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.