Choices

It's Monday. I feel scourged.

Nick is trying to choose a college. He's narrowed down his choices to Sewanee and Loyola New Orleans. My father has sent me 7 emails encouraging me to help him pick a college. Duh. My parents have called three times today.

I had 4 patients over the weekend. One was a suicide. His family was mystified. Beautiful family. It came as a complete surprise. Hard not to hope. Fine line to walk. Sometimes he had responses, some times he didn't. His daughter would grasp onto these--"He's in there. Do you think he can hear me? Do you think there's hope? What would you do?"

I cop out of these questions when I can. When I can't, I stick to the truth.

"Have you seen injuries like this get better?"

"Yes." Well, I have. I had a patient whose brains would come out of his nose when I turned him. Unbelievably, he recovered. It's always amazing how much of your brain you can actually do without and not really notice. We would joke when we suctioned him and find grey matter on the pillow--"Oh, look at that...graduation..."

His sister takes me aside. "Please try not to give these girls any hope."

You try to keep yourself clear, open, present. It's hard.

"I'm so sorry," his sister told me at one point. "I'm sorry I tried to take over."

"Designer death," snorts Wiz. "Everyone wants control over everything. "

Wiz has taken a second job, he won't say where. He is clenched like a fist. Short. Exhausted. Noncommunicative and brutal when he is. No joking, no singing, no weird aphorisms or flights of philosophical soap-boxing. Work. He's checking off his tasks. He acts like a prisoner, like a cart horse.

"You have limits, too," I say to him, after Friday's shift.

"Thank you for your opinion." He says, giving me his back as he walks down the hall.

"Sauce for the goose."

"Go tell aunt Rhodie." He can't resist.

"Don't forget your medication tomorrow!" I call after him cheerfully.

He's a little better Saturday. At least he engages in banter. And he's nice to Marcy. I am submerged with my suicide.

Sunday, we have a care conference to discuss palliative and withdrawal of care. It's perfectly awful. I had a flat tire on the way to work, didn't get my cafe con leche. I also found out this week that I have some sort of growth on my thyroid I have to get biopsied. I worry about telling this to Jay. Somehow, I don't think he's the type for the long haul through sickness. My shrink disagreed with me on this point. "Look at his history," he pointed out. "the more screwed up you are, the better."

"How are you holding up?" Wiz asks me, Sunday.

Oh, good. He's back.

Someone leaves a funeral wreath in the ICU waiting room. One of our crazier family members goes screaming about this all the way to the CEO. It's our fault some lunatic leaves a funeral wreath? Now we're supposed to police the waiting room?

I admit a patient from a car accident. Miraculously all right. His buddy who was in the car with him walks out of the emergency room AMA and up into the unit. He has a gash on his head pouring blood and as he walks, you can see that his right leg is clearly broken, because the bone is torquing the skin. "I want to see Ed!" He screams. "I got to see Ed right fucking now."

"Could you please go back to the waiting room. You also might want to go back to the ER."

"I'm fine. Those fucking doctors don't know what they're doing. I want to see Ed." The same woman who screamed about the wreath screams about this, too. "He's upsetting people!" she tells Wiz. "Make him go to the doctor."

"I can't," Wiz tells her, holding her hands, "it's his choice. People make their own choices. He's not threatening anyone, and he has a friend here. If he becomes disruptive, we can call security, but otherwise, there's really nothing we can do."

"He's disrupting me!" She says.

The family decides to withdraw care. We page the palliative team. Everyone wants a piece of this death. The wife and daughters are under siege. Is there anyone out there who knows what it means to really support someone? There's a doctor in the family who goes on and on about what will happen when they remove the vent. There's a friend who keeps interrupting the wife and saying "What she's trying to say is..."

I'm so glad to get out of there. Finally the shift is over. And then at the end, one of the daughters says, "Will you be there, with him when they withdraw care?"

"I'm not working tomorrow." I tell them.

"Oh, that's too bad. Do you know who it will be?"

"No." Shit. So I went today. Put on my twin set and rode my bicycle over. The bike lock's rusted. Couldn't find socks. Is there anything that makes you feel more poverty stricken than not wearing socks? The crazy wife notices. "You're not wearing socks!" She says, pointing at my feet. I wonder if she'll complain about this, too.

"I know. My kids did the wash."

She laughs. "I have socks if you want them," she tells me.

That's my 1/2 hour.

Voting

I voted today, of course.

Jay woke me up early this morning. He was so excited. He wanted to be the first person at the polls. Dork.

"Wake up! We have to go vote!"

I started to get up. It was pitch black outside. The stars were shining, the hill and the pond sloping away. The sweet incense like smell of the leaves blowing in. It's very warm here. We had slept with the windows open. Then I looked at the clock. 4:30 am.

I don't love either Jay or Barack that much.

"It's 4:30 am."

"Oh, sorry."

We couldn't go back to sleep, so made love instead. Then fell asleep after.

At 6:18 sharp, I was awakened by the sound of gunfire. Lots of it.

"What's that?"

"Duck hunting season started. They have a precise time they can start shooting. First light. Changes every day."

Maybe a little grey yellow light was breaking over the hills. It almost looked imaginary. "It sounds like we're being attacked." The gunfire continued.

"Christ, how many of them are out there?"

Jay got up, made coffee. He's going to upstate New York today for 5 days, then to Alberta, Idaho, and some place else. He was going to go to Canada last week to film a duck hunting special for Bass Pro, but for some reason, the ducks blew it off. No ducks. Maybe they're getting organized--getting the word out.

Heck, if a black man can get himself elected of this country, it would not surprise me one bit if the ducks were getting wise to the hunters.

I'll miss Jay, but it's good that he's going, because I'm really behind on my classwork.

It's funny, but I haven't even thought about race during this campaign. I wonder if most people still do. I was reading a blog called "The Root" this morning--I'll post the link--and it framed this election in racial terms, which surprised me. "Yeah," I thought, "I guess they have a point." But I never thought one of the key things about Obama was his race. It was always considered impolite in my family to notice and comment on things like race and ethnicity--although my mother often did--comments utterly ignored by my grandmother and father. It fell into the same category as finances. Whether you were accepted or not ostensibly should depend on your charm and character, and not your background, race, or finances, good or bad.

Then I went to Dartmouth. And one of my housemates, Eileen Brown, said something to me that I'll remember the rest of my life. I had just made the idiotic comment that I didn't really notice whether people were white or black (I was nineteen, okay?). And she said, "If you're really my friend, you had better damn well notice I'm black. Because being black involves a lot of stuff that you'd better be mad about and worried about if you really are my friend."

I drove into town. I passed the Little Dixie county fire, the polling place by Jay's. Packed. Pick-up trucks pulled over on the side of the road a quarter mile down. I've never seen the polling places so crowded.

I vote at Unity church, which everyone who doesn't know me very well thinks I should attend. I like voting days, because I get to see all the funny little people who live in my just-hanging-on-by-our-bitten-fingernails-to-middle-class (whewww) neighborhood I have to wait in line to show my i.d. I think about being grumpy and complaining that this is unconstitutional, but the little old lady is so kind and excited as she checks my address, I can't muster up the meanness. She's wearing a lavender pantsuit, with embroidered violets on the lapels. A bent little Nigerian man with a name that takes up almost his entire nametag (his wife, equally bent is standing beside the ballot box in a bright head scarf) explains in great detail to me how I am to fill in the circles next to the candidates of my choice. They've changed pen brands for this election (thick, sharpie magic markers were used in the past), and the pens they've supplied us with have much thinner tips, so the poll workers are very anxious that we get this right. (Paloma never has problems with votes being messed up, let me tell you. The city of OCD.)

I complete my ballot. It does take longer with the new pens. Give it to the Nigerian lady.

"Sticker! You must have a sticker!" She calls after me, runs up, hands me an "I voted" sticker. "and you're taking the pen." So I am. I sheepishly hand it back to her. Then I walk outside the church. An older woman I don't know in sweeping scarves is walking towards me. "You look so beautiful!" she tells me, beaming. "What beautiful colors you're wearing." I hadn't noticed, but I guess they are--wine and amber and brown courdouroy tree of life skirt, green suede jacket, plum pashmina.

"thank you. Have a good day!"

"I am, oh, I am." she says, beaming.

A man is several feet behind her. "Good morning," he says, smiling.

"Good morning!" I reply.

"It's going to be a beautiful afternoon." He says. He stops on the walk. He is in his late 50's, neatly, cheaply dressed. Khakis, blue and white striped shirt. Hair needs a trim. I've never seen him before in my life "It's going to be a good day tomorrow, too, I think."

"I think." I say. "I hope."

"I hope."

We look at each other. He has tears in his eyes. I pat his hand. He nods, gives my hand a squeeze, and goes inside the church.

Oh, man. I hope.

That's my 1/2 hour.