Chamber Music, Hypberbaric and Otherwise

I write a list of the pros and cons of being on the meds. On the pro side is the fact that I don’t feel too bad and am able to function normally. I also have very little appetite and no urge to drink. On the other side are the side effects. None of them are severe, but added up they prevent me from enjoying anything. 

The responsible thing to do, of course, is tell all this to my doctor and have him adjust my dosages to hopefully alleviate some of the numbness. 

Of course I don’t do this. Instead I decide to just be done with the wretched things. I know they work and I know what to expect. If things get bad, I can go back on them. 

As the drugs leave my system, I feel myself surfacing. For a few days I find myself sobbing at random moments, then that phase passes and I experience a sharp clarity I haven’t felt in months. It feels like the first cold snap of the year; painful but refreshing. My brain is once again permitted to feel misery, and it does, but I look the misery in the eye and it doesn’t exactly disappear, but it shrinks a bit. I find myself feeling tired but not exhausted like I had been. The idea of lying in bed and doing nothing for days on end no longer seems like a viable lifestyle choice. 

At work one day I find myself taking out my pocket sketchbook and drawing without even realizing what I’m doing. It’s like my hand has suddenly woken up after a deep slumber. The pictures don’t exactly gush out, but they flow, easily and without struggle, and I feel a microscopic thrill of pleasure. 

The words are slower to return. I don’t push them, just try to stand back and let them emerge in their own time. When they do, it’s like drinking a cold glass of water after a long, hot day in the sun.

My senses return to normal. I go out to a fancy dinner with a friend and the food is so good I don’t even feel all that envious to hear that her life has turned around and everything is going great. What must that feel like, I wonder, gnawing the head off a shrimp the size of my fist. 

The following night I attend a chamber music recital performed by a trio from Copenhagen. The musicians resemble their instruments: the pianist is sleek and angular, the violinist seems to rest her chin on a small model of her own body. The cellist has a narrow waist and large bottom. I love watching her rock back and forth. I want to be held like that, gripped by her knees, with my head resting against her bosom as she coaxes beautiful music from my hollow shell. 

A delicate, dissonant piece by Bent Sorenson is paired with Beethoven’s “Ghost.” After the break they launch into a Tchaikovsky piano trio. It sounds like a Russian folk song has exploded, with shrapnel flying in every direction. After forty-five minutes of furious veering and swooping, the strings fall away to leave only the piano quietly plinking and fading to an almost unbearable silence. We all just sit there… surely it doesn’t end like this? But it does, it’s over, the mood shattered by applause that, after such an exquisite descent into nothingness, feels vulgar and inappropriate. It would be better for us to stand and file out without a sound, carrying that silence with us, letting it burden and buoy us.

*

“There’s a woman in your shoe,” Aaron says. He and Jean and the new guy surround me in room one. He’s right; over the weekend I drew a woman on the white inside of my post-op shoe with a Sharpie. I was surprised to find that it had transferred to the bottom of the soft cast. I was a little embarrassed, but Jean didn’t notice it when he pulled it off; at least he didn’t say anything.

It’s strange to be surrounded by men in this clinic which until recently has been overwhelmingly female. “Lotta testosterone in here,” I say loudly, and the women on the other side of the curtain laugh. I tell Aaron I haven’t seen him in a while and he says he was on vacation in Southern Italy. I’m surprised; he doesn’t seem the type to visit Italy. He usually just goes camping around Mount Hood. 

The wound on my left foot isn’t any worse, but it’s not much better. I’m not upset; all I care about is whether the skin on the right foot is still intact. And it is. 

Dr. Thompson comes in and asks if I mind having an observer, a young woman doctor from St. Vincent’s.

“Did you get to see your friend?” she asks. I had told her Amy was going to be in town. I tell her I had forgotten how nice it can be to just sit around and watch tv and laugh with someone. I talk about how difficult the isolation has been.

“It’s so nice to have people you can share activities with,” says the visiting doctor.

“I know, burying bodies is a lot harder by yourself,” I say.

The visiting doctor looks upset but Dr Thompson just shakes her head and says, “I think we’ll go back to the hard cast next week. It should help you heal faster. I know you had problems last time but I think you just needed a break from it. Does that sound okay?” I tell her it sounds fine. Another month, two months, whatever The skin on the right foot is still intact.

Aaron has Jean do the soft cast, but halfway through he takes over and does most of it himself. The two of them banter the entire time. The doctor from St. Vincent’s has stayed to watch. She comments on their rapport and Aaron says, “Ejon and I have known each other since we were twelve.” Ejon? What the hell is this guy’s name, anyways?

“So you’re like family,” the doctor says. 

“We’re actually brothers,” says Aaron.

“Stepbrothers,” says Ejon. “We have different moms. But we grew up together.” The doctor can’t tell if they’re joking, and neither can I, but  I seem to notice a slight twang in Aaron’s voice for the first time. 

As they’re finishing up, Sally from hyperbaric appears. It’s good to see her. I tell her I miss her and the chamber, and she says I can come back anytime I want. 

“Don’t I have to get an infection first?” I ask. 

“Eh, we can fudge the paperwork.”

During the bus ride home, I get a text from our building’s super saying the elevator is fixed. It’s only been down a little over a week, much shorter than they predicted. 

I put my phone away and see a man sitting across from me wearing ear buds and a brown sweater decorated with vegetables. He sings and sways and shakes his head, from time to time throwing up his hands and yelling “Christ is king!” I can only make out a few words at first, but eventually I realize he’s singing Sarah Smile by Hall and Oates. He’s utterly lost in the music. I watch him shamelessly. I’m the only one doing so; everyone is looking at their phone. With one final “Praise Jesus!” he bolts out the door and dances across the street, beaming, confident the traffic will stop for him, or maybe not even knowing it’s there. 

Elevator

There’s no question the antidepressants are doing what they’re designed to do, filing off the sharp edges so I can continue to function. I’m getting up every day and going to work and getting through the day without panic or anguish. But I have no drive and no urges, and if I don’t feel much pain, I’m not feeling much pleasure, either. I can read but every time I try to write or draw it’s like trying to wade through pudding.

The first day the elevator is shut off, I get three floors down the stairs when I realize I don’t have my wallet. In the ten years I’ve lived in this building, I haven’t once left the apartment without it. Until now.

The man who set burned down the May apartment building up the street a year and a half ago has finally been found guilty. He was obviously mentally ill and I feel sad for him, sad for all those people who lost their pets and their possessions, sad for everyone. And yet it’s a shallow kind of sadness; the meds keep me from dipping too far down into misery. I don’t like how weird and flat I feel though. Between the meds and my cataracts, I feel like I’m watching the world through aquarium glass. 

After work I go to Safeway to get my shots. 

“That’s a lot of shots,” the pharmacist’s assistant says, looking at the checklist. 

“Is that a problem? They didn’t say there was a limit.”

“I’ll ask.” 

She comes back and tells me to wait in a tiny waiting area facing the kombucha. I wait so long I get my daily drawing finished. It’s a picture of a goopy blob of a man being poured from a mayonnaise jar. 

The pharmacist leads me to a room barely big enough for both of us. A bowl of Dum Dum lollipops sits on a miniature end table. She tells me that both my arms will probably hurt and that I should take things easy for a few days. We exchange vaccine horror stories. She gives me a flu shot and COVID booster in my right arm and shingles and hepatitis B vaccines in my right. I don’t even know what hepatitis B is but they recommended it on the website so I checked the box. The shots have pierced both of my tattoos, the one of the ant and my cartoon of Noodle. She puts a band aid across Noodle’s eyes, like a blindfold.

When I get home I lock up my scooter and climb the stairs and try to nap but can’t. I make dinner and read some of the Wright Brothers book and try to nap again. I am so tired, and I know I should write but I have nothing to say. I try to collage my fragmented thoughts but nothing coheres. I can’t even feel upset about it, just irritated in an abstract sort of way. 

I wake up in the middle of the night aching and can’t get back to sleep. When the alarm goes off (I’ve finally switched from NPR to the jazz station, which unfortunately seems to play only the smooth variety) I sit up and feel horrible. I retch violently into the toilet but nothing comes out. Maybe it was a mistake to get all my shots at once.

I scoot a few blocks and have to stop. I’m utterly exhausted and my entire body hurts. I think of calling in sick, but press on for another two blocks, rest again, and slowly cover the last stretch to work. 

I leave early for my appointment and doze on the bus, and by the time I get to the hospital I feel… not refreshed, exactly, but able to function. Shelley is training yet another new guy, named Tim. She’s not impressed with the old cast. I tell her it wasn’t put on properly. “I can see that,” she snaps. 

“The other new guy put it on,” I say. “What is his name, anyways?” She says Jean. 

Someone in the next room says, “How are you feeling today, Gil?” Gil is a very old man who was in the chamber at the same time I was. I used to try to engage him in conversation and he would just stare at me blankly. I want to yell hello but he’d just be confused. I wonder how my other fellow patients are faring. 

Dr. Thompson is happy with the progress. The right foot is completely healed, though the skin is still raw and will not be strong for a long time. She doesn’t touch it, just has the nurse put a foam pad on it. The wound on the left foot is a little deeper but she says it looks healthy. “What you need is a third leg,” she says as she hacks away at the ever-growing callouses.

I’m supposed to go to a reading after my appointment, but instead I go home and make supper and swallow my pills, feeling queasy at how many there are. I take some aspirin, wishing I had something stronger. It’s a perfect evening, and I sit on the balcony for a little while but I can’t get comfortable, so I go back inside and lie in bed, aching. This is my life, now; no highs, no lows, no thrills, no trauma. My entire existence reduced to a low, dull ache. The pills are working their magic. There’s no point in trying to kill yourself when you’re already dead.