Hagfish

 The next day when I get to work, I check the calendar of deliveries for the following week. I knew it was going to be busy, but Monday in particular seems like it’s going to be bedlam. I call the wound care clinic but no one answers –I remember them saying Bree was going to be off- so I leave a message canceling  Monday’s appointment.

A little while later Agnes calls back, but I’m in the middle of something so she leaves a curt message saying I need to call and reschedule, or else go in to the emergency room and have my cast cut off on Monday. “If this is going to be a problem, you need to rethink this whole thing,” she says. I feel my simmering anxiety start to bubble. I call her back immediately, but of course no one answers, so I just leave another message. She does not call back. 

All weekend I try to both relax and stay busy to distract myself, but I feel waves of panic rolling beneath everything like an underground sea that might burst through the crust at any moment. 

Monday morning is indeed crazy at work, but fortunately I’m in between shipments when Bree calls. She says it’s really important that I come in as soon as possible. I’ve already decided that if I need to, I’ll just call in sick, so I ask if she has any openings the following day. She says she has a 12:40 and I say fine and she says are you sure and I say I’ll be there. 

I’m exhausted when I get home that night, and after supper I collapse into sleep and don’t wake up until 5:30 in the morning. It’s gorgeous out, only slightly chilly, so, keenly aware that such opportunities are going to be in short supply in the approaching wet season, I wrap myself in my housecoat and have breakfast on the balcony. Even though I’m exposed out here, I always feel invisible. During the warmer months, I sat out here in my underwear. If anyone really wants a show that badly, they’re welcome to it.

Our manager told us long ago that we should call him if we aren’t coming in, but no one else seems to do this, so I just send him a text. He does not respond, but no one from work calls looking for me, and a few hours later I see that he has adjusted my schedule. II will get through this one stab of anxiety at a time. 

It’s nice to have a morning off, and despite my coffee I end up dozing off for a while, waking up with plenty of time to get ready and catch my first bus. The bus schedule works out so that I’ll either be very early or slightly late, so I opt for early, and when I arrive at the hospital I spend some time drawing on a bench in the shade. It’s warm but there’s a strangely refreshing breeze blowing, more like a wind. 

I check in and head up just as they’re finishing their lunch hour. Vicki comes out to get me and tells me to go to room two, where a young woman I’ve never seen before greets me. 

“I’m Karen. I don’t think we’ve met before,” she says.

 “Oh, you’re the other Karen. I’ve heard a lot about you,” I say. This is not true. All I know about her is that her name is Karen.

“Good things, I hope,” she says. She is young, as blank-faced as the other Karen, only brunette, and skinny. My attempts to engage her in conversation teach me only that she recently moved here from Omaha. 

Vicki stands by and watches closely as she saws the cast off, and answers the many questions she has. She seems kind and attentive but the whole process is very slow, and when she finally cuts the cast, it still won’t come off. Even Vicki is baffled why. “I’ve never seen this happen before,” she says. I tell her that’s not something a patient ever wants to hear their nurse say. She doesn’t laugh. Eventually by ripping out great handfuls of padding, they manage to yank the stubborn cast off. It hurts. 

As Karen takes measurements, I hear Taggert yelling on the other side of the curtain. 

“So do you want this half bag of mouse paper I have?” she asks. “It’s enormous, I hate to waste it.”

“Is it wood chips?” a man’s voice asks. 

“It’s paper,” she says. “Mouse paper.”

“Does it come with mice?”

“I hope not, though it’s been in the garage a while so who knows. We used it for guinea pigs.” She says something about snakes but I can’t make it out.

The wound on my foot is slightly smaller, and the one on my knee is completely gone. When Dr. Taggert arrives she seems relatively pleased with the progress. “You’re using the wheelchair, right?” she says. 

“No,” I say, confused. Agnes slips in through the other side of the curtain, her eyes narrowed over her mask.

“You’re not supposed to be walking on this,” she says. “It’ll never heal up. I had a patient in a cast for a full year and it wouldn’t heal because he kept walking on it.” 

“I guess I’m confused,” I say. “I thought I could walk on this. I thought that was the whole point.”

“We’ve had this exact conversation numerous times,” she says, visibly frustrated. Have we, though? 

“I guess I didn’t understand,” I say. “Maybe I didn’t want to?” I add, trying to placate her.

“So what are we doing here?” she asks. “Are we going forward with the cast?”

I say yes, and explain again that it’s just difficult for me to fit it with my work schedule. “I am trying so hard to balance this with my job,” I say. I’m not yelling but I’m not exactly whispering either. “I don’t want to have to go on leave again, it’s horrible. But I just don’t have any weekdays off, and you aren’t open nights or weekends. It’s incredibly stressful but I’m doing the best I can.”

When Taggert finishes debriding the wound, she asks me what shoe place I use. I tell her Evergreen, and she says, “Oh that’s great. They make visits here, you know, so you can get measurements made for new shoes while you’re here. I keep getting told I can’t write any shoe prescriptions because I’m not a GP, but you know what, that turned to be wrong with the home nurse thing, so what the hell, I’m going to try it with these shoe people. And if I’m here to coach them, maybe we can finally get you a pair of shoes that actually work.” I don’t allow myself to get my hopes up, and choose to assume she is not, in fact, implying that I will actually be able to walk in these shoes, just wear them. A pair of perfect shoes to stand and and pivot in.

She makes a quiet exit and New Karen is joined by Old Karen. “Doesn’t this get confusing?” I ask. They say yes in unison. 

New Karen prepares my cast, while Agnes coaches her, swinging wildly between bossy and supportive. It makes me a little seasick. She pokes the flesh below my kneecap.

“You’re all swollen,” she says, as if I’ve just kicked a puppy. “Why are you so swollen?”

“I’ve been walking on it, remember?” I say tartly. 

“Are you propping it up? You need to prop it up. Go home and prop it up for an hour.” I tell her I’m propping it up every day. 

“I told you my boyfriend and I split up, right?” she says. “Well I just moved into my new place and unpacked a box of letters from old patients and I found that drawing you made me, of all the hyperbaric merchandise you want to sell. It’s so good, I put it on my fridge.” 

As she puts on the cast, Taggert asks if I heard about the big crash on the 205 early this morning.  “A drunk driver hit a tractor trailer full of meat and seafood. You know me and protein, I felt like I should drive over there and scoop it all up and hand it out to all my patients.”

“Fill your trunk with it,” I suggest. “Drive around town, handing out meat to all the starving children of Portland.”

I ask if they remember the truck full of live hagfish that spilled its slimy load in the southern part of the state some years back. “Four tons of eels flopping all over the highway,” I said. New Karen looks like she’s going to be sick. 

At last they release me, not commenting on the fact that I am, in fact, walking out, just like I had walked in without them saying anything. I look at the glamor shots of all the nurses hanging in the vestibule. I look for KC’s portrait. It doesn’t look anything like her. I make note of her last name, then chide myself; what am I going to do, internet stalk her? What good would that do?

It’s still only the middle of the afternoon, and I do a few errands on my way home. I figure I will continue to hobble around at work –they wouldn’t let me anyways without a note- but I resolve to behave myself the rest of the time. Once my knee skin gets stronger, I will be able to use the scooter again; until then I’ll stick with the crutches or the dreaded wheelchair. 

Any why is the wheelchair so dreaded? Because every time I think of it, I think about the single time I used it to go across town. It took me all day, and my arms are so weak that I could barely get on the bus and was stymied by even the slightest incline. I know that with time I will get better at it, but I think back to that afternoon, when I found myself physically unable to pull myself up onto the curb in front of my building, despite the access ramp. I sat there, stuck in the gutter on the corner, just a few dozen yards from my front door, and cried. 

I end the day the way I began it, sitting on the balcony. It’s warmer than it was this morning, and the wind has died down. A few stars manage to elude the clouds. I pour myself a juice jar of wine, placing it on the little wooden end table I keep out there for my coffee. I read for a while, a delightful novel about old people in Florida. Not one of the characters in the book is wheelchair-bound; old as they are, they walk around town and mount the porch steps without thinking about it. They are all old but suspiciously healthy.

Eventually I put the book down and look out at the lights scattered across the dark hills. In some of the nearer apartments, I can see tiny people going about their business. Making supper, playing video games. I feel like James Stewart in Rear Window, sitting with his broken leg, watching the world go on without him. Watching and waiting for something terrible to happen. A slap in the face, a knife in the bag, or maybe just a slimy spill on the highway.

I suddenly think of Agnes, 27 going on 70 and tough as rope, cutting open carefully-taped, neatly-labeled boxes in her new apartment. I feel exhausted by her vacillating between soothing and scolding. Pushing my little table further away, I prop up my foot and resume my reading.