Samsara

     On Wednesday I leave work for my appointment as usual. The bus is full, though there are no colorful ex co-workers or anyone else of note. I roll up to the desk but before I reach the cute older woman’s spot, the woman next to her calls me over. I used to get her all the time; she is the only one here who still reads off a bewilderingly long list of COVID-related questions, and she always reads them carefully from the screen, looking a little confused, as if it’s her first time. I miss the big Black woman who worked here for a time. “I gotchoo, McCollum!”   

    I give her my birth date and name and she asks me to spell it and I spell it and she asks for my birth date and I give that to her and she asks me to spell my name again. I speak slowly and enunciate each letter clearly, as if I’m talking to a slow child.

    “What are you here for?” she asks. I say wound care.  “You’re not scheduled for anything,” she says. I tell her I come here every Wednesday at this time. She shakes her head. I ask if she can call upstairs and she says no. 

    “So I need to call myself? Even though I’m standing right here, and you have the number right there?” She says that’s right. 

    For years I tried to develop a daily meditation practice, but I always lacked the discipline. Earlier this summer, a coworker forwarded me a free trial of a wakefulness app. I always hate these things, but for some reason I instantly loved this one. For the first time, I am able to focus enough to sit and try to hone my awareness every day. I feel it affecting my moods throughout the day. I’ve noticed myself feeling more patient and slower to anger, and when I do get frustrated, I don’t cling to it the way I used to. I think it’s really helping me.

     “Thanks for all your fucking help,” I snarl, and wheel over to the side of the lobby to look up my chart. I can’t remember my password, so I give up and look up the wound care number.

    “Wound care,” says the receptionist. I’ve only called a few times and she always answers like this; no hello, no name, no “may I help you.” I take a deep breath and tell her who I am and that I’m here for my appointment. 

“    They’re in a meeting today, they canceled all their afternoon appointments. Didn’t anyone tell you?”

    I race to catch my bus and see it pull away just as I’m cresting the hill. I’m caked in sweat and I smell disgusting. Every day they say this heat wave is going to break and every day they’re wrong. It’s bad enough that I’ve wasted two hours of my precious sick time, bad enough that I’ve run across town in the blazing heat for nothing, but after all this I didn’t even get an interesting story out of it. Maybe some crazy person will shoot me on the bus, but more likely they’ll just shit their pants.

    I sit in the paltry shade of the bus shelter and try to pay attention to my ragged breath and racing thoughts and roiling emotions, try to do like the guide on the awareness app instructs and look try to see the one who is paying attention, and even though the point of the exercise is that when you look, you find that no one is really there, I find that there actually is, and he’s a vicious little bastard, screaming his grievances at the world. And I fear that no amount of mindfulness will ever shut him up.

Pumpkin Spice Gummy Worms

    The air is thick and hot when I leave for my wound care appointment. The bus ride is uneventful until we get to Burnside, when a familiar face gets on the bus and plops down next to me, yelling at someone on the phone.

    “I’m going to the B-side. The B-SIDE. Si. Si. I’ll meet you there. Love you. Mwah.” He turns to me. “Hello, Papi.” He smells like beer. It’s three in the afternoon. I ask how he’s doing and he shakes his head sadly. I ask him what’s wrong. 

    “All I did was talk to her in Spanish and she reported me to HR,” he says, with no preamble. “They had already made me sign a paper forcing me to deny my Latino heritage.”

     “That doesn’t sound legal,” I say. I heard a somewhat different version of this story a year ago when I bumped into him on the street. He worked in the AV department at the museum before being fired for flirting with too many coworkers. I run into him from time to time and he always either smacks my ass or kisses me, sometimes both.

    “They said I was not allowed to touch people,” he says, stroking my arm. “But I am Latino, it is what we do, we touch people. So then this crazy woman reports me just for speaking to her.” 

    “Are you working?” I ask.

    He stares me in the face and shakes his head, looking like he is going to cry. 

    “I’m slinging tamales and doing some catering.”

    “Are you making rent?”

    “No, it’s terrible. My friend, this is my stop. I am meeting my amigo at the B-side. It is so good to see you. Give my best to everyone who doesn’t hate me.” He kisses me on the cheek and dashes off. 

I check in with the cute older woman at the hospital counter, making small talk about COVID. She says she’s never had it, which is remarkable considering where she works. I grab a lavender colored mask from the desk and say hi to the sleepy guy driving the people mover and head upstairs.

Shelley comes out to collect me before I have a chance to sit down. The office is empty aside from her, Gladys, and Karen. 

“You’re the only one here!” cries Shelley. “Three women lavishing attention on you! Don’t you love it? Mind you, it’s probably not the kind of attention you’d like.”

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” I say. 

“I just heard that they did a study and found that when a bunch of women get together and talk without any men around on a regular basis it lowers their blood pressure,” says Shelley. “It proves that gossiping is good for you.” I want to ask if Aaron and S-John are still around, but decide I don’t really care that much.

Karen unwraps my foot and asks what happened. 

“I’ve been walking on it,” I say. 

“Yeah it’s pretty wet. At least you’re honest.” She takes the measurements and the wound is indeed twice as deep as it was two weeks ago. The secondary wound has somehow completely vanished though.

I ask Shelley how the kids are and she tells me about her little one’s fourth birthday party, for which she and her older daughter baked a cake in the shape of a raccoon, with sprinkles for fur. 

     She talks for a while about pumpkin spice. I don’t have any opinions one way of the other about it but find it ridiculous that it has become such a divisive topic, even if the outrage is exaggerated and performative. She says she read that most people that the appropriate date for pumpkin spice products to appear in stores is September first. She recently tried pumpkin spice goldfish crackers. “They were surprisingly good,” she says. Why are we still talking about this, I wonder.

Gladys comes in and points to a sore on my heel and asks, “What’s that?”

“A sore on my heel,” I say. 

“I don’t like that. I don’t like that at all. You need to be really, really careful that doesn’t get worse.”

“So start going barefoot?”

“I’m serious. Your tendons are right there. Right under the surface.”

Doctor Taggert comes in and does her crazy dance and sings a tuneless song. She too asks what’s the matter with my foot and I tell her I’ve been walking on it. 

    “Well, try not to,” she says. “We have you down for a cast but everything’s backed up. Scheduling has gotten…” she looks at Gladys.

    “Complicated,” says Gladys, looking worried. 

    “Complicated. How often are you changing it?” Taggert asks. 

    “Every couple of days,” I say. In reality I have hardly been able to bring myself to look at the festering thing. The stench of the discharge sickens me, and yet I feel paralyzed to even unwrap it more than once a week.

    “It’s really wet, you should be changing it daily. Did they send you supplies?” she asks. I tell her they did, though they charged me and it was really expensive. I had been shocked when the tiny box arrived with its handful of the good foam bandages and a few packets of Aquacel, the absorbent pads you stick underneath them. 

    “Well you haven’t met your deductible yet. You know how it is, they will charge you as much as humanly possible for everything. Try Amazon.”

    Taggert carves the callouses and we laugh a bit then she goes and leaves me alone with Shelley, who cuts a new insert for my shoe and bandages my foot. After a few minutes Gladys reappears, chewing on sour gummy worms. “Here I spend all day telling people to watch their blood sugar and then I eat a whole bag of these things for dinner. It’s amazing that I’m not diabetic.”

“Not yet,” I say.

    “Hey, I’m a wunnuh,” she says, her mouth full of worms. “I meed lopf of fugah.”

     “Do they make pumpkin spice ones?” I ask. Gladys mumbles something I can’t make out. 

     “I don’t know but I would try those,” says Shelley, then hands me the leftover scrap of Aquacel, tucked in its foil pocket. I tell her I’m saving them up to make a life-sized bust of Dr. Taggert. They all howl. “It’s going to be tricky though, I don’t know what she looks like without a mask.”

    “Well take a look. We’ve got all our pictures hanging here now,” says Gladys, and points to two rows of photos hanging across from the reception desk. I barely recognize anyone; they all look glamorous with lots of make up and fancy hairstyles. Dr. Thompson’s face is so brightly lit she looks Caucasian.

    “I think we all look pretty nice,” says Gladys. 

    “You all look beautiful,” I say. “See you next week.”  

 

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    Even though I told numerous coworkers I had to leave at 11:30 sharp, no one shows up to relieve me, so I call the control room and tell them I need to catch my bus. The officer who answers the phone sounds like he’s not sure who I am. Hoping I don’t get in trouble, I hang up and roll off down the hill to the bus mall on my scooter, which I’ve finally started using. 

Sitting across from me on the bus is a blind man wearing a Gang of Four t-shirt. “Saw them earlier this year,” he says. “This was their last tour.” He gets off, swinging his cane wildly. He is replaced by a gargantuan mother and her equally huge offspring, who take up five seats and don’t get off their devices until they reach the hospital stop, at which point she barks, “Put that fucking thing away.” They push past me to get off the bus, then waddle in front of me down the steep hill toward the main entrance, leaving me no room to pass. Thankfully, I’m early. 

The metal detector is once again taped off; I wonder if they ever use it. How is Luigi doing, I wonder. I’ve forgotten to bring a mask, but there don’t seem to be any dispensers anywhere. The cute older woman is the only one at the desk, and she is talking loudly on the phone with someone who seems to need to know every detail of the admitting process. Eventually someone else comes out of the back, and I ask her if she has any masks and she says no. 

Like the obese family, the man driving the people mover has parked his vehicle so that people can barely squeeze past. I smack the hood as I wheel past and he starts as if he was asleep. 

I roll past the Starbucks, around the corner, up the Green Elevator, and plop down on a chair in the waiting area. The new receptionist, whose name I forget, passes on her way into the office and says she’ll get me checked in. Her perfume smells like bubble gum. 

As I sit there, I look at the blue door button, the Clinical Decision Unit sign, the photograph of the Tower of Babel. Only one thing is new; a large black banner with gold lettering beside the office door.

Congratulations our care team award honorees!

The care team of the month award recognizes any team who exemplifies our Providence Mission and Values and dedicates a caring attitude to 

And so on. 

A half hour later one of the nurses comes out to get me. I can’t remember her name, either. Luckily, when I ask if there’s anything new in the office, she says, “Well I’m not the only Karen anymore. But she spells hers with a Y.” I pass Vicky and Kaitlin and Gladys as she leads me to Room Two. I ask if I can have a mask, and she brings me a bright purple one. She wheels my scooter away then looks at my foot and the two wounds on it. One is very recent, but the other has been there since March. Barely a week after Taggert released me, a small blister had opened up. Over the past five months it has  blossomed into a ragged mess. 

“Does it usually leak this much?” Karen asks. I say yes, and tell her how I knew I should have come in earlier but I just kept putting it off. 

“I know it was stupid. I just couldn’t bear to come back in. I needed a break.”

“I understand,” she says. “It doesn’t look great, but it’ll look better once she cleans it up.”

“I’m so embarrassed.”

“But none of this is your fault.”

I try to make small talk with her, but while I’ve warmed up to her over the past yaer, it’s still difficult to get her to respond in more than monosyllables. She would make a perfect spy, not just because of her reticence but because she is so nondescript no one would ever notice or remember her. 

I hear Dr. Taggert in the next curtained room. “Guess what?” she cries. “We don’t need to see you anymore! Of course you’re always welcome to call or come back for anything.” The man she’s talking with has a pleasant voice and sounds about my age; it’s like I’m being brought in to replace him. Or he’s being pushed out to make room for me. Either way, I envy him. 

After measuring the wounds and putting numbing cream on my foot and doing a lot of typing, Karen asks if I need anything and leaves. I let myself sink back into the familiar surroundings. The wooden crucifix that looks like it’s flapping its hands, the Visiplex clock, the gloves reaching out of their boxes. The beige curtain with its declarations of Peace and Joy. Speak Your Truth it reads, backwards and forwards and upside down. 

Then the curtain is thrust aside, just like old times, and once again let’s have a big round of applause because Heeeere’s Taggert! She surprises me by running up and hugging me. No, she is not upset that my foot is fucked up again. No, she’s not going to scold me for not coming in right away, though she wants me to know that just like my predecessor in Room One I can come and see them anytime I need anything. The whole time she is so nice I want to cry. “It’s so good to see you,” she keeps saying. “We missed you so much.” 

For the first time, I think maybe it’s okay that this is happening. Even if it isn’t, it would be foolish of me not to take what affection I can get, because over the last five months I feel like I have been dying of loneliness. It’s been an extremely busy summer, and I’ve been going out and doing things with people every weekend, but the disconnect I often feel between me and my fellow humans seems to be widening and I don’t know why or how to stop it. For the first time in a very long time, I don’t actually think there’s anything inherently wrong with me. But something is undoubtedly wrong. 

Taggert says she had a bunch of student nurses but all but one of them have disappeared. She asks if I mind if that last one comes in and watches. A lovely young woman comes in and watches the doctor debride the ever-loving shit out of my ravaged foot. Dear, dependable Gladys, twenty-six going on seventy, comes in as well, apparently just to hang out. Taggert keeps scraping at a particularly delicious callous on the side of the foot, then stopping herself, then scraping a little more before finally putting down her knife and saying she doesn’t want to overdo it. The whole time I keep making her laugh with what is unfortunately pretty stale material.

“I had to come back,” I tell her. “The way I left, there was no closure! If this was a TV show, everyone would be throwing their shoes at the screen. Speaking of which, my shoes suck.” She laughs and agrees that things were really weird at the end there. I can’t remember the last time I saw her in such a merry mood. 

“I hope this care team award nonsense hasn’t gone to your head,” I say.

“Isn’t that wild? They put our pictures up in the hall!” she screams. “One of our patients nominated us.” 

“Well it wasn’t me.” 

She asks if I want a cast and I say sure if she thinks I should have one. “I’ll have to run it through insurance first, of course,” she says. She talks to me about footwear, I tell her about my new endocrinologist, and then they all file out and Karen comes back in to apply Aquasel and some turquiose goo I’ve never seen before. She wraps me up and cuts out a foam pad for a new postop shoe. 

I ask how she held up during the strike. “I assume you all got enormous raises. I saw a bunch of shiny new cars in the lot.”

She sighs. “It was pretty rough,” she says.  

She doesn’t elaborate, so I ask, “You’ve been here a year now, right?”  

“Just had my anniversary,” she says. 

The others are all talking when I leave, so I just say goodbye to the new scheduler, whatever her name is, and roll off to catch the bus. When it rolls up, a woman in a hospital gown and slippers and nothing else, with her right hand wrapped in a bandage the size of a cantaloupe, pushes ahead of me to get on. “Downtown?” she screams at the driver, then sits down before he can answer. Her eyes flicker back and forth wildly. It’s good to be back.