Happy Days (Part II)

    “I hope you like Henry Winkler,” Stacy said, “Because I have tickets to see him.” She often buys us tickets for things she’s enthusiastic about. I hadn’t known she was such a Fonz fan; she was driving down from Seattle just to see him. My own feelings about Winkler were benign. At the last minute she said couldn’t make it and that I could have both tickets. While my interest in the whole thing was mild, it was something to do, and wouldn’t cost me anything, and I hoped I could get an anecdote out of it. 

    I couldn’t find anyone to go with me –to be honest, I didn’t try very hard- so I made my way across town alone. I wore my new diabetic shoes, which I was still breaking in. They seemed fine so far but the infectious disease doctors had driven it into my skull to be watchful for blisters or other issues. 

    The talk was entertaining enough –Winkler was charming and funny- but it all felt as scripted as a sit-com, which of course it was. He was promoting his new memoir, the lazily-titled Being Henry. His stories were amusing but he had obviously told them countless times, and he peppered his talk with banal self-help speak. “I just want to say one thing,” he said, after saying many things, “You can do anything you put your mind to.” 

    Afterwards, there was the option to have your picture taken with him, but I didn’t see the point aside from the novelty; besides, the line was extremely long. The books came pre-signed –worse, they came with a little notecard he had scribbled on- so there wasn’t any chance of having them personalized. 

    As I was walking back to the bus, my feet started hurting. When I got home I pulled off my shoes. The right foot had a huge blister on the bottom, and the toes were angry and swollen. I was terrified –this is what my left foot had looked like right before I lost my toes- and that night I was up for hours with the chills. The next day I left work early to go to Urgent Care.

    The doctor at Urgent Care sat me down and removed my shoe and sock and asked, “So you know you have a piece of glass in your foot?” I had not been aware of this, but my neuropathy in my feet is so bad I don’t feel anything down there. With tweezers he plucked out a clear shard the size and shape of a cat’s claw. “Looks like it went straight in,” he said. “Could have been there for weeks.”

    They didn’t have the capacity for doing x-rays or much of anything at Urgent Care, so he gave me a prescription for antibiotics and suggested I see an actual doctor. I called my podiatrist, who surprisingly had an opening in an hour. I rushed across town to see her. She said I should go to the ER, which was right down the road. Once there, I waited for a long time before being seen, and once they did, they wanted to admit me. I stretched out on a gurney, waiting for them to free up a bed. The whole time people rushed past me with various issues. I could hear two women taking turns moaning in the distance. Security guards were everywhere, striding up and down between the stations. I could hear bursts of chatter from their walkie talkies, mostly talk of fentanol overdoses. Occasionally the loudspeakers would blast “Code Gray” and the guards would all rush in the same direction. I told myself to lie like a sand bag and accept whatever was going to happen. 

    As I drifted in and out of a sort of sleepy stupor, I heard my name being mentioned from the nurse’s station. Eventually a young man came over and said, “I have to show you something.” He held up his ID card. His first name was spelled exactly the same as mine. “I’ve never met another one,” he said in awe. 

    They took blood and did x-rays. “It looks like you have a piece of glass in your foot,” they said. I was confused and told them I’d just had a piece of glass removed from my foot. They shrugged and didn’t mention it again.

    It was six hours before they wheeled me into a room, hooking me up immediately to IV antibiotics. My nurse that night had a soft, gentle voice with a laugh that burbled out of her. She was pretty and her ass was massive; as she fiddled with the computer I couldn’t stop staring at it, imagined it was expanding and would eventually fill the room and swallow me up. 

    The next morning the floor doctor checked in with me briefly. I asked him what the plan was and he said I should ask the podiatrist. An hour later the podiatrist arrived -I was surprised and a little disappointed to see that it was my podiatrist from down the street. She said the hospital didn’t have a regular podiatrist. I asked her what the plan was and she said the floor doctor, whom I had just seen, would explain it all. He never returned, and all day I felt myself withdrawing further into myself like  a hermit crab to try to escape the mounting dread.

    That night I felt something akin to a panic attack. It was Friday night and most of the staff had scattered for the weekend, while I remained, paying thousands of dollars to be ignored. I fantasized about tearing out my IV ports and signing myself out AMA (Against Medical Advice) and checking in to a different hospital. I couldn’t believe my doctors had so little interest in seeing me, and now it was the weekend so I most likely wouldn’t see anyone until Monday. Plus the foot was getting worse. The swelling was increasing and my second and third toes had turned purple. They took another x-ray and once again noted a foreign object lodged in there, but all they did was change my antibiotics so that I was now hooked up to the machine nearly all the time. It awoke me with its screeching in the middle of the night. People came in constantly to take my blood or check my vitals. They kept having to change my IV port –by the end of my stay they’d put in five total, with one in each arm for a time. 

    I tried to write and draw and read but couldn’t concentrate. I began to disappear into my surroundings. The other side of the building had expansive views looking out over the valley but my window faced a drab courtyard with a small patch of sky. The pillows were black with white pillowcases stamped with the name of a different hospital around town. I joked with the nurses that the place was so broke they had to steal pillowcases but none of them laughed. 

    Most of the nurses looked like they were in high school. They were friendly but all seemed distracted. The exception was Holly, my day nurse for much of my stay. She was rail-thin and looked like a startled tropical bird. One half of her hair was dyed chartreuse and the other dull orange. Her lashes were painted sky blue. She was a lot sharper than her coworkers, and attentive and caring. A few other nurses were like this, and they had all  been trained by the same person. I could see how they clung to one another, huddling on an island of caring and competence in a raging river of dysfunction. 

    Brahms’ lullaby played over the PA system every time a baby was born. I told Holly I thought they should play something every time someone died. “Not to be morbid,” I said, “But in celebration. Maybe Bach or something.” To my surprise, she agreed; she said she was thinking about leaving nursing to work in hospice care. 

    I got used to the rhythms and routine. Up half the night, waking up bathed in sweat, vitals taken, take your anti-coagulants and cholesterol medicine, have your blood taken, have your blood sugar checked, have the IV changed out, possibly get a visit from the useless floor doctor. Almost every night a friend or two would visit, and I did my best to be entertaining, despite my desperation. Time in hospital is so strange, both crawling and hurtling forward. I was allowed to walk the hall but couldn’t go outside and sit in the sunshine for a few minutes. 

    I found myself fixated on things like my hospital gown. Though I knew it was designed to be easily torn off in event of catastrophe, it was nearly impossible to tie and constantly leaving me exposed. I soon got over whatever shame I had left  though, and when a pretty nurse offered to help me shower, I didn’t balk at being naked in front of her. She had no doubt seen much worse. She told me she was diabetic too, had been diagnosed on her thirtieth birthday. On her forearm was a tattoo that read Love is Pain. 

    The pattern on the gown was a black crest or mandala on a green background. I wondered about the person who had designed the crest, picked the colors, no doubt meant to be unnoticeable. I found it hideous. I was always cold. Holly finally brought me a pair of pants and that changed everything. 

    I had fever dreams every night. Strange, scary abstract things. One in particular seemed to be composed of thoughts –but thoughts made physical, tangled in a great knot that I kept trying to unravel. I kept struggling to wake up and I couldn’t. One thought would always remain entangled, and though I couldn’t tell what it was I felt my survival depended on my freeing it. 

    The weekend dragged by and by Monday my second toe had gone from purple to black. My nurse that morning was very concerned and she took a bunch of photos and sent them to my doctors, who did not respond. I sat there for hours, trying to accept the fact that, due to my own stupidity and the negligence of these assholes, I was probably going to lose another toe. All because of a piece of fucking glass. I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. It was all too terrifying and preposterous. 

    Late Monday afternoon a new floor doctor came in. He was bald and looked about sixty, but I’d gotten so accustomed to everyone being so young, it’s possible he was only my age. He and I had the same first and middle name, though his last name was Czech rather than Irish. He looked very concerned about my toes, and when I told him I hadn’t seen anyone all day and that the nurses had been trying to contact my podiatrists, he looked at me a moment then left the room. 

    An hour later my podiatrist came in, with another man who turned out to be one of her colleagues. He removed the sock from my foot and started prodding and pressing, even cutting into the blisters. “I don’t feel anything,” he said, as my podiatrist stood there meekly. He looked at me. “I’m going to need to cut you open.” I told him I was worried about losing the toes. He looked at them. “We’ll do our best,” he said, and breezed out, followed by my podiatrist. 

    A few hours went by and one of the nurses came in to tell me they had scheduled surgery for 8PM that night. I was frightened but also relieved; I had assumed it would be a day or two before they could fit me in. 

    A tall, skinny man with a bright red cowboy hat trimmed with white fur wheeled me down to surgery, eliciting comments from everyone we passed. The surgeon was cheery before the procedure, and promised me I would not be losing any toes. An hour later I rose slowly from the depths of anesthetic, to the sounds of people arguing about flying first class. “It’s only $75 more,” one of them was saying. “It’s totally worth it.” 

    “But it’s 75 dollars,” the other person whined. 

    “Exactly. It’s 75 dollars.”

    I drifted in and out of sleep all night. At one point I realized with a shock that my room had changed dimensions. I vaguely knew it was the same room but it seemed to face a different direction and gotten much smaller. I knew it was an illusion but I couldn’t shake the feeling. I felt like I was going crazy.

    I woke up the next morning with my foot attached to a wound vacuum. It must have been there the night before but I had been so out of it I hadn’t noticed. It was the size of a typical vacuum cleaner hooked on the lower bed rail. A clear tube ran from it to within my bandages, and every five seconds or so a tiny dark bead  would run along it, looking like a bug. They said I was going to have to take it home with me. The room still didn’t look right to me. 

    The toe looked worse than ever. I expected the surgeon to show up but he did not. No one did until later that afternoon, when my Czech namesake finally showed up. I told him I hadn’t seen anyone all day and he shook his head. “I’m hearing that they don’t talk to one another,” he said quietly. An hour later my podiatrist showed up, with her coat on, looking frazzled, with the floor doctor marching behind her. She didn’t want to unwrap my foot and told me we’d just have to wait and see.

    The next morning the toe had gone from black to purple. For the first time I felt a modicum of relief. And the surgeon surprised me by popping in early. He took me off the wound vac, said it wasn’t doing much anyways. He told me he had removed something from my foot but couldn’t tell if it was glass or something else. He said he hoped to have me out by the weekend. Saturday was going to be my birthday, as everyone who scanned my ID band kept reminding me, and I hadn’t expected to be out by then. 

    The floor doctor came by and I told him what the surgeon had said and thanked him for his help. “I had to kind of light a fire,” he said. “This is not how I want our hospital to be run.”        

    I slept on and off all day. I tried not to think about the expense of all this, or how work was going to react. The machine of the hospital kept whirring around me. Women kept taking my orders for my meals, kept bringing them in and placing them before me, and I kept eating them. I wasn’t allowed to check my sugars or give myself my insulin, so I had to wait for a nurse until I began eating.

    By Thursday the toe had gone from purple back to dark red, and turned pale when pressed, which was a sign that it wasn’t dead. There was talk of releasing me Friday but I didn’t dare to hope. Holly was gone and replaced by a peevish older woman named Hannah. She showed interest in my writing and said she wrote too, but when I asked her what she wrote  she reluctantly said that she copied out bible verses. “They bring me comfort,” she said. She seemed anxious and frightened of the floor doctor.

    Friday arrived and everyone seemed to be preparing for my release. I joked with Hannah that I’d finally annoyed everyone enough that they were kicking me out. “You’re one of the least annoying patients I have,” she said, sounding annoyed. The surgeon stopped by and said he thought I could go, that I should make an appointment with him after Christmas. 

    When he left, my friends Bronwyn and Mike stopped by; they lived in Tacoma but happened to be in town for a few days. They gave me a small bag full of thoughtful gifts. One of them was an oblong stone Mike had found in Ohio. When he had thrown it into his rock tumbler, a piece cracked off one end. Inside, the stone was lined with crystals. “It looks exactly like my toe!” I exclaimed. It was even purple, and the glittering hole was right where the toenail would be. They were less amazed by the coincidence than I was. 

    They left just as my friend Robyn arrived to help me make my escape. We had to wait for my oral antibiotics to be ready. I was told I could walk as long as I didn’t put pressure on my toes, gave me a temporary shoe with Velcro straps. It felt strange to hobble past the nurse’s station, through the double doors I’d only seen from the gurney. The drive home reminded me of movies where convicts were released from prison. I felt overwhelmed by the simplest things; traffic lights, weed-choked lots, peeing dogs, the rush of cars.  

    It felt so good to lie in my bed that night, surrounded by my books and tchotchkes, the cat beside me beneath the covers. I picked up the Henry Winkler book on my nightstand but was soon disgusted by its vapid optimism. You can do anything you put your mind to. I passed out and when I awoke I was fifty one and still, unbelievably, more or less intact. 

The Ballad of Harvest Lightning

    Hobby Lobby was a nightmare. I had never been inside one, so I wasn’t prepared for the aisles stretching endlessly in every direction, teeming with Christmas items. There was nothing for Halloween, even though it was still a week away, but a small corner of the store was dedicated to fall items, so I grabbed a bunch of fake leaves and a roll of ribbon decorated with pumpkins and rolled the hell out of there on my knee scooter. 

    The following day my brother and I drove to Ithaca, where my sister was getting married. We would be up there all weekend, staying in a faux French hotel. Blue Mountain –yellow and orange with foliage- loomed above us like a wave, and we dove right into it to emerge on the other end of the tunnel in slate country.

        As soon as I rolled into the hotel, we were thrown into the social maelstrom. The lobby was full of arriving guests, some of them relatives I hadn’t seen in years. By the end of the night I was exhausted from trying to hide my social anxiety behind a mask of friendliness and humor. I felt self-conscious about the scooter, and in the crowded room I kept bumping into people. When everyone started dispersing to their rooms I did the same. I took out my autumnal decorations and, like the Peanuts gang resuscitating Charlie Brown’s pathetic tree, I transformed my rickety mobility device into a stylish transport designed to make every bridesmaid blush and every groomsman question his manhood. 

The makeover did what I had hoped and made me feel slightly less self-conscious about my being disabled. I maneuvered through the wedding with only a single sleepless night of crushing loneliness. People commented on my stylish ride, whom I christened Harvest Lightning. She was especially admired at night, when I switched on her lights. I accepted the compliments with modesty and grace but secretly I loved the attention. 

    I stayed at my mother’s another week after the wedding. We took day trips to the Reading Public Museum and the Barnes Foundation, two institutions that could hardly be more different from one another. Having to use a scooter –decked out or not- made it difficult to pay full attention to the exhibits. I constantly had to make sure I didn’t bump into any masterpieces or hit a crack or bump and go flying. Still, I was grateful that being physically disadvantaged didn’t prevent me from taking in the Renoirs and shrunken heads, that I was still able to enjoy a cheese steak at Pat’s. 

    Before I’d embarked on my trip, I had called the airline to request wheelchair assistance. At the Portland airport, everyone had been astoundingly helpful. A chatty young woman who was going back to school for computer tech even though her boyfriend, whom she lived with in Kelso, had his doubts about her ability, though what did he know since he worked in a warehouse for Amazon, had wheeled me across the bafflingly beloved teal carpeting past the check-in lines, where a TSA in training had awkwardly felt up every part of my body while I remained sitting in the chair. Every step of the way, everyone was courteous and helpful.

    Flying back was a little trickier. Newark is nobody’s favorite airport, but it’s the only one in the area that has direct flights to Portland, so I wind up being there a lot. The place was more chaotic than usual as they were undergoing massive remodeling. I eventually made my way to the assistance desk, where a woman told me I needed to get my boarding pass and check my bag first. I tagged both my items but the man at the bag check told me I needed to leave my scooter at a spot across the enormous room. I told him I couldn’t walk without it and he immediately got flustered. He walked me back to the wheelchair desk, where the woman had abandoned her post to go to the restroom. The bag check man told me to sit in a chair and he took my scooter away. That morning, I had removed all the decorations, assuming they’d think the string of lights was a detonator or something. Stripped of her foliage, Harvest Lightning was reduced to a black skeleton. 

    I sat there for a while, repeatedly glancing at my watch, before the woman returned to the desk and told a young man to wheel me to the terminal. He immediately informed her that they had double booked him. Eventually another young man was assigned to push me. We got through security fairly smoothly before having to go downstairs and outside to take a shuttle to the proper terminal. He had me get out of the wheelchair and said someone would be by to take me down the bridge onto the plane. He took the chair with him. The plane started to board and no one showed up to help me. I kept trying to get the attention of the two ticket takers, but they were both distracted by an issue with one man’s ticket not scanning. Eventually I just got up and hobbled down the bridge by myself. 

    We sat there for a half hour while they sorted out some issue dealing with “an issue with excess baggage weight,” according to the captain. Then we sat on the runway another half hour waiting for other planes to take off. I was irritated and stressed out, but along with the wheelchair assistance, they had upgraded me to a seat with extra legroom, so I eventually managed to relax. Adding to my comfort was a vacant seat between me and my neighbor, a lovely but slovenly college student. She kept spilling seltzer on the empty seat and I kept helping sop it up. The flight attendant kept saying she liked my drawing. She looked like she was about 12. 

    As I hobbled off the plane there were three attendants lined up with wheelchairs. Two of them were young but the third was very old and obese. This last one held up an electronic pad and asked me, “Are you George?” I said no, and went to talk to one of the other attendants. “Sit right here,” the old man said. I again told him I wasn’t George but he insisted, so I sat down, and with some difficulty he wheeled me up the ramp into the airport. 

He talked the entire time, telling me he had come out of retirement to work here, despite the fact that he had plantar fasciitis as well as neuropathy in both feet. I instantly felt guilty but he was good-natured about his pain. We sat where we could see both the luggage carousel and the door where the larger items come out. 

My duffel bag arrived first and the old man struggled to pull it off the carousel. Just the week before, an off-duty pilot sitting in the cockpit had attempted to crash a plane. The plane had made an emergency landing right here in Portland. “I saw them when they took him out and cuffed him,” the old man said. We both agreed it was a horrifying story. By this time the carousel was empty and the old man went to talk to the attendant. “That’s all of it,” he said. I asked about my scooter and he once again talked to the attendant, then wheeled me over to lost and found, which was a very narrow little room stuffed with bags. A weary woman took my information and filed a report. She told me it should arrive the next morning. I sat there trying not to scream

The old man wheeled me out to the curb, where I called my friend who was picking me up. 

    I spent the next day calling and texting the airline but got nothing but automated messages telling me they were still searching for my baggage. United Airlines had experienced record profits this year. Its CEO took home ten million dollars. 

    I had an appointment with a new therapist that afternoon, so I took my crutches and slowly made my way across town. The therapist was nice and I enjoyed babbling on to her about myself but the appointment was barely 40 minutes and she said she couldn’t see me again for another six weeks. 

I made my way home and after hours of texting was told that my scooter would be on the nine o’clock flight. At ten someone called me saying it would be delivered to my apartment by eleven. By midnight I gave up and started drifting off to sleep, when I got a text saying there were only two deliveries before mine and that a man named Edwin should be there by one. At one I got a text from Edwin saying he would be there at 1:30. At 1:30 he texted again to say he would be there in fifteen minutes. At this point I could barely keep my eyes open, and to keep from missing him, I hobbled down and leaned against the front of my building with my crutches to wait. At 1:45 a car came tearing up the road, screeched to a halt, and a man jumped out. 

“You waiting for a mobility thing?” he yelled. I said yes and asked if he was Edwin. Without answering he pulled my scooter from the trunk, set it on the curb, and sped off. 

I had another doctor appointment the next day, and when I got home from it I unpacked the leaves and ribbons and lights and that night Harvest Lightning sped through the rain, flying through the dark until she hit a crack in the sidewalk and nearly pitched over and after that I slowed the fuck down. 

Ghosts

     Summer weather returned to Portland as a storm of violence burst over Israel. Sunday afternoon Mich picked me up and we missed the turn a few times before finally making it to the Multnomah Arts Center for Lee’s memorial. 

    At one end of the banquet hall was a stage where a jazz quintet was setting up. Photos were projected onto a screen and there was a row of tables heaped with Italian food along one wall. I wheeled over to get some food before the rush. I’ve been cutting back on carbs to help my foot heal better, but I allowed myself two pillows of ravioli and filled the rest of my plate with salad and meatballs the size of tennis balls. 

    No sooner had I sat down when someone pointed out that some tables across the room were heaped with a mountain of his t-shirts, plus a few crates of records. We were encouraged to help ourselves to some keepsakes. I scooted over immediately; I’ve inherited my father’s inability to resist a crate of LPs. I pulled out two Pharaoh Sanders albums and one by Jackie McLean, then wheeled back to eat. The band started up and sounded terrific. 

    An elderly couple asked if they could sit next to me; they had known Lee from the convention center, where he’d worked events for the last few years. The woman was tiny and wizened; she told me she’s just celebrated her 90th birthday. Lee had been 70. I’m 50. Jasmine had only made it to 40. It’s morbid but I’m unable to resist making these comparisons, any more than I could resist wheeling over to grab a few more records, once I’d decided enough people had taken their share. Lee Morgan, shot dead in Slug’s Saloon at age 33. Albert Ayler, found dead in the East River aged 36. Lee never had lost his Brooklyn accent. 

    The place was filling up, and as I wolfed down my meatballs I looked around to see if there were any single women. There were not, but I did spot The Silver Fox, who used to host Museum After Hours down at the art museum. Every Wednesday our Grand Ballroom would feature live jazz music. I used to swing by after my shift but it was basically a glorified pickup scene for divorcees. You’d see the same sharks every week, circling as Linda Hornbuckle (2014, age 59) or Paul deLay (2007, age 55) wailed in the background. They’d stopped holding the event years before but Lee had never stopped complaining to me about it as if I had been the one who had canceled it. Sometimes I would tell him I’d heard rumors of it coming back, just to get him excited.

    His friend Whitney, who had organized everything, got up on stage and sang a song of mourning in Hebrew. I didn’t bother trying to stop my tears. When she finished she passed around a microphone so people could share reminiscences. I didn’t really have any good stories, and it felt pointless to repeat the same things everyone else had already said; that Lee loved music and food, that he was constantly kvetching about Portland’s lack of good pizza, its dearth of bagels. I tried to imagine the pat phrases I will be reduced to when my time comes. “He sure did draw a lot. And always with the foot problems.”

    Lee’s African drum group got up and drummed, a wild rhythmic salvo to accompany Lee on his journey, to carry on his heartbeat. Explosions rocking Gaza, boots stomping the desert. Mich drove me home and I put on The Albert Ayler Trio’s recording of Ghosts, recorded in 1965, when Lee was 12 years old. I lay in bed and let its chaos scramble around inside my head, scouring it clean with breathtaking fury.

Chainsaw

    On the first day of autumn it was as if someone had flicked a switch to turn on the rainy season. I felt restless, so I forced myself to get out of the house and do a few errands. The light rail seemed to be taking a very long time. I heard some people talking about how one of the trains had hit a car. 

    Eventually the train showed up and it was packed. No one moved for me so I sat precariously on my knee scooter and held on to the pole. Everyone was talking about the train that had hit the car; no one had any details but they all had opinions about it. I picked up my prescriptions at Safeway then headed to the downtown Office Max. It was a lousy location and a lousy company but I’d been buying my pens  there since I’d moved to Portland so I felt a certain amount of fond animosity towards it. The store used to be two levels then at some point the basement part became a TJ Maxx. At some point that closed and after limping along for years the rest of the store was finally closing down. I was hoping they’d have some good sales but the pens were only 10% off. I grabbed the last package on the shelf. 

    Downtown smelled like rotting fish, the way it always does when the first rainfall mixes with the crow guano on the brick sidewalks to make a sort of rancid slurry. I got back on the train to head across the river to get something to eat. Once again no one moved for me. Men sprawled across the seats as if they’d been tossed there like dolls, deep in the sleep of addiction.

    I got off at the convention center and rolled up to Burgerville. It was the weekend of the Rose City Comic Con and despite the rain the streets were filled with people in costume. Everyone seemed really young and I couldn’t tell what they were supposed to be dressed as. I felt even more old and out of touch than usual. 

    The woman behind the counter stared at me blankly without saying a word. I had to repeat my order three times and she still didn’t get it right. I sat down with my number and watched the colorful characters parade past. There were plenty of Comic Conners in the restaurant as well, clutching bags advertising Stranger Things and Dark Horse Comics. Vampires sucking milkshakes, Anime princesses gobbling French fries. At the next table over sat a young man and woman dressed in British school uniforms. He was paunchy with a man bun and a samurai sword across his back. She was gorgeous, heavily made up with bright pink hair. Her uniform was distractingly tight. They had a child with them who appeared to be dressed as a chainsaw, with the blade sticking out of his head and a handle on his back.

    As my food arrived, the woman ordered the child to blow his nose. He didn’t seem able to, so she told the man to help. After a few minutes of watching the spectacle of sniffling and snorting she stood up and held a napkin to the child’s nose. 

    “Go ahead and blow, baby,” she said. “Harder. Harder. That’s it. Harder. Yes. Yes. Don’t stop. Don’t stop, baby. Harder. Harder. That’s it, baby. That’s it. You can do it. Harder. That’s it. Yes. Yes. Yes.” This went on for an uncomfortably  long time. Finally she gave the kid’s nose one final wipe and said, “I don’t see any more boogers. Not really sure why that that took so long.” The chainsaw looked up at her with his mouth agape. They all got up end left and I finished my meal and got back on the train. No one moved to give me a seat. A group of robots and aliens laughed in the corner. I sat on my scooter and held on tight and watched the rain splattering the windows as we headed back across the river. 

Tightrope

     It was a beautiful sunny day and the stands at the fairgrounds were full of families. Below us stood a cage, or two cages, filled with tigers. The ringleader introduced his special guest, Wonder Woman. It was the late seventies and the Wonder Woman TV show was on, though this wasn’t Lynda Carter but just some woman dressed as the character she played. Our seats were pretty high up but her sexy red, white, blue and gold outfit is seared into my mind as she cracked her whip at the big cats. 

    “You don’t remember that at all?” I asked my brother recently. He did not. A few days later I asked my mother and she didn’t recall any of it either. “I feel like I’m losing my mind,” I said.  

    The only other thing I remember about that day was an older man walking up a rope that stretched diagonally from the ground to the rafters of the grandstand. He passed right over our heads, carrying a pole for balance. I can very clearly see his white shoes; they were cleft, like a camel’s toes, to help him grip the rope. I remember thinking there was something dishonest about this. As he passed overhead, he looked down and winked at me, though I know for sure I’m making that part up. 

    Years later, our father took us kids to the Ringling Brothers Circus. Unlike that earlier experience, neither of my siblings contests that this one actually happened. All I remember are the elephants shitting behind the tents. It’s so lonely being the only one who remembers something, especially a spectacle as surreal as an Amazon princess taming a pack of wild jungle beasts. I know I didn’t dream it, though the memory has the feel of a dream. The old man on the rope winks at me again. I yell up to him that I hope he falls and breaks his fucking neck. 

Marmalade

        They discharged Lee from the hospital so he could die at home. Val drove Julie and I out to his condo. Not knowing what the accessibility would be like, I took my crutches instead of the scooter, and it’s good I did since his unit was on the second floor. There was no parking so Val went and parked across the street and came back and led us upstairs. A young man answered the door of a darkened apartment. Val apologized and he told us we probably wanted 205-B instead of A. So I hobbled down the hall and down the stairs and across the lot and up another set of stairs and down another hallway until at last we were greeted by the woman who I’d met in the hospital last week. She hugged us all and started to weep.

        The visit was a blur of women coming and going. They said there was a 24 hour nurse but he was in the back room taking a nap. I wasn’t really aware of much other than Lee’s body. He was propped up on a hospital bed in the living room, facing the door. The walls were covered with concert posters. He was conscious but not lucid, words dribbling from his lips in a stream of slurred glossolalia. I sat next to him for a while as the women flitted about the kitchen. He had lost a lot of weight over the past two weeks and his skin had a grayish pallor. He kept trying to rip his tubes and bandages off and I kept gently pulling his hands away. He didn’t fight me. The skin of his wrists was scaly, his arm hair stiff. I thought of my father, just a few years older than Lee, who at that very moment was in the hospital for another fall. Instead of being there I was here, staring into the face of a man who was unquestionably dying, little more than a shell breathing and muttering and doing very little else. 

        I’ve been losing more and more friends over the years but somehow I’d never actually seen anyone this close to the end. The deaths had all been sudden and remote and while the shock is awful, this was obviously very, very different. Actually seeing it, smelling the sweet lotion they put on his flesh to mask whatever smells his body was emanating, was a completely new experience for me. I didn’t know what to say so I didn’t say much, just gave him some water when he stuck his tongue out like a lizard. He kept trying to scratch and pick at himself and once he managed to throw the blanket off. Suddenly, there was his penis, vulnerable and exposed to the brutal world. I quickly covered him up and held his hand. His wrinkled fingers were soft and dry. He mumbled a word that sounded like "marmalade" but probably wasn't. 

        At one point a German woman stopped by who made it a point to tell us she was the head of the HOA. It seemed obvious that she was there less from caring about Lee than concern about all the strangers coming and going. She did not linger, and we left as well, after what might have been days or weeks but was probably about an hour. There was nothing else to do or say. He wasn’t opening his eyes, was only grunting occasionally. We didn’t know it but he would be gone within hours. In the hallway outside the condo I found the blackened husk of a dragonfly splayed out on the concrete. I picked it up and pressed it between the pages of my book then slowly made my way back down the stairs. 

Happy Days

    A few days after my visit to Urgent Care my phone rang. It was a man from the Center of Disease Control telling me that the lab had called him with my test results, as they are required to do when they come across any fairly uncommon pathogens. He explained that the bacteria in my foot is the same which causes diphtheria, though he assured me I was in no danger of contracting that. Shortly afterwards my GP, whose name I can never remember, called me. I’ve never met him in person, we’ve only had a few video appointments, in which his face shimmered like a phantom against a wall of light. He told me he was talking to the infectious disease department to figure out a course of treatment. That night I picked up my new script and he said he’d try to find a foot doctor who had an opening. I asked if he knew anyone good and he said no.

    That weekend I got nervous and went to Urgent Care again. The same  jockey-sized physician’s assistant saw me and took more photos of my foot and said I should just keep taking the antibiotics. I asked if he knew any good foot doctors and he said no. 

    The following Tuesday we had first aid/CPR training at work. We spent the afternoon breathing into the parted rubbery lips and clicking the chests of the limbless torso. “Be prepared to do this for hours if you need to,” our instructor warned. “And remember, you’re going to break some ribs.”

    The following day my GP managed to get me a last-minute appointment at a foot clinic. As I rode the bus across town I braced myself for the worst, prepared myself for the news that the infection had entered the bone and my misshapen foot would, at long last, need to be completely amputated. 

    My new doctor was young and lovely and met my gaze with huge brown eyes as I gave her the basics of what I was going through. She carefully unwrapped everything and scraped and hacked at my foot, then took x-rays and sat and went over them with me. The infection was serious, but had not reached the bone. She said I should stay off it and come back in a week. My terror of amputation evaporated but was replaced by a wave of lesser but still powerful anxiety about what would happen next and how it would affect my job. There is always more fear waiting in the wings.

    She sent me to the hospital to get a bunch of blood work done. In the waiting room I emailed my bosses to let them know that I was happy to keep working but would not be able to be on my feet. On the way home the head of the department called me to tell me not to come in to work the next day, that HR would be contacting me. I was surprised –when I’ve had foot issues in the past, my old bosses always found sit-down work for me to do. These were not my old bosses though, and I felt myself overcome with dread and paranoia. This is how they are going to get rid of me, I thought. 

    HR sent me a terse email the next day with instructions on filling out forms for a new state medical leave program that just happened to be starting in a few days. I didn’t really understand it but in the meantime I would use up what sick and vacation time I had. After that I had no idea what would happen. 

    Saturday Mich once again picked me up so we could visit Lee, who was still in the hospital. He was supposed to leave last week but instead they’d had to operate again. It had not gone well, and they were sending him home as soon as they could get hospice care set up. I walked on my crutches past the office where I had seen one of my many useless foot doctors to the ICU. The visit was awkward. I didn’t know what to say, and then felt bad for not knowing what to say. My humor –the tool I reach for most in awkward situations- remained out of reach. Mich was also subdued. Lee was quiet as well; I couldn’t tell if he even knew or cared if we were there. What can one possibly say in the face of death? What good can words possibly accomplish? It seems like language is the least accessible when we need it the most. 

    Another of his friends arrived during our visit, and she immediately went up to the bed and warmly grasped Lee's hand and held it as she smiled sadly down at him. I felt humbled by the eloquence in this single gesture, and saw in this woman a compassion I did not feel capable of. 

    I had a ticket to see a play later that evening. I wasn’t about to let my limited mobility stop me from going, so I hopped on my scooter and got onto the train to head across the river. A tiny local theater company was putting on a production of Beckett’s Happy Days in the abandoned Victoria’s Secret store at the mall. Most of the mall stores have closed, but they’ve been trying to revitalize the place by lowering the rents to allow smaller local businesses move in. My favorite comic book store is there, and a nice little record store, and a bunch of other shops. And the ice rink is still operating, though it was closed for the night. A very widewoman was driving a Zamboni around, leaving the ice shiny and reflective in its wake.

    A few flyers pointed the way to the old lingerie store. A woman sat taking tickets just inside the entrance. Sheets of plastic hung everywhere, corralling you to the middle of the store, where thirty folding chairs set on the floor or on risers in front of a pair of red sheets that looked like shower curtains. I sat of to the side so my scooter wouldn’t be in the way. A young woman sat behind the old check out counter which had been converted into a makeshift sound and light booth. 

    The play consists of a woman buried up to her waist in the ground, or in this case a cloth-covered mound. Beside her is a bag filled with belongings that she occasionally rifles through. Her husband or partner sits just out of sight behind her; you can sometimes see his arm or back of his head when he moves around. It is unclear how their situation came to be but it is apparent that it has been going on for some time, and their provisions seem to be dwindling. The woman prattles on cheerily to the audience, to the man, to herself, insisting on how wonderful everything is. It would be unbearable –and it almost is- if it wasn’t so comical and strange, and while the woman’s acting was a little broad, I really loved the show in all its hysterical bleakness. I thought of Lee in the hospital, I thought of my parents, I thought of all the people I know who seem to be inexplicably sinking into the earth.

    When it was over, they led us toward one of the staff exits, since the mall was closed for the evening. As we filed past a security officer he smiled and said hello and I recognized him. He used to work downtown and would come to the museum’s coffee shop. I hadn’t seen him since the beginning of the pandemic. We chatted as he walked alongside us across the mall, then left us as as we filed through a set of double doors into a long, narrow corridor. I was last in line and as I heard the doors slam shut behind me I saw up ahead a steep set of concrete stairs leading up. There was no way I could drag my scooter up that many steps. I called out to the people ahead of me but no one turned around or stopped, they were all focused on escaping the buidling. I wheeled back to the double doors and tugged at the handle but they were locked. I banged on them and called the name of the guard, the sound echoing along the dimly-lit corridor. 

    I pounded and pounded.