Chapter 2
— Chapter 2 —
“Promise me you’ll walk at least,” the nurse says, handing me discharge forms to sign. She has a helmet of yellowed white curls and frowns like she wants to say more. Like she wants to take me home with her. Or maybe I just think that because I want her to. She could press her cool hand to my forehead to check for fever and bring me soup made from turkey bones she saves in her deep freeze. I bet she does that for her kids when they’re sick, even though they’re probably grown like me.
“I’ll do what I can,” I say, scribbling my name at the bottom of her clipboard.
“And here.” She flips the page, taps the last line with her fingernail. “To confirm you’re requesting discharge against your doctor’s recommendation.” She studies my face, shaking her head. I think she expects me to cave.
I draw a squiggly line for my signature. I can’t keep paying forty bucks every time they tape a new gauze pad to my stomach.
“You’re going to want to lie around and avoid moving because it hurts, but the best thing you can do for yourself is walk, walk, walk.” She wiggles at the waist as she talks, and I imagine her in snappy white sneakers, power walking at the beach. “Don’t lift anything. Try not to sit for long stretches. If you start running a fever or the wound gets puffy, get yourself back here. No excuses.”
She hands me a big plastic bag labeled Patient Belongings and doesn’t leave. Getting dressed is a test, an excuse to call the doctor back.
When I dump the bag on the bed, the smell of old clam water and stale beer wafts around us, so strong it feels like green cartoon lines could form in the air. I step into my jeans, clenching my teeth to keep from crying. As I pull them up under my gown, the nurse watches like I might detonate.
The button can’t reach the tab across my swollen belly. I turn my back to her and zip as far as I can. The hospital gown drops to the floor when I take it off. There’s no way I can get back up if I bend to retrieve it, so I have to pretend not to notice—that I’m the sort of person who leaves messes for someone else to clean up and doesn’t care who knows it.
I pull my Thirsty Clam t-shirt on headfirst, one arm at a time, stretching it to cover my open pants. It’s embarrassing putting on smelly clothes in front of this woman.
I don’t even have a jacket. No one at the bar thought to hand it to the EMTs or bring it by the hospital. No one checked in to see if I made it. I’m not sure who the hospital would have called if I hadn’t—how anyone would have found out. Remember the girl? The one who used to work here? What happened to her?
“Who’s picking you up?” the nurse asks.
“Cab.”
“No.” She hugs the clipboard to her chest.
I’m not sure if it’s her rule or hospital policy, but I can tell by the arch of her brow that I won’t be able to talk her out of it.
My cell phone is dead. It’s an ancient brick, and there’s no way anyone here would have the right charger. I use the phone by the bed to call the only reasonable number I know by heart, hoping local calls are free.
“Thirsty Clam.”
“Hey, Buck. Send someone to get me?”
“Who is this?”
“Freya.”
“I just saw you in the kitchen.”
“No.”
“Who was that?”
“Send someone, please?”
“Where are you?”
“Maine Coast Memorial.”
“Wha-wha?”
“Remember? Sunday? The ambulance?”
He’s quiet for so long I think he may have hung up. Finally, he says, “Oh… yeah. What’s wrong with you?”
“Appendix. Please send someone?” I know this doesn’t sound like the conversation of a woman whose dearly beloved person is on the way, and I worry the nurse will change her mind about discharging me.
“Like they took it out?” Buck’s voice is high, incredulous.
“Yup. Can you put Markus on the phone?”
“Do you get to keep it in a jar?”
“I don’t think so.”
“When are you back at work?”
“Don’t know. Can I talk to Markus?”
“Tomorrow?”
“Probably not.”
“That’s too bad—Oh, hey, the fish guy is here. I gotta go.”
“You’re sending someone to get me, right?”
“Hey, Johnny! How’s it—” Buck hangs up without saying goodbye.
“He’s coming,” I tell the nurse. “Twenty minutes tops.”
She looks me in the eye, pulls a roll of medical tape and a stack of gauze pads from the pocket on her scrub shirt, and throws them in my belongings bag.
“Thank you,” I say.
“For what?” she says, shrugging, like she didn’t do anything at all.
I clutch my bag of pill bottles and paperwork to keep it from flying off my lap as an orderly wheels me to the lobby. We round the last corner too fast, wheelchair listing, veering off course. When I turn to see why I’m headed toward the wall, the orderly stashes a phone in the pocket of his scrubs. He parks me by the front door while we wait for my ride.
I don’t know if Buck will send someone. His short-term memory is toast. Too much coke in the eighties, too much booze now. After a few awkward minutes watching the parking lot, I say, “You don’t have to wait with me.”
The orderly sighs. “I do.”
There’s a single brown leaf flapping on the tree in front of the building. Gusts of icy wind leak in through the worn weather stripping on the doors, making a squeak like someone blowing on a blade of grass. My arms are bare, and my teeth are clenched at the verge of chatter.
The orderly shifts from one foot to the other, back again, like maybe he has to pee. I’m considering striking a deal—his phone to call a cab in exchange for a bathroom break—when finally, a red Dodge Colt with one gray door pulls in front of the hospital.
“This is me,” I say, gesturing to the car. The orderly shoves his phone in his pocket and wheels me out, the bumps in the walkway conspiring to gut me.
“Holy shit. What happened to you?” Buck says as the orderly helps me into the car.
The passenger seat is littered with packets of rolling papers and empty beer cans. One of the cans clanks to the pavement. The orderly picks it up, pauses, at a loss for what to do, then chucks it into the car by my feet.
“What happened?” Buck asks again, as loud as if we’re in a bar full of chatter.
“Appendix,” I whisper.
“Oh. Yeah,” Buck says. His breath is beer sour.
As the orderly closes the car door, I mumble a quick thank you . We’re both too mortified to make eye contact.
“You drunk?” I ask Buck.
“What? No.” He shakes his head, and when he stops shaking, his eyes struggle to focus.
I point to the far end of the lot. “Drive to that corner.”
Buck does as he’s told.
We switch seats. I’m not sure which of us has a harder time coordinating our movements. My body is slow and heavy. It feels like the wrong twist or turn could send my insides leaking through my incision, starting as a trickle, building to a gush of intestines unraveling like spaghetti dumped from a pot—too fast and slippery to catch. I wipe my eyes and hit the gas.
“Man, you’re really washed out,” Buck says, gesturing to his face. “Kind of a wan thing…”
I watch the road. Wish he’d stop talking.
“My brother went pale like that once. We were playing a show in Manitoba. He was on PCP, and he fell off the stage. Peeled the skin right off his shinbone.” Buck laughs. “Said the devil shoved him.”
I can’t even form words to tell him to shut up. My face is sweaty, but I’m covered in goose bumps.
“He lost so much blood. And I thought, ‘Holy shit, man,’ you know? This guy came in and stitched it up with a needle that was like this big.” Buck holds his hands a foot apart. “And all he did was run a Zippo under it for like a second. It was disgusting, man, holy shit…”
I roll the window down, breathe cold air. I wish I had a mom to pick me up from the hospital. Not mine. Someone else’s. The kind who presses her hand to your forehead and always has a secret stash of ginger ale.
When I drop Buck off by the kitchen door, he lingers in the passenger seat as if we’re at the conclusion of a date he doesn’t want to end.
“You coming in?” He runs his hands through his thinning hair. It flops against his cheek, defeated. “If you take my afternoon shift, I can sleep it off.”
“I had surgery two days ago.”
“Oh,” Buck says, blinking, like he can’t see why that should interfere with his drunk nap. If I didn’t have to worry about my slithering intestines, I would push him from the car.
“I’ll be in tomorrow,” I say, which is a lie, but he won’t remember and it gets him to go.
He stumbles into The Thirsty Clam. It’s not even noon. I feel bad for whoever will have to deal with him on night shift once he’s all the way in the bag. I feel bad for Buck too. It must be exhausting to be confused all the time, to have to maintain the habits that made him this way several decades after they stopped being any fun.
I park Buck’s car next to mine, stash his keys in the visor, and haul myself out of the seat. I’m not supposed to take my first Percocet for another two hours, but the pain makes my eyes tear. I collect spit in my mouth, dig my keys from the pocket of my jeans. The driver’s seat feels wet when I sit. I pat around to make sure it’s just cold. There’s a sweatshirt on the back seat. I want to reach over and grab it, but the movement would hurt.
Twisting the child-safe cap engages my abs ever so slightly and I feel the skin on either side of my incision shift. My stomach lurches. The pill scratches my throat on the way down.
That sweatshirt is cold anyway. There’d be no point to the pain. I crank my radiator on full and endure the cold blast, hoping against hope the heat will kick in this time.