The Formula for Pi

 It’s hard to believe but I’ve been back at work a month. It has been a positive experience until Monday, when the difficulty of 

PARAGRAPH REDACTED 

But it’s Friday, and the moment I wake up I sit up in bed and say aloud, “This day is going to kick ass!” And I laugh at myself, because I don’t really believe that verbalizing your wishes makes them come true, and people who claim otherwise seem like either deluded, or charlatans. 

The day doesn’t kick ass, but it’s not that bad either. I’m happy to be leaving work early for my trip across town to get my cast changed for the third time. I’m already getting used to this new routine, and I’m really looking forward to going in and seeing my wound care family.

The bus is running late again, but it turns out not to matter. Inside wound care stands a barricade of mobility devices, and I hear all kinds of voices carrying on from behind all three curtains. 

“Am I late for the party?” I call.

“Hi Seann. We’ll come get you when we can,” someone yells back.

I sit out in the waiting room. An old man with an Anton Chigurh haircut and pasty legs is watching something on his phone. It’s a program about the history of the AR-15 assault rifle, and it’s very loud and laced with profanity. I want to ask him to turn it down but just as I’m about to, he starts scratching his balls intently. I bury my face in my New Yorker.

After a half hour Kelly comes out and apologizes, says everything is backed up because their computers were down because of the CrowdStrike IT outage. A little while later she returns and says, “Okay Gerald,” and the ball scratcher hauls himself up and shuffles after her. One by one the mobility devices emerge, pushed by various old women. KC follows them, wheeling a device with what looks like handcuffs suspended from it.

“Want a ride?” she asks. “With this thing I can carry you like a baby.” I decide not to tell her how much I do, in fact, want that.

When I’m finally called in, it’s by Aaron. Aaron is the only male in the department. He’s kind and conscientious and always seems a little sleepy. He likes mountain biking and Dungeon and Dragons. As he’s starting to draw cut-lines on my cast, he suddenly stops and asks if I’d mind if the new nurse watched. 

Aaron is very slow and thorough as he explains what he’s doing to the new nurse step by step, which makes the entire thing take twice as long. I try to make small talk with her but she’s pretty reserved; it’s only her second day. Aaron does a good job with the saw and dressing my wounds, but I am hungry and impatient and I need to take a leak and just want to get the hell out of there.

Finally Dr. Ronda comes in and goes to town. She is in good spirits and I ask her why I can’t get a cool teal cast like the one I saw a girl wearing at the museum. “It looked great on her.”

“The cast looked great or she did?” she asks.

“Um,” I say. 

“I wish we could get the colored casts,” she says, “But they only let us have the plain ones.” 

As she slaps and smacks the cast into place, out of nowhere Dr. Ronda says, “I just read that they’ve found a new way to calculate pi. I don’t really understand it, but I’m not sure I’m ready to accept that pi has changed.” She doesn’t stop working this entire time, and water slops from the bucket onto the floor. “I sure do like to make a mess, don’t I,” she muses.

By the time they let me go, I’m extremely irritated, despite all the warm goodbyes from KC and everyone as I wheel away. I just miss the bus and have to wait forty minutes until the next one, which is full of twitchy guys with crinkling bags of cans. Nothing is really all that bad, it’s just not all that good either. The day certainly didn’t kick ass. I feel depleted, and disappointed that I didn’t even experience anything worth writing about. But I write about it anyways.