Rewards

 I wheel into the office and plop onto the chair in room one. Jean takes my scooter and unwraps my bandages and is joined by Jenny, who says she’ll be working on the floor more now that the two newbies are fully trained. “I really miss it out here,” she says. She keeps calling Jean what sounds like “beezhawn,” and sure enough, when I squint at his name tag it reads BJON. What the hell kind of name is Bjon? Not Bjorn, or Bijan, which is Persian for hero. 

“Drainage on the right wound is scant,” he says. Scant. What a beautiful word. I feel a tiny worm of hope try to inch its way to the surface.

Jenny is very chatty and we talk while we wait for the doctor. She tells me about how the kittens got into a bag of sponges and now that’s all they want to play with. I tell her about being on antidepressants. She says she wishes her husband would go back to therapy. He’s never been the same after his father died in 2006. Incredibly, both their fathers died within two hours of each other. 

Dr. Thompson comes in and asks how I’m doing. She’s wearing a new cap with little green and brown blobs on it. I say not bad, and ask how she is. “I’m in trouble,” she says. “I’ve been walking on my foot too much.” When she comes closer, I see what the blobs on her hat are. This Black woman doctor who has flown jets in the Navy and worked in the emergency room and as a reconstructive surgeon, who rides a motorcycle and plays the saxophone, is wearing a hat covered with Baby Yodas. 

She is chatty as well, and talks about reading music. “I’m terrible at memorizing things,” she says. “I’m better at problem solving.” She tells me about a cellular biology exam she took in medical school. The first essay question was about a patient who had suffered severe burns. “Everyone was freaking out. We hadn’t covered burn treatment at all. But then I realized, it’s all just cellular biology, and I got an A.”

She says the wound on the left foot looks good, even though it’s a little bigger because she cut so much of it away last week. The foot on the right, however, is almost completely healed over. “This is good news,” she says, and that little worm of hope breaks through the surface and wriggles around for a moment before diving back under.

Bjon or whatever his name is puts on a new soft cast. Jenny just watches, answering his occasional question. “I’m just going to do a banana fold here, right?” When I get home I find that my foot is wrapped so unevenly that I can hardly walk on it without twisting my ankle, and I realize that he forgot to put the outer layer on. 

On top of that, a sign taped to the door of the elevator reads

ELEVATOR WILL BE OUT OF SERVICE

FOR THREE WEEKS STARTING OCTOBER 1ST

WE APOLOGIZE FOR THIS REAL INCONVENIENCE

They had warned us that this was coming, but it’s still irritating. But they’ve removed the “no dumping” sign, so maybe they changed their minds about that at least. Or maybe they’ll put it back up. I understand that change is part of life, but why does it always seem to be for the worse? And why do I foolishly want some sort of reward for all this hardship I have been through? I know it doesn’t work like that, and yet I still feel entitled to some huge piece of good fortune.

But I’m looking forward to my eye exam on Saturday morning; hopefully now that I’ve got the retina problems addressed, we can go ahead with scheduling my cataract surgery. 

When Saturday comes, I roll out to catch the streetcar up to the eye clinic. The usually-teeming office is nearly empty. I wheel up to the lone receptionist and comment on how quiet it is. He just stares at me until I tell him I’m there for my 9:30. 

I sit in the waiting room. The building is all odd angles with a high ceiling crisscrossed with beams. Everything is gray. Eventually a woman calls me and says “Before we go back, I need to ask why you’re seeing Dr. Foley instead of Dr. Danh?” I start to tell her this was the soonest appointment I could get but she cuts me off. “It doesn’t work that way,” she snaps. “You need to see your usual doctor. Besides, Dr. Foley is scheduling cataract surgeries out for six to nine months from now. Dr. Danh will be able to do it sooner. I will have Martin reschedule you.” She storms off and I’m left with the dead-eyed receptionist, who tells me Dr. Danh can see me in two weeks. 

It’s a perfect day but my mood is sour as I roll along the bold, uneven sidewalks of Northwest. That little squiggle of hope has shriveled to a dry husk. It’s so fragile. Six to nine months? What if Dr. Danh can’t do my surgery until months and months from how? I’ve already waited so long. I am so tired of this blurry world. 

I figure since I’m in the neighborhood, I may as well stop by the hardware store and get a bike lock for my scooter; there’s a bike rack on the ground floor. The leaves are starting to drop and so are acorns and buckeyes and sweetgum seeds, and I can no longer speed blithely along. 

I ask a guy at the hardware store where the bike cables are. They’re secured to pegs, so I ask another guy to unlock one for me. I have a padlock already, the one I bought to secure the U-Haul when I moved across the country. I haven’t used it since. The cashier asks if I’m a member and I say no. “You get rewards,” she says. I don’t answer, just swipe my card and wheel on out to face the next obstacle.