fiberglas to the doctor. “This is like being at the hairdresser,” says Taggert. “You probably know more about me than you ever wanted to.”

     “I know more about everyone here than I ever wanted to,” I say. 

     “You could write a book! But here I am telling you all this nonsense when I should be asking you how you’re doing.”

     “Well, my life kind of sucks, but at least I’m not stuck in a bus seven hours with nine teenage girls. Going to Idaho, no less.”

     “Hey, I’m from Idaho,” interjects KC. “Where is the track meet exactly?”

     “I don’t even know!” wails the doctor. “Boise? Everything’s in Boise, right? I’m a terrible mother!”

     It is well past five by the time they finish wrapping me up. KC tapes a plastic bag around my cast to keep it dry. “Hopefully this will work,” she says. 

     “I’m sure it’ll be fine, I’m just going straight home,” I say.

     “What, no dates tonight?”

     “Sadly, no.”

     “Come on, Really?”

     “Just with my cat. And I’m out of Temptations so it’s not going to go well.”

     She fetches my scooter and escorts me out of the office. As I wait for the elevator,she places her hand on my arm and quietly says, “Bye, hon.” I can’t seem to look her in the eyes. When I get outside, it’s so dark I can hardly see a thing. Headlights, tail lights, street lamps. The throb of a siren.  My own little lights blink off and on as I push my way up the hill.

Bruce Lee

 On the way to work, I pass a Native American man using a knee scooter just like mine, only not decorated. His left leg is in an even larger cast than mine. We nod and smile at each other and I say, “You need to get some decorations on that thing!” He agrees and we roll our separate ways. 

At work, the FedEx guy pulls me aside. Lately he’s taken to asking me questions about my foot; he hurt his ankle and has been experiencing neuropathy and is worried about it. He’s a nice guy and I don’t mind talking about it but our problems don’t really have anything in common. 

He asks me how I first knew I was having issues. I again tell him it really doesn’t relate to his problem, but he seems really worried so I ask what his symptoms are. He says he wears a cast, though I can’t see it through his uniform, and that it makes his ankle red. “It goes away overnight,” he says. I tell him it probably just needs to be adjusted.

He tells me that his nerve pain has gotten better. He says he originally started feeling it after he got the ankle massaged as part of physical therapy. “I got this device over the internet that shoots electricity down your leg,” he says. “Bruce Lee used one like it. There’s footage in which you can see his chest muscles twitch.” I ask if it helps and he says he thinks so.

After work I get on the bus to go to my appointment. At the next stop, a guy with a walker gets on. A few blocks after that, a woman with two kids and an enormous stroller gets on. And at the stop after that looms a gigantic man in the largest wheelchair I’ve ever seen. The driver gets up, looks at the man, looks at all of us, and asks the woman with the stroller if she minds sitting with her kids in seats further back and if he can push the stroller out of the way Then he asks me if I’ll have enough room. I hope so. The huge man slowly wheels on. Luckily it’s one of those motorized chairs that can turn in place. He backs up against my scooter, which I’ve pulled as close to myself as I can.

“Don’t run over his toes!” the driver says. 

“It’s okay, I don’t have any,” I say. 

“I have ten, you can have a few of mine,” a man behind me says. 

“One big and one little?” 

“They’re yours.”

The man in the wheelchair settles in and the bus continues on its way. We’re pretty crammed and people keep getting on the bus. I’m pretty uncomfortable, and I wonder how I’m going to get off, but luckily the big guy is getting off at my stop, and not a moment too soon; another woman in a wheelchair is waiting at the stop to take our place. 

I put my bag in the tray and once again ride my scooter around the metal detector so the guard can wand me. He seems just as annoyed as I am by the whole thing; I’m sure he gets dozens if not hundreds of complaints every day. But this is the country we live in, where no one is willing to pass any sort of gun control laws. As usual, we citizens pay the price for our elected officials’ immorality and cowardice. It makes me want to shoot someone.

Things seem the same as ever in the office, though after Tuesday’s cataclysmic election, I feel like I’m seeing everything through a different lens. Aaron brings it up first. He says what so many of us have been saying all week; “I don’t understand it. I really thought she would win.” 

He asks the usual questions about my blood sugar and changes in meds and upcoming foot appointments. I tell him I finally got my cataract surgery scheduled. He acts oddly blasé about what I consider extremely exciting news.

Though I had been trying to be patient, I was growing more enraged every week that went by without getting the call from the scheduler. I even called her number once and left a friendly if long message, but that had been weeks ago, and I was wondering if it was time to leave a somewhat less friendly message. 

But on Election Day I had been sitting at the Mark desk again when my phone rang. Assuming it was the same Chicago collection agency that has been harassing me, I almost didn’t answer, but then I looked at the number and almost dropped my phone. 

Just like last time, the woman couldn’t hear me, but before she could hang up I ran out the door and stood on the front steps, screaming “Hello, hello! Can you hear me?” 

She told me surgery on my first eye would be on December 11, more than a month away. The second surgery wouldn’t be until February. “She’s extremely busy, and will be away for a while,” she said. The clinic was way out in Tigard. Afraid of jinxing things, I just said thank you and got off the phone and almost cried with relief.

Aaron saws the cast off and says is happy to report that the blister didn’t burst. I had tried to stay off it as much as possible at work, hoping for this. “Looks like you’re reabsorbing it,” he says. The wound itself however, while only draining a little, is no smaller than before. He says he’s not too worried about it. 

Just then Vicki pops her head in and says, “So it looks like you were approved for the graft!”

“What graft?” I ask. 

“The skin graft Dr. Thompson has been trying to get you!” She sounds very excited about this thing I’ve never been told a word about. “What’s more, it’s being donated.”

“Where’s it from?” 

“It’s from a placenta,” she says.

“Um, ok,” I say. I had wanted to know who had donated it.

“They used to use horse foreskin,” she says. 

“Huh,” I say.

She hurries away.

“Dr. Thompson talked to one of the reps and got them to give us $10,000 worth of skin,” explains Aaron. “Towards the end of the year, they start tallying up how many of their products we’ve used, and if we haven’t used enough –or if we’ve used a whole lot- they give us a lot of stuff in the hope we’ll keep buying from them.”

“So this is… a bribe?” I ask. 

He shrugs. “More or less.”

Jenny pops in and says she has a patient getting rid of a brand new wheelchair and can have it if I want it. I’m still a little dazed about the whole horse foreskin thing and tell her I’ll think about it. Do I need a wheelchair? I know Taggert wanted me in one, but she seems to have backed down. No doubt I will need one someday, but should I have one ready, just in case?

Dr. Thompson bursts in. “Guten tag!” she cries.

“Guten tag, Doktor! Sie gehts?” I ask, exhausting my German.

“Gut, sehr gut.” This is the first I’ve seen her since she got back from her trip to Germany. I ask her how it was and she says amazing, but doesn’t elaporate. She looks at the foot but only says, “I shall return in my finest gown.”

As Aaron prepares the cast, he talks about the possible nursing strike. I ask him when this is happening and he says January. I suddenly feel deeply weary. 

Thompson comes back in wearing her yellow paper gown and Baby Yoda cap. She seems in really good spirits, and tells Aaron she bought a present from Germany and is having it shipped. “I shouldn’t say anything, it may never show up. But I know how much you like biking stuff.”

“Viking stuff?” he and I both ask excitedly. 

“Biking. Biking,” she says. “Everyone over there bikes and they have equipment you can’t find anywhere else. I didn’t want to make a thing out of it.”

I ask her again how her trip was and she goes on for a while about how her friends told her they have laws against revving your engine or blaring your horn too aggressively, and that sure enough, she had seen some guy revving his engine and the cops pulled up and gave him a ticket. 

When she’s finished, she says “Monday we should be able to get the first skin graft on. They gave us four but I think it’ll be okay to cut them in half. This is really good. You should be healed up by Christmas.”

“A Christmas fucking miracle,” I say. I don’t believe it for a moment. This week has taught us all a painful lesson in the danger of being overly hopeful. 

Thriller

     I have the same manic bus driver as I had on Monday. “Not running late today!” he says triumphantly. 

    I’m the only one in the waiting room, and I don’t have to wait long until Shelley greets me. “Oh good, you’re early. I need to get out of there and help my little monsters get dressed for trick or treating.” 

“    Where’s your costume? I thought everyone was supposed to dress up today.” The only person in costume is Vicki, in tie dye and fringed leather boots. 

    Though I see Sjon in the background, I’m relieved that Shelley is instead joined by Aaron. They don’t ask any of the usual questions, Aaron cuts the cast and Shelley sits at the computer, not typing anything. The inside of the cast has gotten wet, but just in the heel. “Don’t hesitate to come in if this gets wet,” he says. “It can really make things get bad really quickly.” I tell him I hadn’t realized it had gotten wet; I’ve been keeping it wrapped up in a bag now that the rainy season is upon us. But he says the wound itself looks smaller, though he doesn’t bother measuring it. There’s a small amount of drainage, which means I should be able to go back to once a week visits after next week, provided it doesn’t get worse over the weekend.

    Dr. Bayliss appears, dressed as a blue shark, complete with a floppy dorsal fin. “I wear this every year,” she says. I tell her I’m having flashbacks to all the shark movies Sally made me watch in the chamber. She swims off to let Aaron prepare for the cast. As always he is speedy but methodical, at times asking Shelley for her advice, to make her feel important, I assume. She is so sedate and pleasant I wonder if she’s medicated, but then she says she had too much candy and is crashing after the afternoon’s sugar high. 

    Jenny pokes her head in to say hi, then Dr. Shark returns to put on the cast, a yellow paper gown over her costume. The cast doesn’t go on smoothly, and Shelley ends up doing a lot of it, four blue gloved hands frantically rubbing my leg at once. They end up putting on an extra roll of Fiberglas. “Well, guess I won’t be taking my pants off this weekend,” I say. 

    “Hey, do you want a job?” Jenny asks as Shelley puts my shoes on. I always tell her I can do it myself and she always insists. “We’re hiring someone for the reception desk.”

    “Oh no, is Perez leaving?” I ask. 

    “No, her job’s just… changing a bit. You’d basically be answering phones and doing scheduling.” 

    “He doesn’t want to work forty hours a week,” says Shelley.

    “I already work forty hours a week,” I say. 

    “You could get free wound care,” says Jenny. 

    “Throw in a few free sessions in the chamber and you’ve got a deal,” I say. 

    Although it’s a gloppy, chilly night, I feel don’t feel like spending yet another night at home alone, so I wrap my cast in plastic and venture down to the Goose. It’s raining lightly and the chilly air is refreshing. At the corner of 16th and Clay I see a car approach the intersection. They have a stop sign, so when I see that they’re slowing down, I cautiously start to cross. They don’t stop, and slam on the brakes and avoid running me over by less than a foot. I stand there and stare at the driver for a moment, though I can’t see them, then continue to hobble across. This is why I don’t go out at night much anymore.

    The Goose is full of costumed revelers, and I take my usual seat on the deck and hope that one of the servers notices me through the crowd. Rachel Clark herself does. Bud Clark’s only daughter (he has two sons), Rachel has run the place for years. Since he died, she hasn’t changed a thing. She comes over to ask if I need anything. She’s dressed as a witch, and is clearly enjoying herself. “Thanks for being here!” she says warmly. 

    My Pendleton tastes particularly good tonight; just the right balance of sharp and sweet. Everyone is talking so loud I can’t make anything out. Rachel herds everyone in a line for the costume contest. I can make out a blurry farmer, a blurry Batman, a hot dog, an astronaut, a goose. 

    When all the contestants have filed inside, it’s a lot quieter out on the deck. Rachel pops her head out for a moment to ask if I want to vote. I say no thanks. 

    Michael Jackson’s Thriller blasts over the speakers, followed by the time warp and the monster mash, all as inevitable as baby it’s cold outside and Feliz Navidad will be a month from now. This is my beef with Halloween: like anything that gets too popular, it has become precictable. I'm bored of the tired tropes, the same skeletons  and tombstones in every yard.

    Every time the door opens I smell warm pastrami as another best Reuben on the planet is birthed. the ghost of bud Clark drifts among his guests, not unhappy in the afterlife but wishing he could still taste the beer. I wouldn’t be here now if he hadn’t created this sanctuary, this haven in the hollow. I wouldn’t be sitting on the edge of this deck, watching a hot dog hit on Cruella DeVille.  As always, I remain apart from the action, Invisible as a spirit. What kind of life is this anyways, this life spent observing rather than living, this life I’ve chosen?

    Rachel rides her broomstick into the dark and is replaced by a new server I’ve never seen before. She’s young and seems to know everyone.  she doesn’t look my way or come near enough for me to ask her for another drink. After a while I finally haul myself up and go inside.

    Cobwebs and skeletons are everywhere. Moe is behind the bar. 

    “Hey seann, what can I get ya?” she asks in her gritty voice.

    “Pendleton neat, then close me out. And I had one other one.”

    “Where were you sitting?”

    I point to my usual spot. Moe checks the ordering screen and says she doesn’t see anything. Rachel never charged me for my drink. I could have dissipated like a spirit into the night and no one would have noticed. 

Sourdough

The door to the bus opens and I clamber on with my scooter. At this point I’ve developed a pretty good technique for boarding without having the ramp lowered. First I haul the front wheels up, then hoist the rear wheels on, then ease my knee up onto the seat and hop on. If I’m paying attention, I can do all this in one smooth motion.

“If you’re wondering why I’m eight minutes late, it’s because of micromanaging,” the driver says, a manic look in his eyes. I take a seat, propping my cast on my scooter. “They didn’t like me being four minutes early. I guess they think it’s better that I’m eight minutes late,” he yells, I guess to me. 

We drive across the river and I pull the cord at my stop. As I’m getting out, he stares at me with an angry grin and says, “I don’t want you to think I did this on purpose. I didn’t try to be eight minutes late. It’s all the micromanaging.” I tell him it’s fine and he speeds off. As I cross the street I almost get hit by a car zipping through the red light.

I sit in the waiting area for a long time, just like I did last Monday. I close my eyes and try to nap, and just as I start to drift off I am roused by Sjon’s voice telling me to come on in.

“I need you to decipher some texts for me!” KC yells the moment I’ve settled in. Everyone in the office laughs.

“Leave the poor guy alone,” says Sjon, sounding irritated. KC runs off.

“It’s okay, it’s part of my treatment,” I say. I can hear what sounds like the entire staff talking at once and laughing. I can’t understand a word.

“I hate that Aaron’s off Mondays,” grumbles Sjon. “Being the only guy here is pretty brutal.” I think about when I worked in subscriptions at the newspaper back in Allentown. The only other men in our department were Jerry, who was gay, and Jose, who didn’t speak much English. The job was awful but I loved being surrounded by all those women. 

I was worried that the fact that the cast seemed to be too loose would have made my foot slide around, exacerbating the wound. I don’t tell him but I also walked around more than usual this weekend. Despite all this, he says things look really good. “It looks smaller. And this is probably the only place a dude likes to hear that.” As he leaves through the curtain, he says, “You’re healing,” he says this last with what sounds like real kindness, and I momentarily stop disliking him.

Taggert comes in to have a look and she agrees that it looks good. She lingers and we talk a while, just the two of us, which is unusual. She speculates for a while about why my cast didn’t fit. “Did you lose weight?” she asks. 

“Not overnight,” I say, not sure if she’s joking.

“Did you eat a lot of salt the day before? Maybe a nice big salty slice of pizza? You might have been swollen up. These casts really help with swelling.” I tell her I didn’t have any pizza. 

Unable to wait any longer, KC scampers in with her phone while SJon prepares my cast. Leaning affectionately against me in her burgundy scrubs, she reads what seems like a completely ordinary series of friendly texts.

“So?” she asks.

“So what?” I ask. 

“It just ends like that, with us talking about where to go to dinner. We had narrowed it down to two options, and he never responded.”

“Um, okay. When did you last hear from him?” I ask.

“Yesterday,” she says. I give her a look. “Okay, okay, so I’m impatient. I can’t wait to start bending him to my will!” She laughs evilly.

“Be patient,” I say.

I ask to see a photo of the guy. He looks like every large, bearded man in Portland, but she’s positively aglow so I tell her he looks cute, except that I don’t like beards.

“Oh I don’t either,” she says. “Except I really like his. So… I guess I do now?” 

I decide to tell her about asking Hannah out, and how I also wish she would respond to my texts a little sooner. I leave out the part that she was my home care nurse, in case she thinks that’s weird, which it probably is. 

“Huh,” is all she says. 

Taggert returns to swaddle my foot in Fiberglas. She makes sure to wrap it extra tight. KC says her new guy used to be a cook. “He makes sourdough,” she says. 

“Big deal,” I say. “Since the pandemic, everyone makes fucking sourdough.” It comes out a little meaner than I expected.

“I bake sourdough for my daughter and husband because it helps with their Ciliac,” Taggert interjects. “I hear it’s not too bad for diabetics as well though don’t quote me on that.” Sjon has been oddly silent this whole time, which is nice. 

“Now if you have any issues, I want you to call us right away,” Taggert says, as usual. “Don’t hesitate, though I know you’ll be back Thursday. Oh, you’ll be here on Halloween!” I ask if they all dress up. “We sure do! I was Cruella last year, with a black and white wig. I even made a black and white mask.”  She dashes off and comes back with a photo of her dressed as a minion.

“Oh right, Cruella was two years ago. This was last year. I used pipe cleaners for the hair.” I wonder what KC will dress up as, before I remember that she’s off Thursdays.

On the bus ride home, a couple struggle on with a pile of huge bags and pieces of rolling luggage. The woman asks a girl sitting nearby if she wants a new Coach bag to replace the one they have. “Brand new. I can give you a good price. Okay, your loss.” Then she points at my decorated scooter.

 “Are those flowers just for you to brighten up your home, or are they for a lady friend?” the woman shouts, even though she’s sitting just a few feet away. “A beautiful bouquet of fall flowers. Though now I see they’re leaves. And there’s some grapes in there too, aren’t there. And pumpkins, or maybe they’re apples. Oh wait, are you dating someone with a fruit fetish? I’m not judging, it’s all good, there’s all kinds of fish in the… oh shit, is your lady friend a manikin? Aw, look at him blush! It’s good thing I don’t turn red like that, I’d never be able to hide my feelings. No poker face. God look at how red you are!” She cackles. The whole bus is staring at me. “Of course us Natives don’t blush, do we?” she elbows her friend. He stares straight ahead as we cross the darkening river and doesn’t say a word. 

Cornucopia

 The waiting room on the fourth floor is filled with people. I’m used to coming in at the end of the week, when I tend to be the only patient.  After a very long wait,  SJon ushers me in to room two and starts up the saw.

KC bursts immediately into the room, resplendent in teal.

“Aren’t you dying to know about how my date went?” She has a huge grin on her face.

“I’ve been thinking of nothing else. Look how happy you are! Do I hear wedding bells?”

“Why, yes, actually! But not mine.” She has to almost yell to be heard over the saw.

“He’s married.”

“Well, technically in the process of getting divorces, but he told me he’s ‘been checked out for years.’”

I laugh. “Like that would somehow make it better?”

“He said he was so scared of her he used to hide from her in a different part of the house.”

“And this was your first date?”

She nods. “And when I told him I wasn’t very social he said ‘well we’ll have to do something about that.’”

Without looking up from his sawing, SJon says, “I miss the old way of meeting; drunk off your ass in a dimly-lit dive.”

“This guy sounds like a real catch,” I say.

She shrugs. “I have some other victims lined up. I should probably get out of the way now though.”

She leaves and SJon pries apart the cast halves. He starts complaining about how hard it is to date in Portland. 

“I’m thinking this isn’t the city for me,” he says. “I’m not a big fan of all this woke shit.” Oh no, I think. Don’t I get enough of this talk at work? He tells a story about when he was downstairs in the ER and he “wasn’t thinking and used a word for little people that isn’t acceptable anymore. I didn’t see that there was one of these… little people in the room, and she went berserk. No lie it took six guards to throw her out. She had those pointy meth teeth.” 

“Meth Midgets, good idea for a new reality series,” I say, being very un-woke. I ask if he wants to move back to Texas.

“Oklahoma, but it’s basically the same state. But no, I can’t go back there. Montana, maybe. Go back to working on the res. I’m part Native American, you know.” I do.

He tells me to think good numbers as he measures my wound. I think good numbers. 

“Could be better,” he says. He takes a picture and shows me. It could be better. 

Taggert cries, “It’s cast time!” She breezes in and looks at my foot, which has not been wrapped for its cast yet, and says, “Oh wait, is it debride day? Did we decide that? I guess we did. Debride day it is! Okay, tools.” She digs around in the drawer for the little knives she likes. 

She slices a bit then leaves and he prepares for the cast. “Let’s see if I remember how to do this,” he mutters. On the other side of the curtain, Taggert and Caitlin start carrying on but I can’t understand what they’re saying. “Cardio vascular doing surgery in a diaper,” SJon says to me, as if that explains everything. “Shitting like a goose all over.” I have no idea what he’s talking about. 

“Time to cast you up up up, time to cast you up!” Dr Taggert sings, and proceeds to cast me up up up. Shelly appears and stands there staring at her phone.

“Can’t even be bothered to say hi?” I ask her. She slinks away without a word. Everybody is a little off today. Or maybe it’s me; three appointments in one week is just too damn many. 

Taggert tells SJon she only really needs a little bit of water in the bucket. “Just enough to cover the rolls,” she says. “Any more and it kind of sloshes all over the place.”

“Dr. Thompson likes when it sloshes all over the place,” I say. 

“That’s what everyone tells me. I want to see her technique, but I asked her once and she said no.” 

“She really gets into it,” I say. “It’s quite a spectacle.”

“I need something like that,” she says, rubbing the casting smooth. “You know, a trademark or gimmick or something.”

“You sing a lot,” I say. “You would be the Warbling Wound Care Warrior.”

“I’m not sure everyone appreciates my singing as much as you.”

Out of nowhere, SJon tells a story about a woman who was undergoing open heart surgery when her dog somehow got into the operating room and pissed all over the floor. I feel like I’ve kind of had my fill of SJon. I wonder if I can switch to Tuesdays, when both he and Shelley are off. 

They finish with me exactly an hour later than last time. Before I leave, Jenny comes to say hi, back from seeing her family in Wisconsin. 

"Oh my God, I love your concucopia. Is that what it's called?" She asks how I’m doing and I say I feel really fortunate, and I actually mean it. After all, I get to come back and do this all over again three days from now. 

“I know this has been hard, but just think,” she says as I roll away, “You’ve had osteomyelitis twice in this foot this year and you haven’t lost anything.” 

“Not yet,” I say. “After all, it’s only October.”