Bargains

Nick's home from New Orleans. The heat's on in the house. He has a cold. Amazing how quickly things resume in families. He's back on the couch, and the living room looks like a bedroom once again. I'm getting to the end of the term and really feeling the stress. I need to take a step back and plan, but I'm too stressed out to make myself do that. All my neurons are firing in different directions (ping ping ping). I'm dealing with the immense load of work on my plate by skipping meetings, sleeping in, and going to movies and out to dinner with the kids. Lilly and I are sitting in the cafe of our independent movie house playing a lot of scrabble. Well, darn it, I just kind of want to revel in them.
The big signal is my deteriorating chess game. And my level of irritation. I played chess with Jay yesterday in the Dakota. He was trying to figure out how to upload something on YouTube. 37 minutes, and it still didn't work. But we got in a nice chess game, which I lost.
Chess is weird with Jay. Mohammed and I used to play every day. He usually beat me, but we took a lot of pleasure in our games. Jay and I played once, 3 weeks into our relationship. He beat me. Then he wouldn't play with me any more: "You're not really a satisfying chess partner for me." He informed me. I couldn't get another game out of him for 3 years. Then I took extra special care to kick his ass. Then he wouldn't play with me because he was intimidated. "You let me win that first time." So I have to judge my game carefully--it has to good enough so that he feels challenged, but poor enough to let him win. What a pain in the ass. Why can't we just fucking play chess? The problem with this relationship is that so many simple things are conditional.
As I'm writing this, Lilly's rooting through the refrigerator. "What are you doing?" she asks.
"Writing."
"Do you have a blog?"
"Yes," I say tersely. Then I feel guilty. Here I've been writing about reveling in my children. But it's only a 1/2 hour. I only allow myself a 1/2 hour. Set the timer. Stop. It's like the chess game. I have to gauge my pleasures carefully.
She pulls out a chinese food container. "Is this still good?"
"I don't know. Have you decided it's time to clean out the refrigerator?"
"Oh, I'm sorry. You're writing. I'll leave you alone."
Lilly puts the chinese food back in the fridge, pulls out a 1/2 empty yoplait whipped yogurt container, starts to eat it. Sticks it back into the fridge. Pulls out another one, and using the same spoon, starts to eat that one.
Note to self: don't eat open yogurt in fridge. She's hanging on the door, in the way that breaks the door. I'm just trying to stay focused.
"You want a piece of toast?"
"No thank you."
We went to get Indian food at Patel's Palace yesterday. My old junior high frenemy, Rita called, leaving an enthusiastic message on my answering machine. "Haley Patton!" She yells, in her friendly Texas drawl (she lives in Texas now), "I can't believe you're still in town. I'm visiting my mom--give me a call." I call her on the way to the restaurant. I've picked Lilly up from voice lessons, snuck in a quick glass of wine with Jay during the lesson, and am driving in the freezing rain. She arrives in blue sparkly cashmere. Her ass is a lot bigger, but she's still beautiful. She must be happy. Girls' butts get bigger when they're happy. Her hair is long and blonde now. Her eyes are still the same sapphire blue (they have always been the most astounding color--since the age of 8). She was the blankest, most boy obsessed thing in junior high and high school. And then she went away to Texas and became a prosecuting attorney. I mean, from what I heard, she was just a barracuda. Who knew?
She's rich now, she married some older oil lawyer. She's sporting a huge sapphire and diamond affair on her left hand, the precise color of her eyes. 10 years ago, I remember having coffee with Rita on Christmas Eve, listening to her sob over same older oil lawyer.
She gives me a hug. All perfume and pokey hair. "Oh," she gushes. "Just look at you! I love your hair. It's so soft and lush. I want my hair to look just like yours! And these are your kids--oh my gosh, they're so big."
"That's quite a ring." I say. I know she wants me to. She wants junior high adulation. She wants the no holds barred envy that only a 13 year old can deliver.
"I know! You never know what life is going to give you! Think about how miserable we were ten years ago!"
We have a nice dinner. We eat everything in sight, and Rita joins in. She tells us about her trips and her life--it's not too bad.
"I've been to Italy, too," Lilly chimes in.
"You have? Oh that's wonderful! Where did you go?"
Lilly rattles off the list. The two of them talk Italy, which is sort of thrilling to Lilly, I think, to have something in common with this beautiful, rich creature perching at our table. Lilly brings up the leather gloves she bought me in Florence.
"Oh!" Rita says. "I know just where you got them. " She describes it. Describes the alley off the square, the little hole-in-the wall shop. Lilly nods, glowing.
"I hate to tell you, "Rita goes on, "but that place is such a rip-off--" and she launches into a whole story, oblivious to the sort of polite tension that has formed around Lilly's mouth. Lilly paid 80 euros for the gloves (on my credit card) but she really felt she was giving me something beautiful and precious.
Dinner winds up. Nick dips early to see his girlfriend. I pick up the tab, after a brief tussle. We say our goodbyes and leave. I put on my ugly hat, the one Jay got me for our first Valentine's day from Mexico and my beautiful, buttery leather gloves.
Lilly rubs them a second. "They're so soft."
"They feel like skin," I agree--"and they're warm."
"I've never seen anything like them here..."Lilly says.
"No, I haven't either. Maybe she was talking about a different shop."
"It sounded like the same shop."
"Maybe she's wrong about the shop. Have you ever seen anything like these anywhere over in this country?"
"No."
"Me either."
Lilly rubs my hands in the gloves again. Smiles. "They're so soft."
"They're beautiful."
We walk back to our car in the freezing drizzle, arms around each other's waists.

Socks and Parties

We're trying to go as long as we can without turning on the heat. We only had the heat on a few days last month, and our bill jumped to $120. So Lilly and I are wearing long underwear and heavy sweaters and spending most of our time in the library. Jay bought me three pairs of Smart Wool Socks, unexpectedly. He dropped them by the house while I was at work. "Why socks?" I asked on the phone.
"I can't stand your socks. You need good socks. Socks are important."
Well, okay.
I love them. They're so beautiful and thick and cushy. They make me feel rich. I like them so much, I safety-pin them together when I wash them keep them from getting separated. I never do things like that.
Maybe socks are important. I like wearing them at work, except they don't really do anything for my legs, which are swelling up more and more. Bilateral pitting edema. +2-3. Why? It used to resolve during the week. Now it just hangs around, swelling my trim little ankles. Breaking my heart.
"What do you think this is all about?" I ask Wiz.
"Right sided heart failure." He says dispassionately, and moves on.
Wonderful.
Drunken Disaster and I had two codes together over the weekend. During the first one, as we were desperately slamming fluids into our triple A, who was exsanguinating in front of us, I said "Get the plasma up," and she said, "It wouldn't hurt you to say please once in awhile."
Several retorts came to mind. 1) "Please--kiss my ass" 2)Only if you stop drinking! But I said neither. I said, "Oh, Morgan, I'm so sorry." Then afterwards, she told me that she thought I was a little bossy.
"Really?" I secretly felt sort of proud. It's taken me so long to be bossy. I mean, in my life, I've never been bossy. I can't believe I've become bossy enough to have people complain to me about it! But I didn't say that. I said, "I'm sorry you feel that way, Morgan. Sometimes in a crisis situation I do become a little terse. I'll tell you what, I'll work on softening up if you work on not taking personally."
"Done." She said. And I started to like her a little bit.
I asked Marcy later, "Am I bossy?"
She just started laughing. "Oh my God. Are you kidding?"
"I am?"
"You are SO bossy."
I asked Wiz. Who also started laughing. "Oh no, not you. Never you."
Hmm.
After work, I dragged Lilly and Marcy and her kid out to a party at Hunter's in Deerville, where he owns a building in their tiny downtown. There was an R&B band, made up of middle-aged white people that was pretty good, and lots of food. Everyone we know is there. Sybil, dressed in velvet and cowboy boots, hair long blonde and flowing, overly made-up eyes glazed and wild--she looks like she's done a lot of acid at some time in the distant past--smiles ecstatically at me as I come in, kisses me on both cheeks. Then she kisses the redheaded woman behind me square on the mouth. Guess I got off easy. "Oh, my God, Mom," Lilly hisses, "She just kissed that woman on the mouth. " "Act casual," I tell Lilly, who starts giggling. There are other kids there, hanging out upstairs, playing games and reading. Lilly joins them.

Sybil and Hunter dance in front of the band, Sybil moving like a snake and Hunter sort of stumbling his bulk in rhythm, his bald head gleaming, in the dim light. He clearly has an erection, his khakis stretched across his groin. The band's playing "Werewolves of London" Jay and I are outside on the porch watching the scene through the window.
"Acck." Jay says. "there's something really wrong with this picture."
Marcy comes up beside us. I think Marcy's life would be better if she had a little lovin, so that's been my project lately: the Marcy Lovin Project. She's wearing a bowler hat made out of ostrich feathers. She looks exactly like a muppet. "I think she's a witch." She says, watching Sybil slithering around the floor.
"It's bad when hillbillies get experimental."
"It's so....french."
"Those french people have a word for everything." We all start laughing. A guy comes up, asks Marcy to dance. She bobs off, feathers flouncing.
"Let's do some Crocket County Woman Flinging," Jay says, and pulls me close. We dance on the porch, by ourselves. It's nice, because neither of us are very good dancers, but we do like dancing with each other. The band starts playing "Take Me to the River"
That's my 1/2 hour.

Bless. Their. Hearts.

Trying to write a paper on class mobility for my community health class. Does it exist?
No.
Stuck in the library, spent my time scouting Brooks Brothers deals on ebay and resolving an unpaid item strike. Not all my time. Halie in the cat suit has made me angry. Which she does on purpose. Met with the director of pharmacy in the morning. I got lost. In my own hospital. I ran into the Assistant director, Charles, whom I know well.
"How can you possibly be lost?" He asks me incredulously. "You come down here all the time!" I'm on a Quality Assurance team. We're trying to get the hospital to vaccinate family members of newborns with TdaP. The pharmacy director was very pleasant. I liked his messy desk and his neat files. He looked like he got things done. He was the kind of regular guy I believe there used to be a lot of in the 50's, but have since disappeared in this land of raging ego. Small unstylish glasses, nice shoes not overly shined, grey flannel pants, dress shirt and tie. Hair cut short, no particular style. He reminded me of my grandfather. A picture of him with his plump grey-haired unpretentious looking wife under a palm tree somewhere warm. Friendly. Just the kind of person who should be in charge of the pharmacy. No status symbols around--gold pens, things like that.
"Any chance of getting this for free?" I ask him.
"Not a chance." He tells me pleasantly. "Solvent altruism--those are my watchwords."
Our team leader is this little elderly physician named Dr. Barrelman. He's a little full of himself.
"Dr. Barrelman, bless his heart, would give all the medicine away to everyone for free. But last time I checked, the public health option hadn't passed." He smiles. I change my appraisal. "bless their hearts" is hospital code for "asshole"
"Bless his heart."I repeat.
"Bless. His. Heart."
So, no free vaccine.
I run into Dr. Barrelman in the Thai restaurant, where Lilly and I are splitting coconut curry and dumplings, extra hot. He's sitting in the corner with a blissfully beautiful young blonde woman. There are only 4 parties in the restaurant tonight--the mayor's son-in-law is getting progressively soused with the editor of the paper, both are arguing passionately and loudly over the new bicycle ordinance, a bunch of Chinese kids giggling and flirting with each other, Dr. Barrelman and the mystery blonde, and us. It's Lilly's therapy day, and we always go out to eat afterwards. Well, the sequence goes like this: Lilly and I have therapy. Lilly goes to the Dakota to chill out and I go grab a glass of wine with Jay. Lilly and I always fight after therapy. But we discovered if we take a break for a little bit, right afterwards, we don't. Then we eat dinner and study downtown. For some reason, these days are really difficult for us. Lilly is getting more depressed. We can both see it happening, but we don't know what to do. I don't know what to do! Maybe Italy again? She cries a lot. She wants to be perfect at everything. She wants a boyfriend. She wants life to be different. She says she only feels alive when she's in a movie theater. "Do you want to go see a movie?" I suggest.
"No! You don't get it!"
Dr. Barrelman and the luminous blonde come over to our table. "Hello, there!" he says. "Rebecca, right?"
"Haley."
"Oh, right."
"Medical school...4th year, right?
"Trauma Surgical Intensive Care Unit. Nurse."
"Oh! Right! This is my wife, Kyrie."
"As in, Kyrie eleison?"
"Yes," she breathes, extending a warm, pretty hand, "That is my chosen name." She smiles. "I think you're in my yoga class."
"I believe I am."
"Namaste."
Lilly's eyes are bright and amused.
"I just started teaching." She says. "My first class, tonight!"
"I just went to my first class," Dr. Barrelman says, beaming through his elfin wrinkles. "It was marvelous! How did your meeting with Stanley go?"
"He's not giving it to us for free."
"Bless his heart." Dr. Barrelman says.
"Bless his heart." I repeat.
Kyrie smiles benevolently. "Bless us all." she says sincerely.
That's my 1/2 hour.

Invisible Nurses

Dressed in my ebay Brooks Brothers dotted navy silk skirt and rust-colored silk sweater for clinicals, sitting quietly in xray rounds at the back of the room, two floors up with the medicine docs. Code pager goes off. Everyone goes for the pagers.
"It's the code pager," one snorts, a little guy with gel spiked hair and a chiva. "Probably SI."
"5 codes yesterday."
"Yeah, and every time they called us the damn nurse told us we weren't needed."
Narrow faced blonde resident: "Then they shouldn't fucking page us if they don't need us."
I think back to yesterday afternoon, and remember her (suprisingly, given my facility with faces) leaning against the sink during the code, as we tripped over her trying to get to the med box. Interesting that no one recognized me as the damn nurse. No one looks at nurses.
5 codes. On the same patient. Wiz covered with blood and shit. We'd get her back, then we'd lose her. Then we'd get her back. The family was in the room the whole time. Came suddenly, with no warning. Sweet little old lady, squeezing my hand and smiling, waking up from surgery. Started to give her a unit of blood, making pleasant conversation with the family, who were just chatting, chatting, I watched her blood pressure plummet after a few minutes--20 points systolic--not awful, but not good
"Excuse me," I say, politely, and feel that weird slow calm coming that always happens when things are about to get really bad.
Finally, after 4 hours of this, the family had had enough.
"I can't stand this," her husband says. "I just can't stand this."
Death takes hours. It takes more paperwork to die than it does to get a student loan. There's a checklist and a certificate and the medical examiner, and all the signatures, and washing and bagging the body, and the funeral home, and people flying in who want to see the body, and calling in the social worker on call, because the VA won't let them in on their own into the morgue--you wouldn't believe the amount of detail work that goes into coding someone 5 times and then closing their chart. Our new nurse, Patricia, who is a little inept, but tries really hard, is doggedly HELPING me each step of the way. "Sit down. Eat some yogurt. I have organic. You need to take care of you." Helps me wash and bag the body. As we're about to zip the bag up, I reflexively feel her carotid. Is that a pulse?
It's happened to me once. A 17 year old girl. Blue line pulsing in her neck as we were about to bag her. Coded her again. Lost her.
"Patty, do you feel a pulse?"
Patty places her hand on her neck, then her femoral artery. "No, no pulse."
I suddenly feel as if I'm going to start crying.
"I think I feel a pulse. Excuse me."
Sometimes, after these things, I think I go a little crazy. Not in a way I can immediately perceive. But I know that I'm not right.
I go get Wiz.
Wiz has been weird since he came back. He's very quiet. He hasn't made eye contact with me or spoken to me personally at all. He doesn't even return my 'good morning.' When he tells me things, it's in short, polite, informational sentences. It's been a little strange and lonely. He's a lot thinner and paler and his hair is too fuzzy. I don't know what's up.
I walk into the patient's room where Wiz is on the other side of the unit. He turns around right away and holds my hand, like I'm a little kid.
"What is it?"
"Please come tell me my patient's dead."
"Ok."
We walk back to the room holding hands. He checks the pulses, carotid, femoral.
"I felt a pulse." I explain.
"I know. But she doesn't have one."
"She's dead?"
He checks her all over, like my dad would do, going through the closets and under the bed when I was little.
"She's dead."
"It's ok to put her in the shroud?"
"Yes. It's ok, Haley. She's not here anymore. No, you're not crazy."
Then he goes out of the room.
Patty looks at me. "I just love you," she says. "Please don't ever stop working here. Because I really like you as a person, and I really like working with you."
"Thank you for the yogurt."
We bag her. I clean the blood on the floor with H2O2.
We're there late, going over the code sheets, putting the code carts back together (we went through 7 drug boxes) catching up on charting. Marcy helps me. We walk out together and find Wiz lying on the couch in the break room, head back over the arm rest, singing Uriah Heap.
"You ok?"I ask.
"I'm covered in shit and blood. My legs are all gritty when I walk, and they rub together in this weird way."
"Should remind you of your club days in Minneapolis" I say
"That's why they call me 'boy.'"
"That is not why they call you 'boy.'"
"Call no man a fool." He says.
"Call no man raca. But can you call them a fucking idiot?"
"Your halloween ok?"
"No. "
"Figured. What'd she pull?"
Halie.
"Costume problems?"
He nods and smiles. "Did it involve spandex?"
"How did you know? Cat suit unitard. No bra. Little fluffy tail."
"You know, this is just about them--it's still their fight and you're just in the middle, right? They don't even see you."
"I know."
"People are viciously self-centered. Rapaciously attached to their own self-interest."
Marcy and I are both standing over him. Tired blood little Wiz.
"What are you guys talking about?" Marcy asks.
That's my 1/2 hour.

Marcy