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.
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