White Coat Syndrome

 I get off the bus and walk down the hill toward the hospital entrance. The last time I did this it was six months ago, and the days were cold and short. It’s only midmorning and it’s already uncomfortably warm out. An enormous woman in a mobility device is blocking the front doors. A woman with a walker asks if she can move a bit so she can get in. “I ain’t movin’ for nobody!” the woman bellows. The other woman squeezes behind her and I do the same. 

The x-ray machine and metal detector are wrapped in caution tape. A volunteer is stationed by the counter, directing people to the line. Clusters of guys in tactical gear stand here and there. I check in with a woman I don’t recognize and she directs me to the Tower Elevator. To get there I walk down a hallway lined with brightly colored paintings of various Portland landmarks, passing a café with a sign that says it’s closed until further notice. 

After a few wrong turns I find myself in the Endocrinology East/Weight Loss Clinic. I know that many type 2 diabetics struggle with their weight but it still feels weird that they combine the two.. 

I check in and give the guy my new insurance card. Our rates jumped so high that the museum changed providers. I’m a little nervous because this is the first time I’ve used the new card, but it all goes fine and my copay turns out to be the same as before.

I take a seat and look around. The room is long and narrow, and everything is tan. One wall is covered with a wallpaper photo of Crown Point Vista in autumn. Next to an empty glass case stands a tropical plant with leaves like outspread hands. An open door reveals a closet filled with brightly colored blouses marked XL, 2X, 3X, 4X, and finally 5X. There are three other people waiting and none of them look like they’re here to lose weight. An older, deeply tanned woman cackles at a video on her phone, then looks deeply serious, then cackles again. I feel like I’m in a David Lynch movie.

I only have to sit for a few minutes before they call my name. On the other side of the door is an astonishingly long corridor lined with identical doors. The aide leads me to a tiny examination room and takes my blood pressure and pulls some blood to check my glucose levels. My blood pressure is high and I tell her it’s probably because I’m so nervous. “Probably white coat syndrome,” she says, and I’m reminded of the first time I heard that term, down in wound care. I know it’s referring to doctors in general but I can’t help but think of people saying “The men in white coats will come for you,” meaning of course that you’re being taken to a mental hospital. 

She leaves and another woman arrives immediately. I’m not used to being helped so quickly. Her name is Barbara and I feel immediately at ease with her. She asks me if I’m here for a specific issue and I tell her that I really just need help managing things and that I’m also struggling with chronic foot ulcers that open up the moment they’ve healed. When Dr. Taggert released me, I developed a blister a week later, and despite my babying it, it soon blossomed into a full-blown ulcer. I couldn’t bear to go back to the clinic, and for the past six months I’ve been struggling to get up the nerve to call them. In the meantime I pretended everything was fine, even though I was constantly gnawed on by fear. 

She downloads the information from my glucose reader and talks to me about the results and some options for bringing my sugars down. She asks if I would be interested in an insulin pump and I say yes but that all my past doctors had been reluctant to help me get one. She says she will connect me to their nutrition education who will talk to me about the options for getting a pump, as well as go over some dietary suggestions with me. Barbara asks me a lot of questions and then she leaves and returns a minute later with Dr. Jackson. 

He pretty much repeats all the points Barbara made, and tells me I should make an appointment with wound care. I thank him and leave. Wound Care is only two floors down and right around the corner, but it's not accessible from here, so I have to go all the way down to the first floor and weave my way through the complex, past the shuttered café, past the irritatingly cheery paintings, past the people mover, its driver looking like he’s falling asleep, past groups of security guards hurrying to respond to a Code Gray, until I find the Green Elevators. 

I realize my heart is pounding as I get off on the fourth floor. There is now a key pad on the door to the Wound Care department, with a  sign that reads, “Press the blue button to enter.” I press the blue button and the door swings open. Everyone turns to look to see who’s there.

“Holy crap,” says Gladys. “Did you stop by to say hi?”

“I wish. I need to make an appointment,” I say, flooded with shame. 

“Sure thing, Bella is… I don’t know where Bella is. She’ll be back. What’s going on?”

“I missed you all so much I gave myself another ulcer. How are you?”

“Big life changes,” she says. “Dumped the boy Looking for a new place to live..” She looks tired, and older than 26. 

The glass has been taken down from the front counter. An Oscar figurine is standing beside the bell. Standing next to Gladys is… oh god, what’s her name?  I can’t think of it. Shelley is also back there with a woman I’ve never seen before. She glances at me and turns away, flipping her ponytail contemptuously.

“Well well well, look what the cat dragged in!” CK jumps out from around the corner, holds up her hand for a high five. “Come on, don’t leave me hanging.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be on strike?” I say, overcoming my legendary dislike of high-fives to pat her little palm.

“Please, not again,” she says, pulling down her mask. I ask how Cathy is. 

“I accidentally locked her outside overnight the other night. I had too much wine. I feel so terrible. I’m such a bad mother.”

“But hey, at least you won an Oscar?” I say, pointing. 

“One of our patients brought that in yesterday,” she said. “He left it blank so we can put our names on it. Mine will be biggest, of course.”

Dr. Thompson appears. “Well hello there!” she says. “How are you doing?”

“Really good!” I say. “I mean, except for the foot.” She stares at me. 

“Your eyes look good at least,” she says at last. I forgot that the last time I saw her, I hadn’t had my second cataract operation yet. That feels like years ago. “Well, talk to Bella, we’ll fit you in no problem. Where is Bella?” Gladys shrugs. 

“I’m here,” says Bella. Gladys introduces us and I say we met already, while they were on strike. Bella pulls up the schedule and says they can see me Monday, but I tell her I need a few weeks to give notice at work. She fits me in a few weeks from now and Dr. Thompson says she’ll see me then. I say I hope so, and I do; I don’t feel up to dealing with the well-intentioned screeching of Dr. Taggert. 

I want to stay and catch up with everyone. I miss them all so much, miss people lavishing care on me, miss the banter. I feel so changed, though I’m not sure how exactly, or why. The past six months have been fairly uneventful, aside from our precious democracy’s rapid transformation into a fascist oligarchy. But I feel like a different person than the one who walked out of here six months ago. I feel like I’m an actor playing that role, a drunken hack, moving woodenly and flubbing my lines. Most days I feel like I’m unraveling, breaking apart piece by piece, waiting for the men in the white coats to come sweep up the crumbs. 

I head back down the elevator and leave by the side entrance, which still has not been closed up like they keep threatening. I cross the parking lot where the baby goats were, where my friends used to pick me up and drop me off for my hyperbaric treatments, and cross the street, where a guy with a leaf blower blasts a cloud of dust into my face and tells me to look where I’m going, though to be honest I really don’t want to.

Don't Chase

 I spend July 4th in the apartment, alternating between cleaning and sleeping. I didn’t have too much to drink at the barbecue but I still feel sluggish and worn out. I have a pretty pleasant day regardless, and by evening feel perky enough to head down to the Goose for supper. 

There are Lost Dog posters plastered all over the neighborhood, showing a moppy little mutt with the typical admonition “Dont chase will run.” The Goose is busier than I thought but most of the crowd is settling their bills and heading out to watch the fireworks, leaving only a few of us. 

As usual, nearly everyone on the deck is coupled up, but when I walk over to the water cooler I see an attractive woman sitting by herself. I smile and she gives me a big, warm smile back. Well that’s nice, I think, but she’s probably waiting for someone. But when I go to sit down with my drink, I see her start to talk to a guy sitting by himself a few tables away from her. He has a full beard and a baseball cap. He also has a dog. 

By the time my food comes they are laughing and chatting like old friends. His dog barks wildly at every other dog that approaches the deck. “She’s just saying hello,” the man says every time. I can’t make out much of their conversation but I hear him say that he’s in real estate. She’s new to the neighborhood, and fairly new to Portland. I hear them talk about paddle boarding. They look like a good match. Even if I had a dog, I can’t compete with real estate and paddle boarding, not to mention that beard, which is full and lustrous. I can only hope that the cap is hiding a case of male pattern baldness, though I know that wouldn’t make a difference at this point. 

I take my trusty sketchbook out for company but my heart’s not in it. I tell myself this is a good opportunity to practice not spiraling down into self-hatred and misery about how alone I am, how long I’ve been alone, how the older I get the chances of this changing grow ever slimmer. It’s so easy to chastise myself for my cowardice. I should have gone right up to her when I got my drink, talk to her before that irresistible canine spell could take hold. But I couldn’t do it. I am convinced that no woman wants anything to do with me. While this might not be true, it has been many years since I’ve seen any evidence to the contrary.

“I need to get a dog,” the server says to me.

“Same here,” I say. “But I like cats better.”

“Me too,” he says. “But, you know.”

The new friends order another drink and I finish mine and head back up the hill. In an empty parking lot, a gorgeous young woman and a man who looks like her father are fiddling with an automatic ball-throwing machine that their dog is nosing warily. The girl is twitchy and holding her limbs at odd angles, like she’s on something. Dog toys and balls and various bits of throwing apparatus lie scattered across the parking lot. 

At the top of the hill, the lost dog signs grow more desperate, hanging from every telephone pole. The sky is nearly dark. Soon the fireworks will start and all the dogs I saw tonight will be whimpering under their owners’ beds. I wonder where the lost dog will hide, who will comfort him as the world around him explodes.

Clean Towels

        It’s the day before Independence Day and the second Revolutionary War has been won. After decades of fighting, the noble rich have finally thrown off the shackles placed on them by the filthy poor. For us huddled masses, it’s all pretty disheartening, but I have the day off tomorrow and am on my way to a backyard barbecue. As I sit on the bench at the bus stop, I look at the arrival time on my phone. It keeps leaping around, getting longer and shorter as some unseen force impedes the vehicle’s progress. A man on the corner shows a cardboard sign to the traffic. I don’t bother to read it. I used to be interested in these signs, in all the different ways people ask for help, the various kinds of lettering they use, but I can’t look anymore. 

        A teenage girl sits next to me, thumbs skipping across the screen of her phone. There is suddenly an explosion behind us, followed by another, and another. It seems early for fireworks –the sun is still high in the sky. I turn around to look and see puffs of smoke in the air above the bridge. The booms go on for a few minutes. 

        “What was that?” the girl asks uncertainly. She doesn’t have an accent I would guess she’s Pakistani.

        “Oh, somebody getting ready for the fourth,” I say.

        “But that’s not until tomorrow,” she says, sounding confused.

        Just then there is a crash right in front of us. An old hatchback truck crammed with junk has spilled a pile of metal shelves out of its open hatch. The truck speeds through the intersection then pulls over. Fortunately, the car behind it brakes before it hits the shelves, and I walk out in front of it, holding up my hand up. The girl runs out after me and we both gather up  the shelves. The words CLEAN TOWELS are written on a piece of masking tape on one of them. We carry them to the sidewalk and the driver of the truck comes and grabs them without a word. 

        

        The girl and I sit back on the bench. 

        “Lucky that didn’t go through somebody’s windshield,” I say. 

        “Yeah. Pretty scary,” she says. The bus comes and I gesture for her to get on first then she does the same to me and I insist and she says no then we both try to step on at the same time and laugh. As we drive off I look at the guy on the corner and finally decide to read his sign. He’s crayoned an American flag next to the words WAR VETERAN ANYTHING HELPS. I wonder if he knows that the real war is just beginning.