Football

 “You want the ramp?” the bus driver asks. 

“Naw, I relish the struggle,” I say. It’s not really much of a struggle; I’ve become such a pro at this I barely have to pay attention to what I’m doing. 

“I know, but last Friday you said you were pooped and needed the ramp,” she says. 

“Well I’m feeling better today,” I say, plopping down onto a seat. I’ve never seen this woman before in my life. 

The streets downtown are bustling, but not with the murderous hordes of Antifa that the administration claims are burning the city to the ground. The only wars here are being fought against Fentanyl and steadily rising inflation. The vacancy rate of the office buildings downtown is up to 15% with no signs of relief. The majority of the shop fronts are empty. But the city remains quiet and peaceful. Blank walls are papered over with posters with the latest symbol of resistance, the Portland Frog, saying DON’T OBEY.

The driver does lower the ramp when I get to the hospital, so I can trade places with another man with a knee scooter. “You’re in a Cadillac compared to mine,” I say to him. He chuckles.

The woman at the counter is the same one as the last few weeks. “I know I promised I’d remember your name…” she says. 

“But you don’t,” I say sadly. 

“I remember your birth date because it’s the same as my mother’s,” she says. “Just remind me of the year.”

When I get to the elevator, it’s full. The next car that arrives is going down, so I wait again. Only one of them seems to be working. I eventually make it upstairs, where Bridget opens the door to greet me.

“Now you won’t be here next week, is that right?” she asks as she leads me into the big room. 

“That’s right. Or the week after that.” 

“So we obviously won’t be putting you in another cast. Are we giving you a football? Do you want one?” 

“I would love a football,” I say. “I mean, really, I was hoping you would ask. Also, what’s a football?” 

I take off my shoe and Karen wheels in the saw with a glint in her eye. “You’re probably an expert at these by now,” I say. 

“You can call me Saw Master,” she says, and proceeds to slice the cast off smoothly and easily. She peels off the wrapping and inspects the padding for drainage. “Looks like it slipped again,” she says. “But it didn’t do any harm. This looks much better than when I saw it last.” Bridget agrees, and enters the numbers as she measures. It’s nearly half the size it was last week. 

“We don’t need to take a picture this week, but I’m going to take one anyways, so you can see,” Bridget says. She hands me the phone. The wound looks horrifying, but I have seen enough of these awful photos by now to know that she’s right, it really is looking much healthier. 

She turns her computer screen to show me what a football is. It’s just a huge ball of cast wrap wound around the foot, kind of a less-intense version of the total contact cast. 

Jenny pops her head in. “Actually Doug, the guy in the next room, loves them, and he’s pretty cranky, as he himself will tell you. I’m putting on him right after you. It’s done wonders for him.” I tell her I think I may have had one and she tells me I haven’t.

There’s a spot of red showing through the foam bandage on my knee, but underneath is nothing but a huge scab. Karen takes a tweezers and gently tugs it off. “Are we calling that one closed?” asks Bridget.

“Closed,” says Karen, peeling off a few stray scraps of scab. I imagine how satisfying it would feel to pick it off but she doesn’t leave me any scraps. As she writes some notes on the white board, I look down shamelessly at her ass, not because it’s amazing or anything, but because it’s there. She’s wearing bright purple pants and a lilac sweatshirt for Zion National Park with some poorly rendered mesas on the front.

Dr. Thompson comes in and is extremely pleased. “Would you look at that. Just look at that. Stunning. Are we doing a football? Good, you’re going to like that. You still need to stay off it as much as possible though.” I file “as much as possible” away in case I need it. 

 She shaves some callous and says she’s taking next week off as well, to study for her recertification. When Rachel asks her why, she says she wants to be a missionary. I’m curious but I don’t want to distract her from concentrating. 

 When she’s done, she tells me I’m to wear the football for ten days, then take it off and cover the wound with a small square of Hydrofaera, a foam dressing I’ve used before. I tell her I think I’ve also had a football before, but she also says I’m wrong. 

“We’ll see you when you get back,” she says, leaving Bridget to do the actual footballing by herself. 

She immediately hits a snag; she doesn’t have enough cast wrap. The entire department is out. “I thought you called down to supplies,” she says to someone. 

“They said they didn’t carry that barcode,” a voice I don’t recognize says. 

“That’s ridiculous. We get it from them all the time,” says Vicki. “They must mean they’re just out. I’m calling down there now.”

“We need enough for Doug too,” says Jenny. 

“Code Gray in ER room 5,” says the loudspeaker. “Code Gray in ER room 5.”

“But I’m right here,” I joke.

Bridget starts the football anyways, measuring out lengths of wrap then winding it tightly around my foot and ankle. “I’m half a roll short,” she says. She opens all the cupboards in the room, then leaves to scour the rest of the office. When she comes back she asks, “Would you mind if I run downstairs for a bit to try to track some down?” And here I had assumed this would be a short appointment.  

She’s gone for what feels like a long time. When she returns the whole office cheers. 

“Where’d you find it?”

“Well somebody told me maternity had some, so I went there first, and they looked at me like I was crazy. So I went to the OR on three and they had a ton.”

“I don’t know what they’re doing down there in supplies,” grumbles Vicki, “But they better get their act together.” 

“Let’s get a move on. I don’t have all day here,” says someone I assume is Doug.

“I thought you liked spending time with us,” says Jenny.

Bridget finishes binding my foot, then covers it with layers of that stretchy beige wrap I love because it sticks to itself in s satisfying way. She pulls a thin stocking over the whole thing and Karen, perched on a stool outside the open curtain, says, “Aw, what a cute foot. It’s so little.” It’s true; even with the bulging bandages, which do somewhat resemble a football, my toeless foot appears oddly petite, no doubt because i've grown accustomed to how huge it is when swaddled in four rolls of Fibreglass casting. It feels so light, and I can move my ankle, which feels wonderful. 

Bridget gets me a new cast shoe and I’m finally free to go. I text my friend to let her know I’m done; she’s driving me home so I can give her the keys to the apartment so she can feed the cat while I’m gone. I leave out the side entrance and sit to wait on the bench where I sat so many times while I was receiving hyperbaric treatment. It’s a bleak view of the busy street and narrow parking lot. A house directly across the street is for sale; I can only imagine how noisy it must be to live there, between the traffic and the sirens. 

I take out my phone and arrange for a car for the airport tomorrow morning; I’ve always taken the train, but I really don’t feel like dealing with it this time. I’m nervous about flying, especially with the government shut down and the shortage of air traffic controllers, but otherwise I’m excited about my trip. If nothing else, two entire weeks without a single doctor visit sounds like a hell of a vacation.