Dick Cheney

It’s a lovely morning, and I have a pleasant scoot to work. It isn’t until I’m in the locker room in the basement that I realize I’m only wearing one shoe. The post-op sandal that velcros over my cast is gone; it must have fallen off on the way. I wonder if I should go back and retrace my path –as usual, I’m 15 minutes early, I could get most of the way home and back- but in the end I decide to just go without, hoping I won’t regret it. I dig through the piles of detritus that have accumulated in the locker room during the construction, and find a black cloth bag that fits perfectly over my cast. It won’t help me walk but it may help hide my shoelessness. 

The annoyance I’ve been feeling about the museum lately does not abate over the course of the day. It begins by getting subjected to a long diatribe from a coworker about 9/11 being orchestrated by Dick Cheney, and it goes downhill from there. Probably because of my own missing shoe, I suddenly remember the time some guy threw a shoe at President Bush. What a shitty president. And yet look at where we are today. I’m relieved to be leaving early for my appointment. 

I get the same goofy bus driver I’ve had for the past few weeks. At our first stop, a woman with a horribly broken body crammed into a wheelchair gets on. He straps her in, and she seems to want him to lift her up and help her shift in her chair. “I don’t want to hurt you, ma’am,” he says, with a tenderness I hadn’t seen in him before.

At the hospital, the metal detector is back in service. A man standing behind an empty wheelchair is arguing with her. “This isn’t just for homeless people, sir. Everyone needs to go through this,” she says, clearly running out of patience. “We’re just trying to keep everyone safe.” She asks him to step aside for m. I toss my bag into a bin and wheel around the detector as the man stands there, still arguing. 

After a short wait, Jenny comes out to fetch me. It’s good to have her motherly presence after monday’s rather exhausting visit. She saws off the cast and as she’s pulling off the undercast, she accidentally yanks off the patch of green mesh that was covering the skin graft. She plucks it from the cotton batting and gingerly places it back on. “Is that going to affect anything?” I ask. She says she doesn’t think so, and that it already looks like the umbilical cord skin is working its magic. Vicki pops her head in quickly to see and she agrees. The blister, meanwhile, has pretty much disappeared. I’m cautiously brightened by this news.

We chat as she wraps a new undercast. Aside from Sjon slipping in to refill supplies, I don’t see or hear anyone else in the office until Dr. Thompson comes in. Instead of her usual African or Baby Yoda headgear, her cap is surgical green, and for the first tie I realize that these aren’t anything exotic. They’re just scrub caps. You can get them on Etsy. 

She looks at my half-wrapped foot and says, “So I don’t get to look at it?” She sounds annoyed. Jenny blushes and apologizes; we had been so busy talking she had forgotten to get her. Thompson shakes her head and says she’ll be back when everything’s ready. 

When she does return she still seems cranky. She can’t get the chair the height she likes, and she keeps telling me to inch forward, until I’m almost falling off the edge of my seat. “This isn’t right,” she says, partially unwrapping and rewrapping the strips. I keep quiet. 

We talk about the election for the first time. “We’ve all been pretty out of sorts,” says Jenny. She lowers her voice. “Well, most of us.” 

Finally Dr. Thompson says, “That’s better.” She sees to be in a much better mood by the time she’s done, and shows e photos of her greyhound encountering a tortoise. 

Before I leave, Jenny asks, “Okay where’s your shoe?” I had totally forgotten about it. I explain to her that I lost it. Her and Vicki laugh, along with Shelley, who has been lurking in the background this entire time, and she gets me a new one.

On the way home, I stop for cat food at Safeway, which continues to be the most depressing grocery store in Portland. The store seems especially chaotic today, the customers frantic as if there's a stowstorm on the way. As I’m leaving another shopper walks alongside me, talking about the time she broke her foot. Everyone has a story of themselves or someone they know hurting their foot or having surgery and wearing a cast, using crutches, riding a scooter. I usually enjoy hearing these stories, though they’re all pretty much the same.  This woman is lovely, in a rough kind of way, and we walk together until I skid on the wet leaves and she says she doesn’t want to distract me. 

By the time I get home I feel a little cheerier. As I approach my apartment, I see a dark shape on the carpet in front of my door. I figure it’s a package with the eye drops for my surgery, but when I get closer I see what it is. 

It’s my shoe.