Unintelligible Prayers

 When I wake up Monday morning, for some reason I feel nervous about making my bus connection, so I decide to take the earlier one.

I get dressed and grab my lunch and scoot down the hall to the elevator. I press the button and nothing happens. I press it again, then put my ear to the door. I don’t hear anything. See, I think to myself, this is why I wanted to be early. 

I slowly make my way down the stairs with my scooter. The elevator is on the first floor, and out of curiosity I get in and press the button for five. It lurches to life like it’s supposed to. Did I just not press the button hard enough? Cursing my stupidity, I wheel out the door, just in time to see my bus speed past. So much for being early.  

The check-in woman is perky, and reads off the questions without waiting for an answer. “No COVID symptoms no changes to insurance no travel outside the country oKAY you’re checked in have a nice day.” 

In the waiting area I find the same man as last Monday, Michael. He doesn’t have his wheelchair or any of his possessions. He groans loudly and I ask if he’s okay. “I’m in so much pain!” he moans. “My foot got wet over the weekend and the bandages got all wet and now it hurts so fucking much.” He’s wearing a pair of New Balance sneakers, so if his foot is bandaged, it must be really crammed in there.

When eight o’clock arrives, I hear the morning prayer, or inspirational reading or whatever it is. It’s a different woman this time but she is equally impossible to understand over the background noise of the hospital. 

A minute later Vicki opens the door and calls my name. KC is standing just inside, smiling, as if welcoming me home. She is wearing deep blue scrubs with a long sleeve chartreuse shirt underneath. The contrast is striking. 

I’m even more anxious about catching my bus back than I was getting over here. I tell myself I have plenty of time, and that even if I’m late, it’s not the end of the world, but I can’t shake the anxiety. Despite this, my blood pressure is good. 

Vicki cuts off my cast effortlessly, then leaves. KC runs in and stands close to me to tell me about the show she’s watching about the Gunpowder Plot. “There’s lots of torture,” she says, making a face. Before I can make a joke about how much she secretly likes seeing people in pain, there’s a scream from room one; the man from the waiting area. He screams for a while then is suddenly silent.

KC shows me a photo of Catherine; I forgot that she’s a tuxedo just like my Olivia. “She’s a little porker,” she says. “14 pounds. When she sits on my lap too long I can’t feel my legs.” I ask how her weekend was and she says she spent it with a friend who’s breaking up with her loser boyfriend. She looks lovely. My fondness for her melts my anxiety a little. And then she’s gone, saying she’ll be back. 

I hear a clamor of voices. “Oh he’s here for Seann,” Shelley says, and a minute later a man with salt and pepper hair says, “Knock knock,” and pulls aside the curtain. He introduces himself and asks if I’ve had diabetic shoes before, pressing a catalog into my hand. 

“Is that Evergreen? I want to talk to them!” screeches Dr. Taggert, and she comes tearing in, followed by a bearded young man who I gather is another doctor she’s showing around. She and the man from Evergreen start talking about shoes. “I preach the gospel of the diabetic shoes to all my patients!” cries Taggert. “This is my religion!” I want to say that I’ve had diabetic shoes for years and they haven’t done me much good, but I’m back to being worried about getting out on time and can’t seem to focus on anything else. 

“He wants to be able to walk,” Taggert keeps telling the man, and she sounds like the very idea is some crazy whim and that she’s just humoring me until I come to my senses. I hate her tone of voice when she gets on this kick. I hate all of this. I want KC to flounce in here and rescue me. My dreams have become so diminished. I once longed to fall in love with a creative soulmate. Now I just want a pretty nurse to hold my hand.

They discuss options for various types of shoes, and then he presses both of my feet into pink foam molds. “If this doesn’t work, we may end up having to make custom shoes for you. They’re not stylish, but it might be our best option if you want to keep walking.”

Eventually he leaves and she debrides my wound, saying that that Dr. Thompson will be doing so during my Thursday visits from now on, to save me time in the morning. Vicki prepares my cast, then Taggert wraps me back up. I ask what happened to her young doctor and she says she doesn’t know, that he wandered off somewhere. She talks about shoes the entire time but I’m not really listening. “He really wants to walk.” I feel her words sink deeper and deeper into the murky dishwater of my soul. 

On the bus there’s a guy in a hot pink wheelchair, with fading green hair, multiple piercings and tattoos everywhere, including a pentagram and a bat-winged skull on his cheek. His clothes look like designer versions of a punk costume, all leather and black denim with Danzig and Subhumans patches attached with a calculatedly slapdash array of safety pins. I think about the basement punk shows we used to go to; definitely not wheelchair accessible. Do kids still put on shows like that? Do his fellow punks carry this guy down the stairs, toss his body around like a rag doll in the mosh pit? 

As the bus crosses the bridge, and I see that I will only be a few minutes late for work, I start to shift from jittery to morose. I wish I felt grateful for what mobility I still possess, but all I can see is how trapped I am by my limitations. I used to want to travel the world. Now, I just want to be able to walk to the convenience store without wheels, without crutches, without a cast. It’s a modest wish mumbled to myself, muttered under my breath. It doesn’t seem like too much to ask. But. of course, it is.