Florida

    A deep weariness of spirit hits me like a sneaker wave. I feel so heavy and emotionally worn out that I can barely move.

     Everything blurs together as I leave work for my appointment. There’s a different bus driver and a woman gets on and starts screaming “Puto! You fucking puto! Where’s my fucking car?” before chasing the object of her aggression out the back door. Clumps of bright foliage still cling to some of the trees, not yet beaten down by the rain. My eyes start to close as a man gets on and starts screaming at the driver to take him to the hospital and the driver screams back but lets him get on anyways. An old woman compliments my cornucopia, a tall young woman with no hair and a Chihuahua smiles at me. I see it all through a mental haze as thick as the visual one caused by my cataracts.  None of it makes an impression, none of it really matters. It’s all just a trick of the light, shadows dancing on the wall. 

     On the way up to wound care  I pass one of those electric shuttles they use at the airport, sitting in the middle of the hallway. It takes up most of the hallway; I don’t see how it could turn the corners.  A very old man sits at the wheel. I ask, “Is this new?” 

     “Nope, it was just out of commission for a while. Needed parts.” I’ve been coming to this damn place at least once a week for over a year and I’ve never seen this beast.

     In wound care it’s another episode of the Aaron and Sjon show. They launch into their usual routine but I’m too tired to even be annoyed by it.  Then Sjon is talking about when he was in Florida, riding his bike shirtless, and he crashed into a tree and was covered in blood and some German tourist pointed and laughed and said, “You hurt your nipple!” All I can think is lord am I tired of all of this.

     Details briefly appear, quickly fade away. There’s a new saw, much louder than the old one. Aaron takes photos of my wound and shows me the whole stream of pictures from the beginning. Dr. Thompson looks at my foot and says “Beautiful!” and applies the second skin graft with much more assurance than Taggert did. 

     She asks if my insurance is changing and I say not that I know of. She tells me there’s something happening between Providence and Aetna. Panic pierces my exhaustion; after my insurance headaches last spring, I’m terrified of being without. Especially when I’m theoretically so close to the finish line. Aaron gripes about Providence’s president, who made millions when his company bought the hospital from the nuns.

     They all say things and do things to my foot but I don’t see the point in making note of any of it. It’s all the same, week after week, visit after visit. Lackluster variations on a worn out theme. The curtain, the crucifix, the gauze and tape and saline solution, Lidocaine and Aquacil and Terracil, Vicki and Jenny and Shelley and oh who fucking cares, there is no insight or poetry here, and if there is, I don’t feel capable of rummaging around in the junk drawer to find it. I’m not really unhappy; I smile and joke with them as usual. But all I want is to go home and close my eyes and have this all over with when I open them again. This trick of the light. This dance of shadows. This vaporous dream.