To clean my palate after all those Godfather movies, I watched Adaptation, one of my favorite films, followed by Mirror, Solaris and Nostalghia by Tarkovsky. Solaris is the perfect movie to watch when you’re encased in an acrylic tube; you already feel like you’re in a space capsule. I try to think of other movies with big glass tube energy. 2001? All of the Alien movies, probably? The iron lung scene from The Big Lebowski? The finale of Wrath of Khan? Episodes of Futurama? Snow White? Every submarine movie ever made?
It’s Thursday, so when I get out I sit in the waiting area to wait for my doctor appointment. A woman is on a conference call on her computer. The volume is up very loud so it sounds like the room is filled with dozens of people yelling. There are other people waiting but they’re all pretty out of it so I can’t tell if they mind. I stomp to the elevator and sit on a bench outside, even though it’s cold and rainy.
When I come back up the other patients are gone but the woman is still there with her voices. I sit down and try to practice not being annoyed by something so petty. Why do I cling to irritation at other people’s thoughtlessness? What good does it do me? Does it help me feel superior, as I sit with my casts on, preparing to have my wounds dressed and debrided? Does this negativity protect me somehow? From what?
At last the woman snaps her laptop shut and strides off down the hall. One of the nurses comes out and asks if I want to go in early.
As I’m sitting in the chair waiting for the doctor, I take my sketchbook out and do some drawing. The doctor comes in and sees me drawing and freaks out. “Oh my god, did you do that? Lizzy, Kyra, come look at what this guy’s doing.”
Soon the entire office of wound specialists pushes aside the curtain and crowds around to marvel at my dumb little doodles. “You should do portraits of us to hang on the wall!” one of them gushes. They are all women and they are all lovely. It almost doesn’t matter that I’m reclining in a chair with my feet covered in open wounds oozing blood and pus.
I tell the doctor the hardest thing about being in the chamber is not being able to draw. She thinks a minute. “We’ll have to work on that. I think if we get you pencils without that metal thingy on the end…”
To think that just a few minutes earlier, I had been thinking about the logistics of beating a stranger to death with her own computer.
No comments:
Post a Comment