Work has been surprisingly pleasant since I returned. All the things that sucked about the job still suck, but everyone seems happy to see me back, even people I don’t know well, even people I don’t particularly care for. After my months of being a hermit, it feels good to have so much attention.
Though I’ve been hired back to run the new loading dock, the loading dock isn’t actually up and running yet, due to a series of construction mishaps. In the meantime, not much seems to be expected of me. Some afternoons I get posted at the reception desk, a place I’ve logged in hundreds if not thousands of hours over the years. Time seems almost visible, like layers of rock in a shorn off cliff.
I had forgotten how exhausting it can be to deal with the public. I like doing it, and I think I’m reasonably good at it, but I had forgotten how much a smile can strain your face, how much the mask of customer service itches.
I spend much of my time powering through a series of instructional videos they’ve recently introduced. They begin with the history of private security, going back to –and I am not kidding- what the narrator calls “the cavemen.” The narrator himself looks like a bald, albino ape with distractingly mismatched eyebrows, and he gesticulates like an actor who’s taken a lot of speed just before a community theater audition. The videos run about fourteen hours and are almost devoid of useful information. There are a lot of quizzes.
I am still wearing a post-op shoe on the left foot and my new diabetic shoe on the left. After a few days I develop blisters on both feet, despite spending most of my day sitting down. When I go in for my weekly appointment at wound care, I get Dr. Ronda, whom I haven’t seen in a while –usually I have Dr. Rochelle. She looks at the blisters and sees how upset I am and tells me not to worry, that I’m still under their care and they’ll take care of things. She bandages them up and I make an appointment to get the diabetic shoe adjusted.
By the following week the right foot looks okay but the left is much worse, and both hurt. But Doctor Rochelle has been talking about putting a cast on it anyways, so I’m not overly worried. When I get to the clinic for my weekly check up, I’m pleasantly surprised to be greeted by Jenny from the hyperbaric unit. This is usually her day off, and she doesn’t work wound care that often. Of all the nurses there, she was the kindest and most capable. We catch up on what her cats and husband are up to while I wait for the doctor.
A few minutes later Dr. Rochelle pushes aside the curtain. She takes one look at my feet and her face falls. Her usually brassy demeanor is muted, and she gingerly cleans up my feet in silence. When she’s done she stands next to me and stares at me intently.
“I didn’t want you back at work so soon,” she says, sounding frustrated. I tell her I thought she said it was okay to go back. “This skin takes a long time to heal,” she says. “A long time. You need to be off your feet for six to twelve months. I know you want things to go back to normal but they’re not going to. Things are never going to be normal. You can’t lead the same life you did. Things have changed. You need to save your feet so you can stand and pivot. You won’t be using them for walking anymore.”
“Like ever?” I ask.
Instead of answering, she says, “I need you to get hold of your primary and have him get you set up for permanent disability, and have him get you a wheelchair. In the meantime sometimes you can find one on Craiglist. Is your apartment accessible? Will they let you use a wheelchair at work?”
I tell her I don’t think so. She leaves abruptly and Jenny starts applying fresh bandages. I start to sob quietly.
“How am I supposed to live if I can’t walk?” I ask.
“Dr. Rochelle doesn’t understand that people can’t afford to just take off work,” she says.
“I’m already so alone,” I say. “I’ve been alone for so long. And never going to find anyone. I’m so tired of all this.”
“I know,” she says, patting me on the arm. “I know. It just sucks.”
They insist on getting someone to wheel me to the entrance, even though I tell them I’ll have to walk to the bus stop anyways, and then from the bus stop to my apartment. As I leave, the door to the hyperbaric unit is propped open. It’s the end of the day; the lights are dim and the three chambers are empty. I long to be wrapped in blankets and slid inside one of those tubes, swaddled and safe with a urinal on my lap, dreaming of the normal, healthy life that just a little while I ago I still believed lay ahead.
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