Sudden fall, part 2

(Writing from a seaside villa in France. Life is grand, for you kind and hardy souls still reading. A break was called for, and a break this is. The story from before, however, continues...)

"I think I might've cracked a tooth," I say from the bathroom. I'm inspecting the damage to my face in the mirror. Not too bad. A scrape from the tip of my nose to my mouth. It jogs a bit to the right as it courses over my top lip. My boss will tell me later today it looks like the scar after harelip surgery.

Right now it just looks like I have a nosebleed.

A goose-egg is growing on my chin. It's already starting to bruise up.

I go back to the living room, where Mr. Billy is icing his foot with a bag of frozen peas. I get another bag and hold it to my face. I look over at Mr. Billy. "We're the disaster twins."

He tells me I shouldn't go in to work. I don't answer that. In only a few days, we'll be leaving the country for a three week vacation. There's just too much to do to miss a day.

I do, however, take time out to see the dentist.

"That's not a crack," she says, peering in (while I breathe out, relieved). "That's bits of sidewalk. I'll just buff it out."

My teeth appear to be intact, but there may be other damage. She can't tell - not even with x-rays - because of the swelling. I may have fractured my jaw.

"Soft food for a month," she says. Soft food? Is she crazy? I'm going to France! No crusty French bread?

"Just the soft, inside part."

Blecch.

On the bus back to work, I think of all the delicious soft French foods I can eat, while people's eyes slide off me. The bruise is in full bloom already. I feel like I'm wearing blinking lights on my face.

Eclairs, pot de creme, onion soup, pate.

Nobody wants to look at me. This isn't an insouciant, adventurous bruise. Something along the cheekbone, maybe, would speak of a branch in my way as I snowboarded down a pristine mountain.

Brie, chocolate mousse.

A bruise on the chin, a scrape on the mouth - on a woman's mouth - these are ugly. People see only bad crazy things that end up here. Somewhere out on the edge of sweaty half-dreams, where the money runs out, the addictions take over, that thing lives. That thing that most never ask themselves - How far can I fall and still live? A face like mine answers, Farther than you dare imagine.

Cafe au lait, I think. Ratatouille.

Sudden fall, part 1

Two cars screech to a stop in the middle of the street. I watch the drivers jump out and run in my direction. This is interesting.

"Are you okay?"

"We saw you fall."

I'm on the ground, looking up at them. I just fell down, no big deal. A third person appears from somewhere behind me. I should probably get up, but it's not so bad, down here on the sidewalk.

I touch my face, and look at my fingers. Hm, blood. Maybe my nose is bleeding.

"Do you need a ride to the hospital?"

I look at the woman. It must have been a spectacular fall, to make her stop her car. I remember starting to fall, trying to catch myself. Taking giant steps, arms windmilling, all flapping limbs like Stan Laurel. My glasses are a couple of feet away. I pick them up and put them on. They aren't broken. Not even scratched.

"I just live right here, thanks," I say, gesturing vaguely behind me.

"Do you need help up the street?"

They really want to help. I thank them again. I'm just three steps from my front door. What was it the hobbit said? "It is a dangerous business going out your front door."

I find my keys, my purse, my book bag. I stand up. No problem. I unlock the door I just locked and walk inside.

"You're back," Mr. Billy calls from upstairs. He's laid up with a mashed foot.

"I fell down," I say, heading up the stairs. I sit down on the couch beside him. I'm sweating, and my vision starts to tunnel in. I put my head between my knees. Maybe I'll be a little late for work.

With my head between my knees, it occurs to me. This was a "sudden fall," a "drop attack," an "otolithic crisis of Tumarkin." Curse you, Tumarkin!

Let me back up.

Several weeks ago, I was tentatively diagnosed with Meniere's Disease. Dig the picture of the guy falling down. That's what happened to me, only I landed on my face instead of my ass.

I've been dealing with the whole Meniere's thing like the bowl of mush I am. Whining a lot. Hey, it's just dizziness. I should be able to deal with that. Had to change my diet, my work schedule, my sleep schedule. I can't drive anymore. That's all okay. I'm lucky to be able to make those adjustments.

But reading is difficult during a dizzy spell. This is not fair. Reading is the thing I do when I can't do anything else. When I was grounded as a kid, when I was recovering from surgeries, when I rode the bus, when I had to sit in a waiting room, I could always read. I'm a writer, dammit. If I can't read, I sure as hell can't write.

But drugs help. Diet helps. Reducing stress, reducing my workload - all of that helps. I was getting past the whining. Just the meat suit reminding me that my flesh outfit is me and I am it and we're in this thing together. All in all, it's a pretty good ensemble. My face fits me: kind of goofy-looking and friendly. I'm a decent dancer. I'm not especially tall or short or fat or skinny. Most of my parts work the way they should.

And then I fell down, and things got a little more interesting.

This is my brain

According to credible reports, I am still here.


Not only that, my brain demonstrates no evidence for intraparenchymal signal abnormality.

The major intracranial signal voids are demonstrated, and the sagittal midline image demonstrates no evidence for pituitary mass or cerebellar tonsilar herniation.

To cap it all off, my ventricles and my sulci are age appropriate.


So I don't want to hear any more jokes about my immature sulci. Got it?

A health care lesson

Recently, Bones asked what makes me pig-biting mad?

I have a wonderful nurse practitioner who has been my primary care physician for a few years now.

Correction: I had a wonderful nurse practitioner. Last week, she left private practice in order to work in public health. She's thrilled to be going back to her original focus - research & education - but here's the part that surprised even me (I'd considered myself well-informed about many of the health care issues in this country): working in public health instead of private practice, she will be making more money, getting better benefits, and working better hours.

"Really?" I said, astutely.

She went on to tell me how she was lucky to get the bare-bones benefits she had at the practice she was leaving. Many private practices, she said, don't offer benefits at all.

That five- or ten-dollar co-pay you make for your office visit? The practice depends on that to make payroll.

It's our beloved insurance companies who are making the money. Not the people who make us well when we're sick.

One thing I loved about seeing her was that she always seemed to have an appointment open when I was sick, and she always spent a generous amount of time with me. She listened to me, and she took the time to communicate clearly.

Apparently, she routinely got in trouble with the insurance company for vile, subversive behavior like this. In order to keep appointments available for people who were sick, she inevitably would have time slots that weren't filled. And this was a cardinal sin. The insurance company comes down hard on any practitioner who doesn't have every single time slot filled.

Good luck, then, getting an appointment when you're sick.

My wonderful nurse practitioner isn't an exception, either. More and more, brilliant and talented practitioners are leaving private practice in order to get out from under the thumb of insurance companies. They're leaving private practice, too, according to the dictates of the "free market": because they can make more money and get better benefits in public health than they can in private practice.

Allow me to repeat this: practitioners are leaving the private sector to work for the government so that they can earn more and have less interference from above.

Pig-spitting mad? That doesn't even begin to cover it.

Quake that refreshes

Ka-boom-boom-boom-boom.

The flat started shaking as I was sharing a pomegranate with Mr. Billy. I had time to stare at Mr. Billy, think, "earthquake," put down the pomegranate, think, "damn, it's a long one."

And then it really got going.

BOOM-boom-BOOM-boom-boom.

We're looking around the flat for anything that might come flying off a shelf or a wall. We both stand up at the same time. Our black cat scrambles for her safe place under the bed.

Something crashes in the guest room.

The striped cat holds for dear life to his platform on the cat tree.

We stand ready for...something. Um, do we need to get under a doorway maybe?

I look at the picture behind the couch, swinging on the wall.

It stops. It doesn't wind down. It just stops. Mr. Billy moves quickly to me, puts his arms around me. We hold each other tightly, for a long time. He grins at me, his eyes big.

We take a minute to look around, see what fell. Nothing seems to be broken. We coo reassuringly at the cats, but it will be awhile before they've calmed down.

I'm putting away the leftovers, and it occurs to me: I'm happy.

Moments before I was Googling symptoms (note: do not do this. I can't stop myself, but you're better than me. Hint: whatever you have is cancer), checking work email, obsessing. Now I'm humming as I find a container for the pomegranate.

The seeds blink out at me like jewels.

No pain

I don't wear dentures

"Do you have any dentures, false teeth, metal in your mouth?"

"Just my fillings," I open my mouth, to show her.

The nurse nods, and leaves the room.

"Myer, right?" I hear bellowed from down the hall. An enormous white guy in a walrus moustache and balloon cap covered with cute little cartoons rolls into the tiny room.

His voice fills the room, bounces down the hall, blows up the curtains on other rooms along the way.

"Born in '68, huh?"

I nod.

"I was in Southeast Asia then. Getting shot at. Bombs dropped on me." He's looking at my chart. "Have any dentures, false teeth?"

Nope.

"You digging this rain? 'Course, they don't have rain here, not really. I'm from Texas. If it's raining in Texas and you're under an overpass, you stop the car and get out of it, else you're gonna drown."

He's leading me and Mr. Billy to the operating room, telling a story of a rainstorm in New Mexico. At the door, he stops and tells Mr. Billy how to get to the waiting room.

"Now say goodbye, kiss kiss."

I kiss Mr. Billy, and he squeezes my hand.

"You're from Utah, huh?" The giant vet in the cartoony headgear leads me to an inner waiting room, stopping to put a blue hat like his over my hair. "I knew a girl from Utah. Mormon. Everyone was trying to score with her. Me, I was just friends with her. We went hiking once, and she looked me over, guessed my size. Next thing I know I get a package in the mail, she's knit me a sweater. Fit perfectly. I showed it to all the guys, Ha, I said, you didn't get anywhere with her, but she knit me a sweater. This is where you get off."

He waves his hand at a chair, and disappears through the doors.

"Do you have any dentures?" A nurse in another blue mushroom hat asks. I shake my head. Another nurse comes in. "Are you my replacement?" asks the first. The second nods, and the first hands over my chart. "I just started the interview."

"Do you wear dentures?" the second nurse asks.

The anesthesiologist comes in, asks if I wear dentures. Tells me about the anesthetic. "You might wake up with a sore throat," he says, "from the breathing tube."

A resident, assisting the surgeon, sits down across from me. "Any dentures?" He went to med school with a friend of mine. He's young, but says he's been in residency six years.

Another nurse asks if I wear dentures. "What procedure are we doing today?"

"Exploratory laparoscopy," I say, "to begin with. He might open me up further, depending what he finds."

"Laparoscopy?" she looks up at me, "Are you sure?"

"Um, yeah."

She confers with another nurse. "It says laparotomy here. You'd better get down there and straighten this out."

There's a big difference, I think, between laparotomy and laparoscopy. At least I don't have dentures.

Fast

The meat suit's been acting up again. Today the surgeon opens me up for a look. I'm considering asking him to install a zipper in place of stitches.

In preparation, yesterday was a diet of clear liquids, today a diet of air and nothing else, not even water, not even my own spit. Under normal circumstances, I am what is called a "good eater." I do not skip meals. If breakfast is - for some horrible reason - missed, I become surly and stupid. I misplace things, like my pants, or my right hand.

But I grew up in a religion with a strong tradition of fasting. On the first Sunday of every month, we fasted for two meals and gave the money we would have spent on them to the poor. This seems a noble thing, and for a long time after I stopped going to church, I kept up the practice.

Sometime in the last twenty years, however, I stopped.

It was also common, in the religion of my youth, to fast for inspiration, something shared with spiritual traditions around the world. I had vague hopes of some form of secular inspiration today, but nothing doing. My head hurts, and I'm hungry.

I guess that religious background makes me want something more from this experience than the gurgling of my stomach. More than once, I thought about the vast numbers of people who feel like this almost every day.

Mostly, though, I want to eat.

Tag, I'm It

A slow-moving blogger gets tagged, courtesy of Joseph K.

So, to business.

Ten years ago. I had to look at my resume to refresh the old memory bank. Miserable in Seattle, though not yet in servitude to Microsoft, deliriously thrilled about going in to work every day in part because it got me away from the Thing I was living with, known here as Mr. 8-ball. I was beginning to wonder if being a grownup meant emotions were dampened, muffled, my last passions already tasted and gone, if adulthood meant a flattening out, nothing left anymore but Duty, Responsibility, Compromise.

I was wrong.

Five years ago, I was roaring through the desert in a Miata with Mr. Billy-to-be. After a day of driving, we would emerge from the dusty car jangled and wind-buzzed, giddy with adventure. One month before, we had gotten engaged, and two weeks before, we had quit our jobs in Seattle. We were trying to see as much land as possible before a) I went to a reunion in London, and b) we moved to Hawaii. Did we have jobs in Hawaii? No, we did not. Did we have a place to live? Nope. Who could wish for more?

One year ago. Note: squeamish readers may wish to skip this bit. Our fantasies come true, we'd been a year in San Francisco, blissful, Mr. Billy and I both working jobs we loved, in love with the city, still thrilling to all the things we'd missed in Hawaii, when something broke loose inside me and I started bleeding. Or rather, didn't stop bleeding as I should have after my regular period in August. By mid-September, I'd been bleeding for a month and starting to feel a little less solid, a little like I was standing on the border between this world and...something else. I gushed through October and November.

I remembered a roommate of mine, years ago, showing me his mother's journal. His father didn't believe in doctors, and she had started bleeding. The last word in her diary, before she died, was: "Gush."

A day or two after making Thanksgiving dinner for several friends, the bleeding became hemhorraging, and it was a long slide from there to emergency rooms, medications, transfusions and surgeries. After one minor surgery, one major, and one middling, I still don't know what it was all about, but the bleeding has stopped, there's nothing left in there to bleed.

Yesterday, our friend Quigley, staying with us for a few days, treated us to brunch in a neighborhood café before disappearing into a cab to the airport.

Five songs I know all the words to. Huh. This is not necessarily a list of songs I love, because I can never understand the words in songs. These are songs I had the liner notes for.

Elvis Costello, "Beyond Belief". Leonard Cohen, "Sisters of Mercy". "America" from West Side Story. "O Come O Come Emmanuel," 15th century French hymn, I think. "In Our Lovely Deseret," Mormon hymn.

I wish I knew all the words to a Clash song, but there it is.

Five snacks. Grapes, cheese (any kind), Trader Joe's multigrain crackers, chocolate (dark), the brains of virgins.

Five Things I'd Do With $100 Million. Lewis Black would pay an excellent salary to someone to be his personal ball-washer. As I don't have balls, I'm stumped. Pay someone to tell Joseph K every day that the supermodels he's dating are really into him. Make a platinum (gold is so eighties) statue of my cat, and hire a staff to worship it and evangelize for the new religion.

Build good, solid low-income housing in New Orleans.

How many is that? Oh, oh, yes. Buy a house in San Francisco. Only way that will happen.

Five places I'd run away to. That special little room in my head. No, you can't come in. My grandparents' ranch in southern Utah, the way it was when I was a kid. The treehouse my dad designed (not built - yet) for the woods on his land in Pennsylvania. Lisbon. Almost anywhere in Italy.

Five things I'd never wear. Those heels-that-look-like-tennis-shoes thingies. A tube top. Slacks, just because of the sound of the word. Slaaaacks. Shudder. "Nude" nylon stockings, actually a disturbing orangey color. One of those little American flag pins (I'm more patriotic than you. How come you don't have a flag pin, huh? Do you hate freedom?)

Five favorite TV shows. The Daily Show. Deadwood. The Sopranos. Six Feet Under. Off.

Five greatest joys. You know who you are. Finishing the book will be up there too, soon.

Five favorite toys. Hm, the pink one with the little vibrating...ooooh, you didn't mean those kinds of toys? Stumped again.

Five people to tag. If you've stuck with me through this whole ordeal: The monkeys, obviously. Yes, that means monkey 0, bluemonkey, and mommonkey (Jill). monkey 0 and bluemonkey, I know your blogs are mostly fiction, so feel free to fictionalize, if you must. Blondemonkey, once you get on the blogwagon, consider yourself tagged.

Oh, I'm drunk on the power! To round it out, I'm tagging both Anne and Anna.

You're It.

Pleasures

Remember this when surgery is months in the past, body again elastic, stitches irritating memories, doctor visits rare:

How delicious, walking to the corner store for milk at dusk.

Eating sausage in an outdoor amphitheater, laughing and crying at Cyrano de Bergerac.

Splashing bleach and water across the tiles of our tiny deck.

Sleep, with ordinary dreams - or, with my dreams, not demons out of a prescription bottle.

Walking, hips moving freely, skirt swinging, shoulders loose and open. Those muscles clenched tight for so long softening, letting go. Shifting in bed without anything hurting, or hurting much. This is luxury, this is pleasure.

In two, maybe three weeks, I'm going dancing.

Billy goes under - part 2

I'm in a different room, a bigger one. Everyone's wearing those blue mushroom caps - people lying on gurneys, blinking and looking around, people in scrubs, walking by, a few gathered at a desk, talking about...food. "Have you tried their fries? Dude, they are a-mazing. They put like this seasoning on them?"

Bastards. I haven't eaten since yesterday. Not that I'm hungry. But still.

I guess they're all done, it's all over. I don't feel so bad, except. Oh, wait a second, here it comes.

Holy shit. I've never felt anything like this before, not even after the last surgery. But maybe people don't remember pain very well. Plus I had that morphine button before. I clutched that beautiful button in my hand all night. Push the button, push the button, good button.

I don't have a button now.

"Mghlapth," I say. I'm not sure what I was going for there, or if anyone could have heard me, but a nurse appears, looking down at me.

"Do you need something?"

"Hurts," I say.

"Brant?" she says, sweetly, "Need some Demerol here."

Brant moves fast, needle in hand, he or nurse or someone shoots something into the tube that's stuck into my hand.

Zooooom.

I feel wonderful. Bless you, nurse. Bless you Brant. This warm wave just washes over me and cuddles me up and I feel a big loopy grin spread itself all over my mug. There's pain there, somewhere, but I just don't care, I don't care, tra la. I look around. Nobody close to my left, but to my right is a guy - a kid, maybe 19 or 20 - on a gurney like mine, big padding on one shoulder.

"Hi!"

He rolls his head around, and flashes me a Demerol grin.

"What're you in for?" We are moments away from being old buddies.

"Fltjopblablepepoipwit shoulder," he says, beaming. "Shit hurts, man."

I nod, sagely. Nurses crowd around him for a minute, a curtain is pulled, but I hear him chatting away back there, to whoever is hovering around.

"...I'm a dancer, see, a ballet dancer," he's saying. The nurses disperse, until there's just one.

"Did I hear you say you were a ballet dancer?" Damn, I'm chatty. It's suddenly terribly important, this conversation. The nurse standing over him smiles at me - is it indulgently? and pulls back the curtain so he can roll his head around again and look at me.

"Yup," He nods, his head moving against the pillow, "I'm with the San Francisco Ballet."

"No shit," I say, "In the book I'm writing, my main character is a ballet dancer."

"Wow. Really?" he says. I doubt he would be this enthusiastic without the drugs.

"Yeah! It's called Hoodoo - working title - and," I want to tell him more. How this is no A Very Young Dancer sort of book. How it's actually really dark and creepy and twisted and all tied up with God and visions and I know he'd get it, we're Demerol buddies, after all, but they're wheeling me away.

"Hey," he says, "look me up on the site, SFBallet.org, I'm there!" He looks up at the nurse, "She's writing a book with a ballet dancer!"

"'s called Hoodoo..." I raise my hand, waving goodbye, as I disappear through the door.

Note to writers: Vicodin is not a performance-enhancing drug

Yes, I know: Hemingway had alcohol, Sartre those mescaline experiments, and Hunter S. managed to pound out amazing things while on...whatever he could get his paws on, but Vicodin just doesn't cut it. It takes the edge off the pain, but brings along with it nausea, sleepiness (I picture the Disney dwarf in Snow White), and shallow naps punctuated with menacing dreams. Profundity (or even the illusion of it), nope. Inspiration, zip. Clarity of thought, don't make me laugh.

I know, excuses, excuses. The story will continue later, after a short, terrifying nap.

Billy goes under

The orderly sits me down in a room, setting a neat pile of clothing next to me. They are considerate here, providing me with a real cloth gown that ties in back, and a robe to go over it. He tells me to remove all my jewelry, so my wedding ring goes into Mr. Billy's capable hands, along with bracelet and earrings. One earring won't come out, and the orderly tells me to let the nurse know.

A nurse comes in to stick me with the I.V. I warn her about my veins: smallish and deceptive, you can think you've hit it okay, but it collapses, or rolls away, or the needle just bounces off. These details are just speculation on my part - I tend to look in the direction of the ceiling while they're rooting around in there. My last hospital stay, both arms alarmingly bruised, nurse slapping away to wake up sleepy veins while I retch into a plastic tray.

This nurse assures me she won't try more than twice, and, she beams, "We have lidocaine, to numb you up!"

"Yay, lidocaine," say I, knowing full well it isn't the pain that freaks me out. I ask her to tell me when she's hit it. "I've hit the vein," she says, "now I just need to advance the needle."

She says nothing for a terrible long moment. I don't feel a thing, but my vision starts to tunnel in, that warm, distant roar in my ears, a high-pitched whine riding on top. I swim up to tell the nurse I may throw up, feel the kidney-shaped pan in my hands, stomach heaves, but they don't let you eat before surgery, nothing in there to come up. Enormous blobs of sweat slid down my body under the gown. Why does my body do this, I wonder? I'm not afraid, and it doesn't hurt, but I can't stop it. I'm barely able to ask Mr. Billy to crack the window. The nurse has said she won't try again, gathering up her goody basket and leaving the room. We can't figure out how to recline the chair, so I slide down onto the floor.

Another orderly guides me to another waiting room, Mr. Billy not permitted to come along, away he goes with my valuables, my clothes and books with the orderly in the plastic "patient belongings" bag. Seven Good Housekeepings and one Ebony. I pick up the Ebony. The doctor comes in, wearing a blue mushroom cap to match my own. She tells me what's going to happen, looks at my earring. "I can't get it out," I say, demonstrating. "Well," she says, "If you can't get it out, I guess there's not much danger of us losing it."

Another orderly, or nurse, walks me to the operating room. Complicated table meant for me, surrounded by blocks of machines, two full-color flat-screen monitors. People in blue caps introduce themselves, the doctor, the assisting doctor, the anesthesiologist. I climb onto the table, going over my vein story once more for the anesthesiologist. He grins and pops in the needle, no muss, no fuss, no lidocaine, no retching. It occurs to me that the anesthesiologist is the only man in the room, and the oldest, somewhat avuncular. I'm comforted by all the women, and the elderly uncle.

I wonder what they'll get up to, while I'm out, that they're so concerned about my jewelry coming off.

And then I stop thinking anything.

What's it doing way over there?

My expectations for medical tests have been lowered in recent months. Once upon a time, I would walk into the ultrasound room with an idea that the technician would turn on the machine, point her wand at me and exclaim, "Well, there's your problem!" and turn the monitor so I can clearly see a tiny demon hammering away at my gut with a pickaxe. He would peer over his shoulder at me and grin maliciously before taking a hefty swing.

"Wipe that smug grin off his face," I would announce, standing on the bed in my paper gown, shaking my fist at the monitor, "Vaporize the bastard!"

Too many times, though, the tech would prod me and gaze glumly at the monitor, clicking her mouse to bracket off bits of sludge from other bits of sludge, muttering to herself, "hmm...that could be...but I don't know..." like she was reading tea leaves. Any questions I asked would be answered with "You'll have to ask your doctor," or even a weary gesture toward the printed sign that scolded any patients who might expect answers from the technician.

Today, however, was different.

Ron the technician has a soft lamp set up in the lab, and a mobile of whales overhead, but I'm much more interested in that grainy gray sludge moving around on the monitor. He's prodding at me with the wand, when suddenly those beautiful words are spoken:

"Well, that's what's causing your problem. And it's a big 'un, too. Look at that!"

And I do, and yup, there it is. No demon, but...something. That's definitely a...thing.

"But what's it doing way over there?" adds Ron.

You got me there, Ron.

Meat suit

Been spending too much time in medical complexes, not enough time on the bus lately, gotten tardy in my posting. Strange how the whole howling world wants to focus down to a single point when the animal envelope - the meat suit I put on every morning at the end of dreamtime wandering - malfunctions.

Tomorrow I get to spend a day inside darkened rooms, dully illuminated by glowing displays of my innards, breathing and seething and going about their innardly business, charcoal-edged light glinting off shining surfaces.

Yesterday I sat in a hard plastic chair on Institutional Green carpet, not enough to hide the unspeakable stain of something liquid splashed under my feet. A woman stands behind a little podium and calls names, a ninety-year-old woman in a wheelchair and her fatuous seventy-year-old daughter, "Joyce called me a pistol today. A pistol! Well, I guess I do have a sort of energy, you know, I think people are attray-acted to something like that..." I could just about hear the old woman's eyes rolling around in her head at her idiot-child, her own comments dry and and spare.

Another plastic chair in another waiting room, an hour earlier. A giant man, massive head, thick lips, Central European accent, also in a wheelchair, and dark blue hospital jammies. "Not a milyon dollarss - a milyon dollarss over twenty yearss, not like you have it all right now."

"...but it's good to have money when you need it, for healt' reasons, or whadever," his mantis wife leans forward reaching one emaciated arm out to lay a hand on her husband's knee. Sitting next to her is a young woman in scrubs, Our Daughter the Doctor, smoothing the way for Daddy in this trying time.

"But the house, beaudiful things, I have a wife who likes fine things, I work hard all my life to give her those things, it makes me happy, people come to the house, they can' believe the beaudiful things..."

Different chair, in the hall this time, earlier yet in the day, reception area renovation, plastic sheeting, dot-matrix printed signs directing patients back through a dark inner hallway, receptionist squeezed in behind her desk, edging out past patients in line to use the copier, laughter bubbling out from behind the door of the break room.

It's too quiet, everyone too submerged in their own broken-down meat suits, no-one meets your eyes, no-one talks, except to their own family, to the receptionist, the nurses, only to say help me, help me.

I'll be back on the bus soon.