Chapter 10
The regimen my nurse friend helped me out with is good, but my arm still hurts like all hell. A simple online search tells me that this is my lot in life for however long. Yeah, not surprising. Bet there are a bunch of lots in life I’m about to deal with.
Trying to process physical pain and emotional pain is clearly too much, so making the decision to just completely deal with neither seems reasonable.
Maybe not responsible, but I’m happy to do so.
It’s hard to reconcile that I’m not crying or screaming, and I feel like a bit of a monster because I should be doing both.
But nothing is happening. My heart is empty of even basic emotion.
The only feeling parts of me are soundly telling me to get the hell out of here.
Megan Madonna is again a lifesaver, and after balking at the state of my wrist, she questions this Maine trip and helps me pack.
She agrees to watch over my place for however long I’m gone, and I’m hoping she’ll have some fun here in this Newbury Street spot.
I do laugh when she presents to me a pair of pajamas with polar bear prints.
This girl knows I’ve been following the San Diego Zoo cameras for ages and that I’ve been obsessed with these gorgeous animals.
How I cried when one of the bears died. I laugh harder when she gives me a matching fleece wrap with a hood, complete with cute bear ears.
“Should you find yourself somewhere colder after this trip.”
We shoot a post about my arm and all the surgery details while I’m slumped on my couch. But only after she’s pointed out my hair situation and sort of fixed it. Bless her.
And then she encourages me to talk about Patrick. “Diana, you’ve been offline for a bit, and I think your people will know it’s not just your wrist.” She pauses. “Everybody has lost somebody. But maybe not like this.”
Megan is right. I ask her to film before I back out.
“While the arm thing sucks, I have something worse to share.” I take a big breath. “You guys may remember Patrick from my post about clamming.” I sigh and swallow hard.
Dammit. Now I’m going to say it out loud and make it real.
“Patrick died in a car crash. He was my best friend. So funny and sort of iconic among our friend group.”
Tears I didn’t expect are involuntarily dropping, so thank God for sleeves to wipe them away.
“He wasn’t my spouse, my father, my son, my brother, so I feel like I can’t claim this loss the way other people can.
Deserve to. My heart is breaking for his wife, as they were so, so immeasurably in love.
But I’m hurting so much still. There’s no way that I’m the only person in this situation, but I do feel so alone right now.
But I know I’m not. Please share your losses and your hurt, and let’s all lift each other up to the sky above. ”
She posts for me.
The next morning, I awake to an astounding number of comments. I’m not, it turns out, alone. So many people share their losses, their hurts, their sympathies. Similar kinds of lonely pain. God, I love my community.
While Megan Madonna and I are loading up my SUV, I take a short walk around the corner to peek at the alley animals.
The little runty guy emerges again, so alone.
I call out to him, and when he starts to come to me, his awful mother shows herself again from a matter of yards away, with that same terrifying howl.
The one that pushes her baby away from food.
If I don’t do something, she’s going to starve him to death.
I scream rather desperately and stupidly at the rotten mom, even taking angry steps forward and holding my palm out flat as I try to back her up. “You’re not very nice! Move it!”
She budges, but not much.
“In fact, you’re fucking awful. How’s that for the truth?”
Now really pissed off and not afraid of her hisses, I stand tall and continue to edge her away. For a half a second, she looks to Stripy Boy, as though she might charge at him, and now I’m done. That’s it. This is the last time I’m letting her threaten her baby.
Aliens has always been one of my favorite movies, so it’s not surprising that when I launch myself in front of her, I yell, “Get away from him, you bitch!”
Huh. That actually worked. The horrid mama seems pretty terrorized by my threat, as she cannot launch herself away fast enough.
Good goddamn riddance. Sure, it might be some kind of natural survival-of-the-fittest thing that she cut him off from food to save the others, but I don’t care. In my eyes, she’s a monster.
The little one inches toward me a bit and sits. While I’m not one to anthropomorphize, he’s got to be telling me that he needs help.
“Sweet baby,” I coo.
I snatch him up and walk him up the stairs. He screams and howls when I plunk him down in my bedroom.
Now what am I supposed to do? Clearly, I didn’t think things through.
Knowing zip about taking care of a pet of any sort, I sit on the bed and place an order for a carrier, food, litter, a super-fancy robot litter box, and three cozy beds.
“We have a cat now,” I announce after I emerge and close the door. “Crazy-big order placed.”
“Of course we do,” my tireless assistant flatly replies.
After the delivery arrives and she’s helped load everything into my SUV, I can practically hear her rightful silent sigh because this is yet another weird move that I haven’t thought out and one I’m clearly doing in some bananas-induced grief/pain moment.
Stripy Baby is likely to spook easily, I would assume, so when I go to load him into my car, I arm my right hand with a pot holder and move in.
When I’m close enough, feigning confidence, I swoop in with my pot-holder hand and pull him next to me.
My heart pounds as I near the trunk. Before I plop this miserable thing into the carrier, I lift him up high, compelling further screams. But I confirm my gut feeling that he is a boy.
He screams wildly, hisses, and tries to scratch me.
This is not one of the magical rescues one sees on social media.
This little shit doesn’t care that I’m saving him. Still, I love him.
“You have a rotten mom. She thinks you’re a runt shit, but I think you’re the best. You’re a top cat. So, here we go. Ready for a road trip?”
The continued lashing out as I move him down a few feet tells me that he is not at all ready for a road trip—frankly, neither am I—so I basically shove him into the large plastic carrier and me into my SUV and get us on our way.
I idle for a few minutes and realize that I haven’t thought about the challenges of driving with one hand. After shutting my eyes for a bit and picturing what I have to do while behind the wheel, I decide I can do this and not put myself or anyone else in jeopardy.
Before I get on the highway, I stop at my surgeon’s office.
They haven’t returned my calls, despite their emails about scheduling an appointment.
So, fine, I don’t have an appointment, but I am going to throw a world-class fit and demand to have my stitches taken out and this cast replaced.
Apparently, I am scary enough, and they send me through another conveyer belt of people—one who takes me into a room, one who cuts off my cast, another who plucks out sutures.
Finally, my blinky surgeon examines my naked wrist and nods, and then yet another guy shows up to fit me with a cast that feels more normal, one that only reaches below my elbow this time.
I will miss none of these wretched people.
It’s only after I’ve put in the GPS address that I realize it’s a six-hour drive, and it will put me just under the Canadian border.
This is not a quick shot to Portland or anything, and I’m starting to get nervous about how isolated this Maine area might be.
But my new, unwilling cat companion and I hit the road.
We listen to music, everything from moody shit to dance pop to country and beyond, and talk to ourselves out loud.
Granted, it’s mostly me, but occasionally, my traveling companion shows up with a hiss or gnarly screech.
“Hey, you! Top Cat, what kind of music do you like?” My questions shout into a vacuum. “What’s your name? Top Cat feels right. Maybe Whiska? Whiska Hargitay? Do you watch SVU?”
After a few hours into the drive, my voice searches don’t deliver much, and there are seemingly no big supermarkets on my route, nor any near my destination.
Or much else. After luckily stumbling upon a weird strip mall, I pull over because it has both a food mart of some kind and, more importantly, a giant chain pet store that hosts a pet clinic. Good thing I bought a carrier.
My newly acquired cat is not happy about being forced to see a vet, but the one we see is endearingly not at all put off about seeing a feral being who was yanked from the streets of Boston.
The wonderful Dr. G listens to what I know about this kitten that I grabbed and am taking north, and she eyes my arm in a sling with compassion.
This cat and I are a rather pathetic pair.
When I unzip the carrier and tentatively touch and then toss my guy up to the table, he throws a fit and is all claws and hisses, baring his teeth and nearly biting the vet.
After reasonably deciding that he cannot possibly be properly examined—given, as she kindly puts it, “how feisty he is”—she asks where I’m headed.
She smiles as I tell her the obscure location.
“I actually have a good vet friend near there.”
She calmly feeds Whiska food that she’s loaded with gabapentin—apparently a sedative—and tells me to give him a few more pills in the morning.
“He’ll be easy to check out when he’s calm. He’s a good baby. My friend will see him in the morning.” Dr. G pats my shoulder. “You did good with him, okay? Really. You saved him. He just might be a challenge.”