Say a Little Prayer

The same driver as last week greets me cheerily as I roll with my signature move onto the bus. He is just as chatty as before, though all he wants to talk about is the weather, which leads to him talking about global warming (thankfully he is not a denier) then nuclear power, and then of course the risks of annihilation as a result of said nuclear power, at which point I let my attention drift off, leaving him to carry on by himself about Fukushima. “You know they have lots of like wild monkeys over there, so they had a chance to test the effects of radiation on primates that are, you know, not that much unlike us…” As he had noted, it’s a deceptively chilly day.

On a whim, I take a different route to get upstairs. I roll past display cases filled with plush animals from the gift shop, past the mysterious Blue Elevators, which perhaps lead to some secret part of the hospital, perhaps where they do animal testing, or keep horribly mutated patients. I pass numerous signs pointing the way to the Heart Center, then speed through the heart of the Heart Center itself before arriving at the familiar Green Elevators. 

I press the blue button and roll in, and immediately I’m told to have a seat in room one by Tim, the only male nurse left in the office, so competent and invaluable that other departments keep stealing him away. Aside from an occasional glimpse, I can’t remember the last time I actually saw him. I take off my post-op shoe and sock and he raises the chair. 

“Well this looks all healed up,” he says, then looks at the computer. “Oh, I guess it was last week too. Well, I guess this is it then. It looks beautiful.”

Lena comes in and asks if I want another watercolor animal card. I say no thank you, though I love the one I have. Once again she asks if I mind if she records our conversation using AI. I ask if this is for her podcast about secret lives of the wound care patients. “Because I would listen to that.”

“Also, this is Melissa,” she says. “She’s interning with us. Is it okay if she joins us today?”

Melissa smiles. She is pale, raven-haired, and absolutely stunning, with piercing blue eyes that hurt to look at. Lena cuts away the callus and seems very happy with the results. Vicki slips in to sit at the computer. 

“Did you get hold of the shoe people?” Lena asks. I lie and say yes. I already know what they would tell me, which is the same thing all the diabetic shoe instructions online have told me. Wear the shoes at home to begin with, starting with a half hour, then an hour, taking them off regularly to check for redness or swelling. After that start wearing them outside for increasingly long periods of time until your feet are perfect and you want walk around like a regular person and live happily ever after, the end. 

I tell her all this but she seems skeptical that the instructions are not more elaborate. “What did they tell you to wear in the meantime?” she asks. 

“They didn’t tell me anything,” I say, feeling like we’ve been through all this before. “I’m wearing the post-op shoe when I’m at work, because I can walk on the heel. I haven’t worn the shoes outside yet. I’m taking this very, very slowly. I’ve learned my lesson.” She seems okay with this and gently presses the area where the wound is. Karen and Jenny pop in to gush about how good the skin looks.

“Did you get to the beach?” Karen asks. 

“I did,” I say. She asks me how it was and I say it started out good, but I got food poisoning. “Luckily it didn’t hit until the next day.”

I really was incredibly lucky. I’ve never had food poisoning before, at least not to this extent, and the idea of being stuck on the bus as an apparently endless stream of liquid fecal matter pours from my body is too horrifying to even contemplate. As it was, I felt disgusting, and took the day off from work. Today I felt a lot better, and had managed to eat a salad for lunch with no ill effects.

“They have one of those mats that leads down to the beach for people with mobility devices,” I tell her. “Not all the way out to the water, but still.” I had sat on my scooter at the edge of that hard strip of blue vinyl for a long time, staring out at the waves crashing in on themselves. Everything was gray: the sky, the sea, the sand. There were no other people around, just huge piles of driftwood scattered about. 

I go to Seaside once a year, during the off-season, because it’s cheaper. I always stay in the same crummy motel facing the ocean. It’s become a ritual for me; there is something magically healing about waking up in the morning and looking out over the water. However, this trip I didn’t feel any of the usual comfort and well-being from breathing in that salt air. I couldn’t relax, and took little pleasure in visiting the usual little shops. I had been good and used my scooter the entire time. Even without the mobility mat, Seaside is the most accessible of all the beaches, with a paved promenade running all the way along the coast, though it wasn’t as smooth as I hoped, and everything I did required a lot more concentration than usual. Maybe that was the reason for the disconnect. Or maybe I’m more of a mess than I want to admit.

“When do you see your podiatrist?” Lena asks

“I need to get a new one,” I say. “I’ve had trouble finding one who doesn’t suck.” They all nod and mumble in agreement. 

“Well they might be able to do x-rays and see what the underlying cause of this is, if there’s a bone spur or something. We’re just here to patch you up, we can’t tell what the underlying cause is.”

I tell her I’ve had the knobby ends of my metatarsals sanded down four times now, but it only helps temporarily. They continue to calcify and eventually break through the skin.

“Dr. Taggert said she was going to recommend someone,” I say. “Do you know who she uses?” 

Vicki says she thinks it’s Dr. Glazier, though he’s not certain. I tell her I can send Taggert a message to ask. 

“Yeah, I think she’s back next week. She took her son to Panama.”

“Is she helping to broker Trump’s deal to buy the canal?” I ask. No one laughs, all of them looking grumpy at the mention of that dreaded name. 

“Her son wants to be a doctor,” says Vicki, as if this explains everything. I try to imagine what it’s like to be Dr. Tagger’s son. A lot like being her patient, I imagine. 

“So do we see him in a month?” Lena asks her.

“No, that’s it. He is done.” Vicki turns to me. “Call us if it opens up or if you have any other problems, but other than that you’re done with us.”

“Really?” My chart had listed me for weekly appointments for another month, but it was probably just automated. 

“I’ll tell Dr. Thompson, I’m sure she’ll be pleased,” says the nurse practitioner.

“She’ll be pleased to have me out of her hair at last,” I say. 

“No, she likes you. You’re one of our favorites. We’re all going to miss you.” 

It was all over so fast, it feels like a blur. I didn’t get to chat or catch up with anyone. The gorgeous young intern vanished almost instantly; what was her name, Melanie? Michele? Was she even there? Who’s writing this show, anyways? Why would you introduce an intriguing new character right before the series finale? 

“So that’s it,” I say, as Tim wheels in my scooter, complimenting my makeshift padding. “I’m really done.” 

“Not quite,” says Jenny. “You still have to ring the bell!”

They all start chanting, “Ring the bell! Ring the bell!” And this time it’s real. The baby bird is finally being booted from the nest to try to fly on his own. I feel a mixture of feelings so overwhelming I can’t think or say anything. But I know this isn’t really over. I’ve been here too many times before. The shoes will start to rub and I’ll develop a new ulcer and…

No. Don’t even think it. Just ring that damn bell. 

 All three of them sit on the counter waiting for me, beside the Oscar statue, which still doesn’t have KC’s name etched on it yet. I wish she was here to see this. Stupid Thursdays. I pick up the town crier bell and ring it, not too hard hard. It makes a high, sweet peal. Everyone cheers.

“See you in a couple of weeks,” I yell. 

“Nooooo!” they all cry. I hit the button and the door swings open and I roll off into the sunset.

In reality it’s only three o’clock and the sun is still high in the sky. I’m still in kind of a daze when I hoist my scooter onto the bus. I have plans to see a movie in a couple of hours, so instead of heading home, I decide to get something to eat, since my stomach seems to be back to normal. 

I transfer to the streetcar and two women get on after me, dragging a pile of huge bags of cans after them. They are both dressed in skintight gym outfits and are shaking their enormous booties and laughing and jabbering over one another. They are obviously very, very high and their merriment has an edge to it, like they might suddenly start biting people. One of them asks me what stop they should get off for Goodwill. As the streetcar moves one of the woman starts singing, 

This morning I wake up

And I put on my make up

I say a little prayer for you

They both belt out an approximation of the chorus before breaking into hysterical laughter. 

Together forever you’ll stay in my heart 

and I will love you 

forever and ever is how it must start

you always bring heartache to meeeee

“This is your stop, Dionne,” I yell as the doors slide open. The women cackle and dance out the door, then go back in and get their bags, then go back for a bag they forgot, then for yet another one. As we pull away I see them in the bus shelter, arranging their bags and wiggling and waving their arms in the air wildly like those inflatable figures in front of car dealerships. 

I get a burger at a place I like down the street from the theater. I sit in the sunshine and watch the passerby as I eat; hipster families and dog walkers and couples of every size and race and gender. Before I leave I use the lavatory and while things are still not normal down there, I feel okay, and I roll off to sit on a bench before the doors open. As I sit there, my stomach starts to gurgle loud enough that I can hear it. It feels uncomfortable, but I tell myself it’s going to be fine. 

When the cinema opens I immediately roll into the restroom. Things are once again not normal, and I don’t feel any relief when I’m finished. I take my seat and start to hear the gurgling again, but then it settles down and I’m able to enjoy this sweet, silly film for a while. But when Parker Posey is accosted by her asshole ex in the stairwell of her apartment, I start to feel stomach pains that don’t abate. It feels too complicated to quietly extricate my scooter in the dark, so I stumble up the aisle and once again jettison a stream of slop, feeling greatly relieved afterwards. I obviously wasn’t ready for solid food, but instead of dwelling on my folly I once again tell myself it’ll be okay, I’ll make it through the film and get on the bus and go home and sleep through the night and feel better in the morning then go to work and then it’ll be the weekend and I can relax, having learned a valuable lesson about the hazards of food poisoning. 

I return to my seat and fifteen minutes later I feel like I’m going to throw up. I breathe deeply and close my eyes but the urge grows more and more insistent, and I start to cough in what is obviously a prelude to something much worse. I make it to the restroom as fast as I can. I have barely shut the door when vomit begins to spew, and feeling the muscles of my sphincter start to unclench, I make a fatal error in judgment and instead of pulling down my pants and turning around, which might give me a chance to keep the damage manageable, I decide to face the basin. 

I explode from both ends, a twin fountain of sour slop. Everything I’ve been holding in, everything I’ve been ignoring and avoiding and shoving deep inside over the past year, two years, hell, probably my entire adult life, it’s all gushing out of me in as violent and disgusting a way imaginable. I have no control over it so I just let it happen, my conscious brain shutting off temporarily so I can get through this. It feels like it goes on forever but the whole ordeal only lasts about five seconds.

When it’s done I drop my trousers and squat on the can but nothing more comes out. Most of the shit is liquid, which means it doesn’t smell all that bad, but also means that I am thoroughly drenched. If this is all some cosmic warning about the dangers of getting cocky and taking things too fast…. then message received, I guess. 

But I don’t have time to dwell on it, and my brain flips into damage control mode as I try to assess the least painful way of extricating myself with the minimum amount of humiliation. The catastrophe has ended, everything else is aftermath. I wipe the beige puddles from the floor with toilet paper, then struggle out of my shoes. I strip off my underwear and run it under the tap but quickly see the futility of this and throw them in the trash can. The thought occurs to me that I should just throw open the door and walk out naked and dripping. For a brief flash it seems like a reasonable thing to do. 

Instead I wash myself off as best as I can, but there’s really nothing I can do to hide the fact that I am a sopping mess, so I just pull up my soaking pants and buckle my belt and head out to the concessions stand to start making my apologies, praying my stench will be masked by the smell of popcorn.

*   *   * 

When the bus crossed the river, I felt myself starting to vomit again. I couldn’t hold it in, so I took out a plastic bag I happened to have wadded up in my coat pocket and coughed some wet chunks into that and pulled the cord. As soon as I got off I once again started ejecting from both ends, and I just let it, cautiously rolling along the unfamiliar terrain. I was twenty blocks from home but I couldn’t bear the idea of getting back on a bus in my state, so even though I was exhausted, I just rolled on. I felt the pressure building again and thought about crouching in the bushes, but figured what’s the point, and just let myself go. Let the few dog walkers think I’m just another bum soaking in his own filth. It was freeing, in a way, not to care, to be released from any of society’s expectations. I was just an animal, albeit one dressed in wet clothes and balancing on a rickety contraption through the streets. The wound care clinic, that oasis of cleanliness and compassion, of cast saws and wound vacs, with its endless rolls of gauze and sterilized scalpels, seemed thousands of miles away. A brief montage of faces and images flashed before my eyes, like in a clips episode of a TV show, but the whole experience was already starting to fade in my memory. The hole had vanished, the wound had healed. Would it open up again? Of course it would. But for now it was closed and the night air was mild and the city felt gentle. I didn’t care that I was soaked to the skin in my own feces, all I wanted was to be home. And unlike the unsheltered people hunched in the shadows around me, I was fortunate enough to have a home, with a hot shower and a soft bed and a sweet ball of fur who hopefully would not find me too repellent after my misadventures. Between the buildings, I could see the moon, a bright blob suspended in the darkness. Cutting through the park, my wheel hit something small and sharp at just the wrong angle and I started to pitch forward. I hung there, balanced on two wheels for what seemed like an eternity, then jerked back and steadied myself before I could topple over. I rested there for a moment, breathing heavily beneath the trees and the sky, and continued on.

Here to Help

The day is balmy, with thin sheets of layered clouds making stripes of dark and light. The bus driver immediately starts talking to me about his wife, who has some foot condition that causes her excruciating pain, something like plantar fasciitis only much more painful, with bone spurs thrown into the mix. He asks how I like the scooter and I say it’s better than crutches. “Yeah it turns out crutches are bad for you,” he says. “Who knew? They have a thing called Canadian crutches they say are a lot better.”

“I tell you what I could use is some of that Canadian socialized medicine,” I say. 

“Tell me about it. The operation she needs will cost ten thousand dollars, even with inusurance. And she works for the state!”

After we bitch about the evils of the insurance industry for a while, the conversation dies a natural death and I make no attempt to resuscitate it. In the window of a postmodern eyesore hangs is a sign that reads “Don’t Give Up.” Further up the street is a billboard for the Salvation Army that reads, “Here to Help.” 

At the reception desk I see that friendly woman whose mother shares my birthday. I think about asking her if she remembers my name yet, but she’s talking to someone so I just roll on past, swerving to  avoid a doctor who never looks up from his phone as he barrels ahead.

On the wall of the waiting area is a sign I’ve never noticed before. “Rapid Response Team. If you are concerned, we are concerned. Dial…” 

I sit for a few minutes before Karen comes out to get me. “Are you excited?” she asks. 

“I’m trying not to be,” I say cheerfully. 

“Well I am! It's going to look great!” 

“I hope so but I’ve been burned too many times,” I say. “I have to protect myself.” All day I’ve been anxious about this visit. I’ve been careful and “done my homework” as Shelley would say, but there’s still a chance that when she unwraps my foot, she’ll expose a bloody mess. 

“Uh oh what’s up with your heel?” she says. 

“What do you mean?” I ask, switching instantly into panic mode.

“There’s a bandage on it.”

“Oh, they put that on because of the blister. Is ithere drainage?”

She peels it off. “Not a drop, And none up here either. You’re still all healed up!”

Jenny comes in and says my wound looks better than she’s ever seen it. She was still on strike the last time I was given a clean bill of health so she's actually never seen me fully healed. 

Shelley and Vicki and Bridget all poke their heads in to admire the smooth, beautiful skin. I ask Bridget how St. Patrick’s Day was. “Wonderful,” she says, her eyes twinkling.

Nurse Practitioner Lena comes in and greets me warmly. “Before we get started, do you mind if I use AI to record all this?”

What would she say if said I did mind, that I thought AI was an insidious technology that is hastening the downfall of society, not to mention teh environment? But I don’t feel like having to explain myself so I just say, “Uh, I guess not.”

She presses a button on her phone and says “Okay, great. It’s my office assistant....this looks beautiful. I’m just going to trim a bit of this callus. I think a number three will do it.” She unwraps a scalpel and makes a few small slices, then asks Karen, “Did we agree on a football?”

“Yep, football,” she agrees. 

“So when do I try on my shoes?” I ask. 

“What did the people at the shoe place tell you?”

“They didn’t tell me anything.”

“But they did get you fitted for shoes, right?”

“I have them right here. You all told me to bring them.”

“Did they give you any instructions?”

“No.”

The Nurse Practitioner and Vicki and Karen all seem completely thrown off by this. “Well, can you call them and get instructions?” Lena asks. 

“I mean, sure, but I’ve done this before. What is tehre to know? Wear them an hour the first day, then two hours, checking them regularly…”

“Every fifteen minutes,” Nurse Practioner Lena says. “Are you still working?”

“I never stopped,” I say. Every fifteen minutes? I understand the need for caution, but aside from the infirm and elderly, who is able to stop everything and take their shoes and socks off every fifteen minutes? 

“He works at the art museum,” says Karen. “I just went for the first time. It’s awesome there.”

“Are you on your feet a lot?”

“Some. I sit down most of the time, but I do have to get up and walk around a bit.”

“Well at the first sign of redness, you take them right off and call to have them adjusted.”

“And what do I wear in the meantime?”

She looks bewildered by the question. Jesus Christ, don’t they deal with this exact issue all the time? What does everyone else do?

“Just stay off it,” she says. “You’ll still be using your scooter, right?”

“I’ll be using my scooter.”

“For how long?”

“I don’t know, no one told me that either.” I wish Dr. Thompson was here. I wonder if she’s had her surgery yet. 

“That’s cool that you work at the museum,” Lena says.
I'm an artist." I tell her I am too, that I paint but mostly draw these days. She says she does watercolors.

“Wow, those are hard,” I say. 

“What do you mean?” she says. Watercolor people never understand when you tell them how hard watercolors are. They're so delicate yet unforgiving, and it's hard to fix your mistakes.

She leaves and Karen wraps my foot in the football. I’m distracted and don’t pay attention to what she’s doing. Lena comes back and hands me three small sheets of stiff card stock and tells me to pick one to take with me. Two of them have cartoon birds painted on them. The third has a wiener dog wearing a pink sweater. They’re all nicely painted but sickeningly cute.

“Wow, you did these? They look professional.” 

I show the wiener dog to Karen and she goes berserk, and insists on showing us an array of photographs of Dolly. She explains to Lena, “I’m part of a club, Wien PDX.”

“You really have to change that name,” I say. 

I pick one of the birds. The Nurse Practitioner says Karen can have the dachshund. She squeals with delight.

“So what do I do if they give me instructions for my shoe?” I ask. “Do I wait until I see you again to start putting it on?”

“No, you can just cut the football off yourself. You can manage that, right? Don’t cut yourself. See you next week. And bring in some of your work, I’d love to see it.”

The sides of my post-op shoe are hanging by threads, so Karen gets me a new one, then brings me my scooter, congratulating herself on backing it up expertly. She asks me what I have planned for the weekend. 

"Oh you know... running a half marathon. Square dance competition. The usual." Actually I've taken a four day weekend and will be heading out to the beach overnight, lugging my scooter onto the bus.

As I roll out, everyone screams, “The bell! The bell!”

"Ding ding," I say.

"No, you have to ring it!"

“I’m not done yet,” I grumble.

Sitting in the lobby to wait for my bus, I suddenly notice that I’m furious. There's no good reason for it; I’m all healed up, the skin looks beautiful, and everything went more or less like I expected, aside from the football thing, but even so, that will actually provide more cushioning, so I should be happy about it. I thought I’d want to celebrate, but instead I feel like screaming. 

As I sit there, a number of security guards hustle past with stun guns in their holsters. When I finally decide to leave, I come across a beefy guard standing in the exit. I roll past him but when a couple of young women in scrubs try to get in, he brusquely says, “You can’t come in here.”

“But we work here!” they cry. He refuses to budge or answer their questions. I see a guard standing on the edge of the parking lot, and another one hurrying across to join her. When I get to the top of the hill I see a Cintas Fire Protection truck parked beside a man standing with his hands zip-tied behind him and a cop pointing an assault rifle at his feet. They are blocking my way to the bus stop. I roll quickly to the next stop over, glancing back occasionally. The two men are joined by a third and they all just stand there as if having a friendly conversation. A number of cop cars speed past. On the ground beside the bus shelter is a white index card upon which someone has written the words “YOU’RE DOING GREAT!” 

“Bullshit,” I mutter, as I roll onto the bus, dragging my rage like a sack of knives behind me.

Operation Epic Fury

 As soon as I get home from my appointment, I notice that the bottom of my cast is soft and starting to crack and unravel. I don’t worry too much about it until a few days later, when it starts to pour, and continues to do so with no end in sight. I start wrapping my foot in a plastic bag, which looks ridiculous but helps me feel a little more secure. I don’t think getting a little water inside will do any damage at this point, but I’m reluctant to take any chances this close to the finish line. 

As the week progresses, I start to feel buffeted by waves of anxiety, not just about my foot but about this astoundingly stupid war that our astoundingly stupid president has plunged us into.  I try not to get sucked into the vortex of apparently inexhaustible atrocity, but I find myself doomscrolling like everyone else as I try to understand the madness, even though I know that by doing so I become infected by it. Outrage is a potent drug.

In the meantime, we all just continue bumbling along, staring at our phones, working at our jobs, and doing all the dumb everyday things we do to survive, which in my case means leaving work early on Tuesday to hop on the light rail and cross the river to pick up my new diabetic shoes.

The shoe place is in a less-than-scenic area of town, and the closer we get, the more the train fills up with people who are all in decidedly worse shape than I am, even taking into account my cast and scooter and cement block of crippling ennui.

Evergreen Prosthetics and Orthotics is only a block away from the 102nd Avenue light rail stop. On the way I pass the world’s least inviting retirement home, a marijuana shop, a mini-mart, and an abandoned taqueria. Evergreen is the only open business in what was once a medical complex.  People with shopping carts and sleeping bags huddle beneath the overhangs of the empty offices. The parking lot is so cracked I can barely roll across it. It all feels decidedly post-apocalyptic. 

Things aren’t much less grim inside. The tiny waiting room is drab with nothing on the walls but a photograph of Portland’s ubiquitous White Stag sign and a TV showing a plume of smoke rising from a school in Tehran that the US is vehemently denying having bombed. I go up to the window behind which slump two vaguely pyramid-shaped women who seem to be melting into their chairs. Before I even say anything, one of them asks, “Are you Seann?” and immediately informs me that I haven’t met my copay, so my bill will be $280. I take out my debit card but she tells me to pay after my appointment, and hands me a clipboard with a formidable number of questions to fill out. “We just need to update your records,” she says. It’s a good thing I got here early. 

I’ve barely finished updating my records when the man who fitted me for my shoes calls me into one of the back rooms. He looks exactly like a shoe salesman. 

“You’re wearing a cast,” he says. 

“Yeah I obviously can’t wear the shoes yet, but the doctor told me to come pick them up and they’ll have me put them on in the office,” I say. 

“Um, okay,” he says. “I mean, I guess that’ll work.” He doesn’t sound at all sure of this. He leaves and comes back with a large green shoebox. “You can try the right one on, at least,” he says. 

“I may as well,” I say. He opens the lid to reveal the most hideous shoes I’ve ever paid $280 for. I have no one to blame but myself; I picked them out from the catalog he brought when he did the fitting.

I put on the right shoe while he leaves to get a tote for the box. I tell him not to bother but he says, “It’s a really nice tote!” so I relent. The front of the shoe has odd zigzag laces that don’t actually do anything; the shoe is held fast by a Velcro strap. It looks a little like a geriatric bondage device. I hobble around the room. It feels like I might step out of it and that it may also be much too tight. 

When he returns I ask him, “So do these, uh, work pretty well for people?”

“They’re good shoes,” he says. “Real good shoes. Customers have been very satisfied with them.”

“Okay,” I say.

“You know, you’ve got a really good attitude about all this,” he says. 

“Really?” I ask. “Because I’m pretty miserable most of the time.”

“I know that what you’re going through with your is frustrating, I mean, I see it all the time. In fact it’s pretty much all I see. But you’re handling it all really well.”

 He puts the shoebox in the tote and I hang it on my handlebars and roll back out to the counter, where the other melting woman runs my card. In the office behind her is a stack of large boxes marked CHIPOTLE. 

While I’m waiting for the Widder to pick me up, I stare at the TV, where a pundit is explaining to a robotic newscaster why it’s actually a good thing that the price of gas is going up, and why this war –sorry, short-term excursion- is an essential step on the road toward making America great again. It’s funny how crooked that road is turning out to be, and there are an awful lot of potholes. I look down at my shoe. Just like this country, it’s weird, ugly, and expensive, but none of that will matter if it actually allows me to walk. 

*

“Is it still raining out there?” Bridget asks when she opens the door. 

“Cats and dogs,” I say. “And possibly a guinea pig or two. Hey, are you ready to celebrate tonight? After all, it’s..." I count on my fingers, "St. Patrick’s Day Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve!” 

“I’m sick of this rain,” she grumbles. 

“Well at least one of you is ready for the holiday,” I say to Jenny, who is wearing shamrock green scrubs.

“It’s been a weird day,” she says. “And the cats kept me up half the night with their fighting.” 

"It's been a weird week," I say. "Between the rain and this Iran shit, everybody's exhausted. I know I am."

"God it's all so evil," says Jenny. 

Bridget saws off my cast, going over the thick cast along my ankles over and over. When she finally manages to crack it open she shows me that the entire sole is starting to peel off. But there’s no water inside.

She tears off the batting and peels off the bandage and both her and Jenny look horrified and say, “Ohhh.” I can see that there is a spot of drainage on the bandage. I feel my blood pressure leap.

“Oh no. What’s wrong? Is it bad?”

“It looks great,” says Bridget. 

“It’s all closed up,” says Jenny. 

“Then why do you have those looks on your faces? And what's that spot of drainage?” 

“Oh that’s nothing,” says Bridget. “I’m going to get the doctor so she can see.”

"So it didn't open up?"

"Nope," says Jenny. "It's been healed up two weeks in a row now."

“I want to see!” squeals Karen. It’s been weeks since I’ve seen her; she says she was away. 

The doctor comes in, touches my foot, and makes a chef’s kiss gesture. “Outstanding,” she says. I want to ask about the drainage stain but decide not to worry about it. Well, try not to.

She and Jenny leave and Bridget prepares the undercast. She keeps asking me questions about how high up to pull the sock and how much padding to put on top. 

“Did Hawaii just wipe your memory completely?” I ask playfully. 

“I think so. Though it feels like it was a year ago.”

Doctor Thompson comes in and sits on the stool. “Now this is my last one so I expect it to be the best damn cast you’ve ever done,” I say. “No pressure. But I can't accept anything less than magnificence.”

"I always strive for magnificence," she says. "Though I rarely achieve it."

For the last time she uses up the first roll of Fiberglas then looks up at Bridget, who is just standing there. 

“What? Oh. Right,” Bridget finally says, then unwraps another roll and drops it into the water, which for the last time is the perfect temperature. The doctor finishes and once again looks up at Bridget, who once again is just standing there staring off into space. 

“Sorry,” she says, and unwraps another roll. “How long will you be gone again?”

“Two weeks,” says the doctor. 

“So I won’t see you next week,” I say. 

“You won’t.”

“ You finally going on vacation?” I ask. 

There's a pause. “No,” she says. 

She applies the third roll but the Fiberglas keeps bunching up and she stretches it tight to smooth it out. “We’ve known each other for a while, I guess I can tell you that I’m having surgery.” I wait for her to elaborate but she doesn’t. 

“I hope it goes well,” I say. 

“If it doesn’t I’m hosed,” she says. She holds out her hand. “Board.”

Bridget passes her the plastic board and she places my sole flat against to make sure it’s at a ninety-degree angle to my leg. Then she asks for another roll. 

“Another roll?” asks Bridget. 

“You know I always like to do four rolls,” the doctor says. She wraps it and rubs it and rubs it some more and then for the last time it’s finished. 

“That’s it,” she says. “This is the one, I can tell. It’s going to work this time. You’re all done.”

“I hope so,” I say. “No offense but this is getting old.”

“Did you get fitted for shoes?”

“Yes, I picked them up. Should I bring them next week?”

“Yes, bring them. And remember, if you start to see even the slightest bit of redness, take them off immediately and call to have them adjusted.”

She gets up off the stool and pushes the curtain open. 

“Good luck with your surgery,” I say. 

“Thank you,” she says, and disappears. 

“So after next week, am I really done?” I ask Vicki, who is standing there while Bridget gets my scooter. “Or do I have a follow up appointment?”

“They’ll decide after they see you next week,” says Vicki. 

“But Dr. Thompson won’t be here.”

“Oh that’s right. No, you’ll be seeing Lena.” 

“The nurse practitioner?” I ask, trying not to sound too crestfallen. 

“From St. Vincent, yes.”

I wish Bridget a happy Saint Patrick’s Day and everyone yells goodbye for what feels like the last time, though of course it’s not. As I wait for the elevator, I start to feel peculiar. I feel a lightness in my chest that I haven’t felt in a long time. It’s like the first breath of fresh air you take after lying in bed with the blanket pulled over your head all day. This is my last cast. This time next week, I’ll be free, though who knows for how long. The ulcer will probably open back up immediately, like it always does. Or maybe there will be a new ulcer in some new spot. Or maybe some fresh new medical horror will rear its head and…

No, I can’t let myself think this way. This time I’ll be more cautious. This time I’ll be more patient. This time I’ll take things more slowly. It’s been a long, difficult journey, but after all the mistakes and poor choices, after all the bad timing and hard luck, at long last, things are finally going to start going my way. 

I am going to be healed. And so will this country. Someday. 

In the meantime, it’s still raining like hell, and I have four minutes until the bus comes. Propelling myself uphill, skirting sticks and cracks and countless other obstacles, I make it with a minute to spare. 

Pink Shoelaces

Leaves plastered to the pavement. Rainbow rings of oil in the gutter. Pigeons perched atop a billboard.

 All day I’ve been trying not to get frustrated with people, but when I get on the bus, the front seats are dominated by a healthy-looking couple who refuse to make room for me, or the ancient woman with the groceries, or the woman with the walker, or the man with the white cane. Every time one of these people get on, the couple glances up from their phones, then looks right back down. 

When I reach my stop, the woman with the groceries apologizes and tries to move her stuff out of my way, in the process whacking me in the head with her cane. She apologizes profusely but I just laugh. My frustration is just covering how anxious I feel about what kind of shape my heel will be in when they unwrap it. I feel a pinching panic when I think about it.

Upstairs, Jenny opens the door and very quietly says “Hello.” I ask if everything’s okay, and she says yes, again very softly, that she’s just tired. “Room two,” she murmurs. 

“Good. I’m tired of slumming it,” I whisper.

Bridget is at the computer, and before Jenny can get the saw fired up she asks, “You know how I told you how important St. Patrick’s Day is to me?”

“Um, yeah,” I say, vaguely remembering her saying something last week.

“I mean, for me and my boyfriend, it’s bigger than Christmas. Well my mother calls me the other day and says she’s getting a six hour surgery done and wants me to take her and stay with her the whole time. And guess what day it’s happening on?”

“Big deal you bring a four pack of Guinness and a bottle of Jameson to the hospital, no one will care,” I say. “I mean, is  it a catholic hospital?”

“I told her I couldn’t do it so she’s getting her friend to take her,” she says. 

I laugh. “Your own mother!”

“It’s Sr. Patrick’s Day,” she says.

Jenny fires up the saw. It takes a couple of passes to cut through the extra thick heel. I brace myself, assuming the blister has broken and that I’ll be exposed to a mess of blood and pus. But nothing has seeped into the cast, nor the batting. She finally pulls off the foam pad and shows it to me. It’s completely dry. 

“Holy shit,” I say. 

“It’s still intact. Looks like it got reabsorbed,” she says. She pulls off the foam pad on the wound. I can see that there is a tan spot of drainage on the pad.

“Scant tan,” she says. “But the wound looks all healed up.”

“It sure does,” says Bridget. 

“Let me see,” I say. There is a smooth, pink indentation where there was once a ragged, gaping wound. With some difficulty, I twist my ankle to inspect the heel. There is a red splotch where the blister was.

“I’m so happy!” says Jenny. “We’ve been waiting so long for this!” 

I run my hand over my smooth heel, and Jenny does something she’s never done before; she plucks a tiny piece of skin from the edge of the former wound.

“Now it looks even better.”

“Let me see,” says Doctor Thompson, coming in before Jenny can apply the Lidocaine. “Yep, this is healed.”

“The blister got reabsorbed,” says Jenny.

“I thought it would. It was pretty tight.”

“I was expecting the worst,” I say.

“How does that song go? Hope for the best and expect the worst?” the doctor says. 

Shelley pokes her head in, then slides in to take Bridget’s place at the computer. 

“Did you do something to your hair?” I ask. She points to her new bangs. “They look good,” I say, though to be honest I’m not sure I feel about them.

“Thanks. They itch,” she says. 

“Did your girls ever cut their own hair?” asks Jenny. 

“The younger one did. She had this huge bald patch. I had to try hard not to laugh.”

“My daughter only did once. She was so proud of herself. She was usually so good but she could be sneaky. She never scribbled on the walls like some kids do, but when we moved, in the back of her closet we found a whole mural of crayon drawings. I have to admit it looked pretty cool. ”

 She washes and wraps my foot and says, “I’m giving you extra padding on the heel again, just to be safe. After this you get two more weeks of casts, and then you should make an appointment to get fitted for shoes.” I tell her I ordered shes already and that they’ve been ready for months. “Well go pick them up and bring them here. We’ll fit them here when the last cast comes off.”

“They won’t just bring them here? They came during my appointment to take my measurements,” I grumble. The shoe place doesn’t have weekend hours so I’ll have to take yet another afternoon off of work, and take the light rail clear across town.  

While she works we complain about the new war with Iran. I think of all the hospitals that have been bombed anin the past few days. And here I’ve been anxious all day worrying about a blister on my heel.

She prepares the bucket of water and the stool and lays down the blue gauze, but she does it all in front of the chair instead of to the side. I almost say something but I don’t want to tell her how to do her job. The moment Thompson comes in she asks, “What is this? You know I like to work from the side.”

 “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry, I guess I was thinking of Taggert,” says Jenny. 

Once Janet has scrambled to put everything in its proper place, the doctor fusses for a long time with the height of my chair, then squats on the stool. She lays an extra sheet of gauze over her sneakers and says, “Need to protect my new pink shoelaces. I don’t usually care about such things but for some reason this time I do.” Are shoelaces particularly sensitive to moisture?

She finishes my penultimate cast, then tears off her paper gown. “Wait, what am I doing, I have one more cast to do,” she says. 

“Hey, doctor?” I say. She stops and turns. “Thank you.” 

“You’re welcome,” she says, then pushes out through the curtain. 

“Code gray in the lobby of the cancer center,” says the intercom.

I miss the bus by about a minute, and sit in the lobby to wait. I feel even more anxious than I did before. I’m so afraid the shoes won’t help, that I’ll end up right back here within a few weeks of having the cast off. The cast is a nuisance but I feel safer with it on, protected by its rigid shell. I know that once it’s off I’ll need to keep using the scooter for weeks, maybe months, not really allow myself to walk around, even though everything looks and feels fine. I need to keep playing the cripple for a while longer. Maybe by summer I can start taking more chances, but until then I need to be very, very cautious. 

I am so fucking tired of being cautious. 

When I get off the bus, the billboard is clear of pigeons and the rainbows in the gutters have dissipated. But the leaves are still glued to the wet sidewalks, and through the chain link fence beside my building, constellations of daffodils bend in the breeze. 

Axolotl

Over the weekend, my stepmother calls to tell me that my father is back in the hospital again. A few days after I saw him last October, he fell and fractured a few vertebrae in his neck. They sent him home in a neck brace and last week he fell again. When he got to the hospital they found that there was a wound on his heel that had gotten infected. 

None of this is surprising; it doesn’t sound like he takes any sort of meaningful care of his diabetes, constantly snacking and sometimes going days without taking his insulin. Aside from the occasional medical appointment, he never leaves the apartment. It seems like he’s slowly committing suicide.

“Room three. Back in the corner,” commands Shelley. She follows me back, chattering happily the whole time.

“You’re in a good mood,” I say. She just shrugs.

It has been exactly one year since the nurses’ strike ended, one year since my last ulcer finally closed up. 

I sit in the chair and she raises it up and says, “Oh my god, I can see your heel.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I can see your heel. There’s a giant hole in your cast.”

She saws off the cast and shows me the bottom half. It looks like a large hole the shape of a crescent moon has been cleanly cut out of the heel. 

“What the hell,” I laugh. 

“Did something happen?”

“Obviously. But I don’t know what. I did notice that it felt it was pinching a bit, but I can’t really see down there.”

 She sets the cast on the biohazard bin to show the doctor, then unwraps the dressings. “Not much seeping through... oh wow! I can’t believe how good this looks!" It's good news but she sounds positively ecstatic. "Another week and this will be closed over and then two more weeks of the cast and you'll be free of us. And the heel doesn't look too... oh, wait.” 

There is a blood blister on my heel, the exact size of the hole. 

“It’s always something with me, isn’t it?” I say. I’m not overly upset, just kind of irritated, and embarrassed that I didn’t notice such a huge gash. But it's true, with my cast on I really can't see down there without a mirror.

 “Well it's intact, so that's good. And I seriously can’t get over how great the wound looks,” she says. I grab my foot and twist it up so I can see. It actually does look really good, just a shallow indentation with the tiniest of slits in the middle. 

The doctor comes in, followed by a woman I’ve never seen before. She’s short and blonde and wearing an enormous diamond ring. Dr. Thompson doesn’t introduce her, just plucks the piece of gauze off my wound and says, “Looks like I’m going to have to find someone else to torture pretty soon.” The blonde woman takes a sealed scalpel and peels back the plastic, then remembers that she’s not wearing gloves and just holds it there. The doctor takes it and says, “Unfortunately there’s not much for me to show you here. No undermining. A little spongy. I’ll just…” She makes a single slice. “There, it really doesn’t need anything else. This is wonderful.” 

“Take a look at this,” says Shelley, showing her the cast. She looks baffled.

“I have never seen that happen before.” She looks at me. I shrug. Shelley points to the blood blister. “Oh that’s not bad at all.” She presses it gently with her palm. “Very shallow. Three millimeters, maybe two. Just put a lot of extra padding on that and we’ll keep an eye on it.” 

Vicki slips in to get a peek while the wound is still exposed, then I’m alone with Shelley again. She wraps my foot back up and fills me in on all the news from home. The youngest is in trouble at preschool because she refuses to help clean up. (Shelley thinks she's fallen under the influence of one of the boys, a litlte troublemaker named Finn. "Like Huckleberry," she sys.) The car is still in the shop after six weeks and two days. The bill comes to over ten thousand dollars. Insurance is covering it. She has expanded her microwaved noodle repertoire to include ramen and mac and cheese. 

She stops talking for a while because she’s being drowned out by the loud voice of the patient in the next room, who put his blue post-op shoe on the kitchen floor next to the garbage, and of course it got carried out to the curb and now it's gone. He laughs heartily at his own story, which is long and involved and without much of a payoff. The nurse laughs politely and says it's time to take his vitals.

"But you just took them," the man says. 

"We have to take them twice now, once at the beginning and once at the end. It's a new policy."

“Oh and my oldest doesn’t like raccoons anymore,” Shelley suddenly says. “I’m actually kind of sad about it.”

“Has she moved on to a new obsession?” I ask. 

“Yeah now she wants an axolotl.” 

"You should get her one, they're cool." She makes a face.

She wraps a lot of extra padding around my heel, after covering it with a large foam bandage. “I’m not entering it as a wound because it’s not open. I’ll just make a note in your chart. The doctor didn’t seem too concerned.” 

Dr. Thompson and her charge return. She wraps the cast and starts talking about the fancy new teapot she bought. “It’s not as fancy as yours,” she says to Shelley. 

“Oh, what brand did you get?” Shelley asks, excitedly. Apparently she is a tea enthusiast.

“Chef something. If you look up chef something teapot it’ll come up.” Shelley turns the monitor so she can see, and does a search. The doctor keeps her eyes on the screen but doesn’t stop wrapping the cast. “Chefman, that’s the one. It wasn’t three hundred dollars like yours. But then again, I don’t make as much as you do. I need another roll.” 

"Mine has it so you can set it up the night before and have it waiting for..."

“I said I need another roll,” Thompson says.

“Oh sorry,” Shelley says, and unwraps another roll of casting. Shelley pulls up her teapot on the computer to show off some of the many featrues. The doctor keeps her eye on the monitor the whole time, then again says, “ I need another roll.” Shelley is wrapped up in her search so once again she repeats it and once again Shelley apologizes. She puts an extra roll on to make sure I don’t have another mishap. “That was probably my fault,” she says. The assistant helps her smooth out the cast, her hands mostly getting in the way. 

“That’s really wet, better let it sit awhile,” she finally says. She looks me in the eye. “With that blister, take it easy this weekend.” 

Shelley empties the bucket and wipes the water from the floor and Jenny and Vicki come to chat while the cast is drying. I ask Jenny what’s new. “Nothing. My life is boring.” I ask if she got Springsteen tickets and she says no. “We got online the instant they went on sale but there were literally 45,000 people ahead of us so we waited a couple of hours then gave up.”

Shelley says she needs to take my fitals again, and I ask her why the policy changed. "The cast is considered a procedure and after every procedure we need to check your blood pressure to to make sure we're not torturing you," she says. I laugh but she says, "No, that's actually what it's for. If it's too high at the end, we can be accused of torture." 

    "I assume this is in reaction to some some big lawsuit?" It can't be a coincidence that she is the second person to use the word torture today. She wraps the cuff around my arm without answering. The machine beeps.

    "That is way too high. Probably because I've been torturing you with my woes. How about we sit for a wee bit," she suggests. I close my eyes and breathe deeply for a few minutes and my blood pressue drops forty points.

I go downstairs to wait for my ride; the Widder is coming to drive me home and drop off some groceries. It’s nice not having to catch the bus, and my usual hour-long journey is cut down to twenty minutes. 

At home, the elevator doesn’t respond. This is the third time this has happened this week; every time has been because someone hasn’t closed the grate all the way. Leaving my scooter in the lobby, laden with grocery sacks, I slowly clomp up the stairs, stopping on each floor to see if the car there. The new cast is extremely bulky, and I'm sure this doesn't count as "taking it easy." I find the elevator on the top floor and ride it down to collect my trusty steed. 

Once I’m in the apartment I lie down and think of the blister. It's wild that I would get one so soon after my father did, and in the same exact place. Is it a sympathy blister? Is this some supernatural bond between father and son as one struggles to live a better life while the other embraces death? 

I go to bed early, and in the midle of the night I bolt awake in panic at my own fragility. I lie in bed and stare out the window at the lights scattered like stars across the dark hills. My heart is still pumping blood and my air is still being sucked into my lungs, while down below the blister waits quietly, swaddled in layers of foam and batting and Fiberglas; a quivering yolk, a bubble of skin swollen with blood and pus. I try to quiet my firing neurons but I can't seem to stop thinking about how maddening this is to have this happen now that I’m so close to being healed. Is this my treasonous body’s attempt at sabotage, now that I’m doing so much better, now that I’m taking care of my health and watching my sugars? Of course, I didn’t even notice that I had a huge chunk torn from my cast, so I shouldn't get too self-congratulatory. No; rather than enacting revenge, perhaps this is my body's way of reminding me that I’m still not paying close enough attention to it. It’s easy to be frustrated with how poorly my father is managing his disease, but to be honest, I’m only doing marginally better with my own. I drink too much and cheat on my diet and hobble around at work instead of using a wheelchair. Maybe this blister is a manifestation of my hypocrisy, a throbbing organ eager to burst and get infected and start this wretched cycle all over again, spin that wheel of samsara in the hope that this time around I start acting responsibly, that after all these years of slowly killing myself I finally decide to live.

Don't Chase

 I spend July 4th in the apartment, alternating between cleaning and sleeping. I didn’t have too much to drink at the barbecue but I still feel sluggish and worn out. I have a pretty pleasant day regardless, and by evening feel perky enough to head down to the Goose for supper. 

There are Lost Dog posters plastered all over the neighborhood, showing a moppy little mutt with the typical admonition “Dont chase will run.” The Goose is busier than I thought but most of the crowd is settling their bills and heading out to watch the fireworks, leaving only a few of us. 

As usual, nearly everyone on the deck is coupled up, but when I walk over to the water cooler I see an attractive woman sitting by herself. I smile and she gives me a big, warm smile back. Well that’s nice, I think, but she’s probably waiting for someone. But when I go to sit down with my drink, I see her start to talk to a guy sitting by himself a few tables away from her. He has a full beard and a baseball cap. He also has a dog. 

By the time my food comes they are laughing and chatting like old friends. His dog barks wildly at every other dog that approaches the deck. “She’s just saying hello,” the man says every time. I can’t make out much of their conversation but I hear him say that he’s in real estate. She’s new to the neighborhood, and fairly new to Portland. I hear them talk about paddle boarding. They look like a good match. Even if I had a dog, I can’t compete with real estate and paddle boarding, not to mention that beard, which is full and lustrous. I can only hope that the cap is hiding a case of male pattern baldness, though I know that wouldn’t make a difference at this point. 

I take my trusty sketchbook out for company but my heart’s not in it. I tell myself this is a good opportunity to practice not spiraling down into self-hatred and misery about how alone I am, how long I’ve been alone, how the older I get the chances of this changing grow ever slimmer. It’s so easy to chastise myself for my cowardice. I should have gone right up to her when I got my drink, talk to her before that irresistible canine spell could take hold. But I couldn’t do it. I am convinced that no woman wants anything to do with me. While this might not be true, it has been many years since I’ve seen any evidence to the contrary.

“I need to get a dog,” the server says to me.

“Same here,” I say. “But I like cats better.”

“Me too,” he says. “But, you know.”

The new friends order another drink and I finish mine and head back up the hill. In an empty parking lot, a gorgeous young woman and a man who looks like her father are fiddling with an automatic ball-throwing machine that their dog is nosing warily. The girl is twitchy and holding her limbs at odd angles, like she’s on something. Dog toys and balls and various bits of throwing apparatus lie scattered across the parking lot. 

At the top of the hill, the lost dog signs grow more desperate, hanging from every telephone pole. The sky is nearly dark. Soon the fireworks will start and all the dogs I saw tonight will be whimpering under their owners’ beds. I wonder where the lost dog will hide, who will comfort him as the world around him explodes.

Clean Towels

        It’s the day before Independence Day and the second Revolutionary War has been won. After decades of fighting, the noble rich have finally thrown off the shackles placed on them by the filthy poor. For us huddled masses, it’s all pretty disheartening, but I have the day off tomorrow and am on my way to a backyard barbecue. As I sit on the bench at the bus stop, I look at the arrival time on my phone. It keeps leaping around, getting longer and shorter as some unseen force impedes the vehicle’s progress. A man on the corner shows a cardboard sign to the traffic. I don’t bother to read it. I used to be interested in these signs, in all the different ways people ask for help, the various kinds of lettering they use, but I can’t look anymore. 

        A teenage girl sits next to me, thumbs skipping across the screen of her phone. There is suddenly an explosion behind us, followed by another, and another. It seems early for fireworks –the sun is still high in the sky. I turn around to look and see puffs of smoke in the air above the bridge. The booms go on for a few minutes. 

        “What was that?” the girl asks uncertainly. She doesn’t have an accent I would guess she’s Pakistani.

        “Oh, somebody getting ready for the fourth,” I say.

        “But that’s not until tomorrow,” she says, sounding confused.

        Just then there is a crash right in front of us. An old hatchback truck crammed with junk has spilled a pile of metal shelves out of its open hatch. The truck speeds through the intersection then pulls over. Fortunately, the car behind it brakes before it hits the shelves, and I walk out in front of it, holding up my hand up. The girl runs out after me and we both gather up  the shelves. The words CLEAN TOWELS are written on a piece of masking tape on one of them. We carry them to the sidewalk and the driver of the truck comes and grabs them without a word. 

        

        The girl and I sit back on the bench. 

        “Lucky that didn’t go through somebody’s windshield,” I say. 

        “Yeah. Pretty scary,” she says. The bus comes and I gesture for her to get on first then she does the same to me and I insist and she says no then we both try to step on at the same time and laugh. As we drive off I look at the guy on the corner and finally decide to read his sign. He’s crayoned an American flag next to the words WAR VETERAN ANYTHING HELPS. I wonder if he knows that the real war is just beginning.