Spaghetti in the Microwave

     The bus is running late. When it pulls up, I notice that the glass of one of its front doors is a starburst of cracks. The door opens normally but it looks like it could explode at any moment into a shower of shards.

     “Looks like I missed the party,” I say to the driver. 

    She laughs. “Yeah a passenger ran on and said this guy was chasing her so I shut the door and he threw himself at it over and over until it smashed.”

    “Wow. You ok?”

       

“Oh I’m fine. We might have to change buses though… in fact here’s Gary. Everybody we’re going to get off and get on the bus behind us.” 

    I feel antsy and bored the entire ride, tired of looking at the same buildings and trees twice a week. Everyone on the bus is on their phones and I’m tempted to take out mine but I don’t want to get sucked into the vortex of depressing news. 

    Upstairs they say it’ll be a while, that they’re running late, but when I come out of the restroom Shelley fetches me immediately. “Back in the corner,” she orders. 

    “Nobody puts baby in the corner,” I say.

    “Are you saying you’re a baby?”

    “I think you know me well enough to know the answer to that.”

 Jenny is back there and compliments my shirt. We talk about shirts until Shelley fires up the saw. When it’s cut she has to use the crackers to pry the halves apart. 

    “The crackers are my favorite part,” Jenny says.

    “Me too,” Shelley says.

    I laugh. They say this every time. 

    “This looks really good,” says Shelley. “Not a lot of drainage. We can probably go down to once a week.” 

    “Oh hell yes,” I say.

    “It’s measuring smaller as well. I think the doctor is going to be very pleased.” 

    She says the doctor is running really late, but i only wait a minute or two before dr Thompson arrives.

    “You know for years I’ve been trying to get them to put doors on these rooms.” She says, “but they don’t see patient privacy as a priority.” She complains to Shelley that there won’t be new episodes of Outlander until March. “This looks really good,” she says as she carves and slices.

    

    Despite her griping, she’s in a jovial mood. Her surgical cap is covered in hearts. When she leaves I ask Shelley, “so no assistant today?” She says no, that she thinks her training is done and that she’s back at the st Vincent wound care center, which is where she’ll be working. “That place is huge, and everything’s new. They even have doors on the rooms.”

“So you’re telling me I should start going there?” I mean, maybe I should. It’s about the same distance in the other direction. That really would be a chance for a new beginning, a whole new chapter with a whole new cast of characters. New scenery to stare at through the bus windows.

    As she prepares for the cast, I ask Shelley if her car’s been fixed yet, and she sighs and says no and proceeds to regale me with the latest complications with her kitchen. “I just want to use my stove again. I’ve figured out how to make spaghetti in the microwave but it gets a little funky.”  

Our deeply fascination  conversation distracts her enough that she runs the water too cold. She pours some out and adds some hot but when Thompson reaches into the bucket she says, “this is cold. What are you trying to do to me?”

    “I know I’m sorry, I tried to fix it.”

    “Well it’s not too bad. Hopefully it’ll set okay.”

    “Just to be clear, I’m not coming in Monday, right?,” I ask Shelley as she brings my ride.

    “Right. We’ll see you next Thursday.” She says. 

    As I leave, Karen runs up to me to ask how I’m doing. How can I think of abandoning these kind people for those spoiled primadonnas at st Vincent’s? 

    I make it to the bus stop in time but the bus doesn’t come, mysteriously vanishing from the schedule. The mild day has been swept away by a bitter wind, and I think about going inside to wait but I don’t want to struggle with the hill. 

    When the next bus finally arrives, the crowd at the bus stop is joined by that attractive older woman I see occasionally. For a moment I don’t recognize her; She looks haggard, like she’s aged greatly since I last saw her. I wonder how much older I look since I’ve started coming here. It’s hard to believe, but Valentine’s Day will mark two years since my first session in the hyperbaric chamber.  

    When we get to her stop I watch her cross the street. Her hair is unkempt and she walks with a pronounced stoop. If she wasn’t so nicely dressed, she could be mistaken for a homeless person. In my current condition - greasy, rumpled, unshaven- I could as well.