The Cast, Part One

 There’s no way it can possibly get any hotter. And then, of course, it does. 

Everyone is used to me leaving early on Tuesday for my weekly appointment, so no one asks when I leave at 2:30. I wheel past a smashed drone lying on the sidewalk, past a man with a blanket over his head, flapping his arms slowly like a dying bird. 

The woman at the front desk of the hospital remembers me and waves me in. Up on the fourth floor, the clinic is nearly empty. I ask where everybody is, and Deborah just shrugs.

I haven’t mentioned Deborah before because she’s the least colorful of all the nurses. She looks like she plays a nurse on TV. She’s nice enough, but scattered, and very, very slow on the computer. She’s not my favorite, but I believe in doing the best with what you're given, so I always try to engage her in conversation. The dullnes of her life is mind-numbing. All she wants to talk about today is the heat. It’s all anyone wants to talk about, which annoys me more than the actual heat does. And the heat annoys the living hell out of me. 

Carol joins her; Carol is at least funny and cynical, even if she quotes lots of shows and movies and expects me to get her references. 

Carol leaves and is replaced by Dr. Rochelle, followed by Gladys, who is always shadowing her. Gladys immediately starts hiccupping and can’t stop. “It’s the diet soda, it always does this to me,” she says, as Dr. R. starts in on the callouses. She asks Dr. R if she  knows a cure. The doctor says she doesn't, aside from the usual folk remedies. I ask if she wants us to scare her. She says no. 

Dr. R. asks if I mind if they open the curtain, since I’m the only patient and there’s no other staff. “But what will I read?” I ask. The curtain is covered in words such as Peace, Honesty, Charity. Gladys hiccups and yanks it back on its runners. 

Energy in the room is decidedly low. The wounds look slightly better than they did last week but no one seems to care, including me. I suddenly feel drained, and stop making feeble jokes. 

After spending a longer time than ever slicing and carving, Dr. R. says, “Okay, are you ready?”

“I’m ready,” I say, not totally sure what she’s talking about. 

She senses my uncertainty and asks, “We’re still doing the cast, right?”

“Hell yeah. Cast me up,” I say, with forced enthusiasm. 

“Great. I’ve been looking forward to this all week.” 

Deborah gathers the material and applies the layers of the undercast. First she bandages up my wounds like usual, then she sticks some round cushions on my ankles, and finally she starts winding the cotton batting that will keep the Fiberglas from rubbing my skin. She asks if I’ve had a cast before, and I tell her the story of when I was at Kaiser and they changed my cast but it was so thick I couldn’t get my pants off, and they told me I needed to just cut the pants off. I loved those pants.

Finally she puts what looks like a small inflatable life raft over my toes, and then they call in the doctor. Dr. Rochelle lights up a bit as she unspools the pale Fiberglas and softens it in a bucket of water before wrapping it around my foot, then my ankle, then... 

“I thought this was just going to be my foot,” I say.

“Oh my no,” she says, and within a few minutes, I am sheathed in a heavy shell from where my toes should be to my knee. Fuck, I think. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. “This will take like ninety percent of the pressure off the wound when you walk,” she says. “Not that I want you to walk on it. But just in case you do. Though, again, I am telling you to really try not to. Any more than you have to.” 

I suspect that those last six words are going to be the only things that might possibly get me through this with a modicum of sanity. 

And now long will I have this one?”

“Until it heals up.” I don’t ask her how long that will be, suspecting I won’t like the answer. 

“It’s not supposed to hurt at all, so if you have any pain, I mean even a little bit, if it’s after hours, go to the emergency room,” she says. “And when you get there, tell them that we have the only cast saw, so they should send someone up here to get it.” 

“The only one in the entire hospital?” I ask. Doctor R. nods slowly. 

They finally release me, after giving me a new post-op shoe, which is comically small. Doctor R holds a small in one hand and a large in the other. “Don’t we have any mediums?” she asks. 

“They stopped making them,” says Gladys. 

The doctor sighs and hands the small shoe to Deborah. “They don’t make shoes for people without toes. It’s discrimination. Anyways, remember, if you draw on the cast, we’re going to save it, and sell it and make a lot of money when you get famous,” she says.  

“You can use the money to buy a second saw,” I say. No one laughs, then they usher me out, Gladys still hiccupping, and I roll, feeling like a wilted plant, toward the elevators and into the smothering heat.