Potato Chips

 It’s strange not to be leaving work early on a Monday, strange not to roll down to the bus mall on my scooter, not to catch the bus up fourth to Burnside and out Glisan to the hospital. When I get off work, I don’t really know what to do with myself, so instead of going home I take the streetcar up to Powell’s. While the place is not as magical as it once was, I still manage to find a few books I can’t leave without, including a copy of WB Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn. 

It’s a strange and beautiful book, but gloomier than I had expected, and Tuesday I feel depression taking hold. It’s not really because of the book, of course, though I wonder how much is enforces or even amplifies the misery that is never far from the surface for me. I feel myself overtaken by that familiar sensation of being both hollow and leaden, like a church bell. I feel stripped of all normal desire; I only want impossible things. To be young again. For my dead friends to be alive again. To be held in the arms of a woman again. I look at the news and it says that the hospital is considering thinking about possibly starting the negotiation process with the striking nurses. Maybe.

Wednesday afternoon I look at my phone and see that I have a voicemail from the eye clinic. That dreadful scheduler says that there was a cancellation and I should call back if I want to have my cataract surgery next Thursday instead of next month. I call back immediately but as usual I just get her voicemail. I tell her I will take it and that she should call me as soon as possible so I can make arrangements with work. I don’t expect her to actually call back, and she doesn’t.  

I don’t want to get too excited; I’m afraid they will give my spot to someone else. But if all goes well, by this time a week from now, I will be able to see clearly again. I will just need to get reading glasses made, and then I need to get this goddamned foot healed up.

Speaking of which, I’m supposed to be changing the dressing on the wound twice a week, but I find myself unable to bear the idea of looking at it. What if it has gotten worse? There’s no reason why it should; it’s securely bandaged, so chance of infection is very low, and I’m not putting any pressure on it.  

On Thursday I send Nurse Hannah a text asking if the home nurses on strike and she says no. Friday morning she writes back and asks if I am able to change the dressing myself and I say yes, though I want to say no, come help me. It’s been a year since her first visit. I miss her tender ministrations. I miss her talking to my toes. For some reason she sends photos of her grandchildren wearing dinosaur pyjamas and bug wings. 

Saturday is a mild, sunny day. I drink a lot of coffee and get some housework done. Later I wheel down to the coffee for an evening of female Jewish storytellers. The women are good speakers but the stories they share are dull and insipid.

Sunday morning I finally get up the nerve to unwrap my foot. But first I do something I haven’t been able to do since June: I take a shower. 

I should explain that I do in fact bathe regularly, but I haven’t been able to take a full body shower since I started wearing the cast. Instead I sit on the edge of the tub with one foot in and the other wrapped in a garbage bag. Like so many things in my life, it’s uncomfortable and annoying. 

I leave the bandage on when I shower, afraid of getting the wound dirty. My left leg is soft, pale and nearly hairless from being wrapped up for six months. Since it’s an old building, the water pressure isn’t great, but it feels wonderful as it scalds my skin and cascades down my body.

When I get out I sit on the edge of the bed with my wound care supplies laid out on a little table. They were mailed to me by the hospital, and I’m surprised to find that they only sent me a handful of adhesive foam bandages, albeit the really good ones, and saline solution and gloves. 

I look closely at the right foot for the first time in a while. The toe that started me on my hyperbaric journey never healed up fully. It looks stunted and gnarled. I don’t expect it to ever completely recover, but it shouldn’t affect my walking. 

I tug on the milky gloves and gingerly peel off the bandage along with whatever patch of magical absorbent Jenny applied to my left foot the last day I was there. Aquasil, maybe. There is a lot of gunk on the patch, and the wound looks much bigger and deeper than I had hoped. I put on one of the bandages, and lie back in bed and stare up at the ceiling. I feel like I need to cry but I can’t. I have not made any progress. I am back where I started. 

Later in the afternoon I go to a staging of Krapp’s Last Tape with Robyn’s boyfriend. The show is at a tiny black box theater I’ve never heard of. There are five steps up to get into the building. I take them slowly, leaning on the railing and using the scooter as a kind of crutch. The people at the ticket table just stare at us without any sort of greeting. Luckily there aren’t any more stairs, and I roll right in and grab a seat in the front row. 

In the play, an old man sits at a desk, listening to a recording of his voice from thirty years ago. He consumes a number of bananas. There is no exposition and it’s up to the audience to piece together the scant details of Krapp’s rather pathetic life. The actor in this production is decent, though I think a slower, more methodical delivery would better highlight the bits of humor in what is otherwise a pretty morose meditation on aging and regret. It’s one of my favorite plays. And I wonder why I’m depressed.

When we leave, the narrow lobby is filled with people chatting. A shallow bowl of potato chips sits on a table in front of an empty popcorn machine. The air smells like wine. No one offers to hold the door and none of the staff says anything about the lack of accessibility. Alex carries the scooter down to the sidewalk, and accompanied by the tape of my wasted life that is constantly unspooling in my head, I hop down after him.

Gnadenhutten

Carefully roll off the bus thank you driver crosswalk button down the steep hill smokers’ bench drop off/pick up only sliding doors stanchioned off metal detector I gotchoo McCullen (close enough) water fountain green elevator waiting area eyelids droop 

“Hey stranger.” 

It’s Sally, wearing her coat and a child size backpack. 

“Hey stranger yourself. I hear you and Jenny don’t have to strike because you’re higher level nurses.”

“Lower, actually. But yeah, we’ll be here with the docs.”

Jenny pops her head out the door. 

“It’s a hyperbaric reunion!” I cry.

“You can come back anytime, you know,” says Sally. “We have lots of openings.”

She heads to the elevator and Jenny leads me to room one. Her scrubs are bright green and look brand new. I marvel at how young she looks. She has ten years on me but her hands are smooth and barely veined.  

“I haven’t seen you in ages,” I say. “How were the holidays?”

“Quiet,” she says. “No drama. Mother-in-law behaved herself.”

Shelley comes in and hands me the doctor’s note. 

Seann McCollum (SOB 12/23/1972) is a patient under my care. He currently has a diabetic ulcer on his left foot. In order to heal his ulcer, he is unable to bear any weight  on the left foot. He may use a knee scooter or wheelchair, but he is unable to go up or down stairs, or take any steps on the left foot anticipate that he will not be able to walk on the left foot for at least 60 more days. We are assessing his condition weekly. 

“Goddamnit,” I say. 

“What’s wrong?” asks Shelley.

Sixty days from the 7th, when she wrote the note, is March eighth. The anniversary of the Gnadenhutten Massacre, the start of the Battle of Guadalajara. The birthday of Cyd Charisse and Mickey Dolenz. I remember Dr. Richmond saying I would be healed up by Christmas. Sixty days from now will practically be Spring. My bosses and HR seemed okay with me continuing to work using my scooter, but I had only told them it would be until the end of the strike. And of course while the strike is on, no one will be assessing my condition, weekly or otherwise. 

“Nothing,” I say. 

I don’t have a choice. I’ll have to just get through this, like I’ve gotten through so much already.

Shelley switches on the saw. “I hate this thing,” she yells over the roar. “It’s so heavy.”

“Also loud,” I yell. 

“What?” she yells. 

It takes her a surprisingly long time to cut the cast off, and even then she has to use the pliers. When the saw is off the office is very quiet. No one takes my vitals, and the doctor doesn’t come in to check my wound, but both Shelley and Jenny say it looks good. 

“It didn’t look great Monday,” I grumble. Shelley insists it looks better. She cleans my leg and dresses the wound while Jenny and I chat. No matter what we talk about we keep coming back to the strike, even though there’s nothing new to say about it. No one wants it to happen. Everyone wants it to be over with quickly. We all wish we lived in a country that believed in socialized medicine. I almost say I’m ready to burn it all down, then I think of the fires ravaging Los Angeles and realize I don’t really mean that.

With no doctor and no new cast, I’m done before four; my shortest visit ever. Shelly puts on my sock and hands me my shoe and asks, “You have the instructions for changing your dressing, right?”

“I didn’t get any,” I say. 

“I gave them to you Monday, didn’t I?” 

She prints them out and brings my scooter and I wish everyone good luck and hit the door open button and roll out to the green elevator water fountain St. Joseph sculpture two nurses on their phones blocking the hallway security guards suddenly everywhere metal detector open again patient transport parked by the Starbucks old guy with a handlebar mustache behind the wheel says “You really speed along on that thing” I tell him I’ve had a lot of practice all the appointments all the days the weeks the months the soaked bandages the split Fiberglas the ulcers the callouses the antibiotics the little knives the skin grafts all the false starts and steps backward all the foolish hopes and unrealistic dreams and most of all the fear the fear the fear I feel it all rising behind me like a boiling wave a blast of infernal wind a panicking mob a stampeding herd shoving me forward propelling me through the automatic doors and into the cold winter sunlight. 

Babel

It’s the fourth anniversary of the assault on the capitol by a gang of hooligans egged on by the most depraved, noxious cretin to ever hold this country’s highest office. On my way to work a guy on a bike decides not to stop or even slow down for the red light and nearly crashes into me as I cross. 

A few blocks away an SUV does stop for the light, but then speeds through before it changes. narrowly missing both me and an old guy with a walker. 

On the other side of the street, a young woman looks around and, deciding no one is watching, decides not to clean up after her dog. 

As I approach the museum, I pass a man wearing a hoodie with the words ASSHOLES LIVE FOREVER emblazoned on the back. 

At work, things are needlessly chaotic. My suggestions to help are ignored, so eventually I just keep to myself as everyone around me bitches about the chaos. Because they don’t really want solutions. They want to keep bitching. And these are the people who voted that treasonous parasite back into office. 

Beneath all my irritation with humanity, I am anxious about today’s appointment and the impending nurses’ strike. I try to keep an eye on my fear, and keep reminding myself of all I’ve been through in the past year, telling myself I will get through this as well. I try not to linger on the mistakes I’ve made that led me to this point, delicious though it might be to do so. 

The sun is blinding as I wait for the bus after work. I’m already dreading Dr. Taggert’s hectoring. I know it comes from a place of caring, but what does that matter if it only serves to amplify my anxiety? Please let her be subdued today, I pray, though I’ve already made more prayers this week than an atheist has any right to, the most pressing one being, Please let them call off the fucking strike. 

The metal detector in the lobby isn’t roped off but I don’t see any guards around. The woman in front of me stands frozen in place. I go around her and skirt the detector. “It’s been out of service for weeks,” I say.

“But I have a stun gun I have to leave with them,” she says. I almost crack a joke, but decide against it.

“McCollum I gotchoo,” the woman behind the counter yells across the lobby. 

An attendant I’ve never seen before is sitting to her left. He calls to me to stop. “She got me!” I yell as I wheel on past.

I sit out in the waiting area, too unfocused to read or draw. I look at 3 beds folded like sandwiches in the middle of the hallway. I look up at the smoke detectors, the sprinklers. I get up to inspect the sole piece of artwork in the room, which I’ve never looked at before. It’s a photograph of a mountain called the Tower of Babel in the Canadian Rockies. 

I look it up online and read a step by step guide to ascending it. The peak affords one a spectacular view of the cerulean Moraine Lake and the other nine peaks that surround it. It looks otherworldly but I will never see it in person. It doesn’t look like a particular arduous scramble but I would never be able to manage it; not that I was ever all that much into strenuous outdoor activity. The last hike I went on was up Larch Mountain, which is also not much of a climb but fucked up my feet for months. Like Taggert says, these feet should only be used to stand and pivot.

S’Jon bursts out and tells me to come on in. I ask how he is and he says terrible. He leads me to room one and I turn my head and see KC hiding in the corner. “Boo,” she says. I’m pleased that at least one of my sad little prayers has been answered.

“Is everyone ready to strike?” I cry. “Where are your signs? I want to hear your chants!”

KC immediately starts talking about how upset she is about the whole thing. “I really spiraled down this weekend,” she says. She tells me she’s really scared about paying her mortgage. I tell her to let me know what she needs and I’ll cover it. “Finally I’ve found my sugar daddy!” she cries. 

“Hey I’m pretty scared too,” says S’Jon, and he actually sounds it. Everyone in the office is on edge. I can hear Kaitlin and Shelley having a heated discussion about salaries. 

“Look at this! You don’t get anyone making less than five million until you hit the next page!” 

“It’s no wonder they say they’re broke, paying all these salaries.”

“And what do they do all day? Their assistants do everything for them!”

“How do they sleep at night?” 

.“I’m all for you guys striking,” I say, “but you couldn’t wait a month until I get my other eye done?” 

“It’s really bad timing for a lot of patients,” KC says, looking like she’s going to cry. “I feel so bad. I wish we weren’t doing this.” 

S’Jon cuts off the cast quicker than ever. “I like to see if I can beat my time,” he says. “Oh hey, you cracked the heel.” 

There is moderate drainage and my wound has grown slightly larger. I grow sullen, and KC gets quiet too. “I’m so tired of this,” I say, for the six hundredth time.

“I know,” she says tenderly.

“Why don’t you just go ahead and chop the fucking thing off,” I say. “You’ve got the saw right there.”

Taggert comes in looking miserable. I want to ask her if the skin graft was just completely useless, but I already know the answer. She talks about scabs, and how much money they make, and how all the hospitals in the area are going to be swamped. 

“It’s going to be just like during the pandemic when you had to call for hundreds of miles around looking for openings. I sent a woman to Boise for an appendectomy!” She doesn’t mention the wound, though she obviously sees how bad it is. She says she’ll be back to do my cast and slips quietly away. Another answered prayer.

“God I hope there isn’t another pandemic,” S’Jon says. The first US death from bird flu was reported today.

“At least we’ll have finally have people running the country who really care about human life,” I say. KC glares at me. 

S’Jon lets her prepare my undercast. I watch carefully, knowing this might be the last time I see her for a while. She wears a black vest over burgundy scrubs. Her sharp little nose hangs over her mask and her face looks ruddy and pinched. S’Jon takes his mask off and his weird little mustache actually looks sparser than before. To cheer us up he shows us photos of his cat, an enormous white rag doll kitten that he says is a huge pain in the ass. He keeps saying it’s “ours,” so I guess he’s not single like I thought, and also has a mortgage, which he too is stressed out about. 

“I know I’m lucky in that I can always go live on the res if I need to,” he says, actually sounding a little sheepish. I like this kinder, gentler S’Jon better than the one who bitches about how dangerous Portland is.

KC repeats that she’s worried about making ends meet. “I know the union can help but you have to prove you tried everything else first,” she says. I tell her that her and Cathy can always sleep in the hyperbaric chambers if she gets evicted. “I just had work done on my teeth,” she says. “I owe six thousand dollars.” She pulls down her mask and flashes her small, straight teeth. I’m not sure what I’m looking for but they look fine. I ask her how her holidays were.

“Low key. Talked to my dad, talked to my mom.” I know her folks are separated but for some reason I also thought her dad was dead.

“You didn’t yell at anyone?” I ask.

“Not this time.”

Taggert cones in to put on the cast and KC stays to assist. I tell her “this might be my last one for a while so make it good! The heel cracked on the last one.”

Taggert comes in to wrap the cast and KC stays to assist. I say, “This might be my last one for a while, make it good! No cracked heels this time.”

They reminisce about the last strike, which only lasted a few days. “This one’s a lot bigger, I’m hoping it only lasts a week or so,” Taggert says. “It’s going to be a giant mess.”

Despite the gloomy atmosphere, I gather what little strength I have left and manage to get them both to laugh a little. By the time they release me, I’m spent. KC walks me to the door. She looks worn out as well.

“You’re going to be okay,” I say.

“So are you,” she says. Balanced on my scooter, I hold out one arm and she comes in for a hug. I don’t want to let go. I don’t want her to go through this alone, and I sure as hell don’t want to be alone. But this is where we’re at in this collapsing tower of a country. I can barely find the words to talk about it. We are all so broken. We are all so frightened. We are all so doomed.