What if?

Obama's coming tonight.

I had to park way down on Broadway, by the old railway station, across from 2nd Baptist to get to yoga. Every parking space was taken by 5:30 pm. I cut through the alley for a few blocks, padding across the bricks on my disintegrating eccos, carrying my yoga pants. The sun was setting. The whole town bathed in golden light. The old Bell South building lit up like the temple of Solomon, amber against the clear blue sky. It's warm this evening. People were drifting South along the streets towards campus. All sorts of people. There's this happy feeling in town--it feels quiet but charged. It feels like Easter morning, only a little more carnival.

After yoga, the sun had set, but the feeling in town was the same. Everyone I saw smiled at me and I smiled back. I got some ice cream (chocolate orange sorbet) and went across to the Dakota, called Jay from the house phone.

"I just called you." He said.

"I figured."

"Are you downtown? I feel one hundred years old. We were shooting in the woods all day--three miles in three miles back--boom jib camera all on my back. I don't know whether I'm cut out for this."

"Are you going to go to the rally?"

"No...that whole crowd thing..."

"Me either."

His phone went dead then and he hung up.

I went home. Lilly and I watched The Office. I went back to working on my research proposal.
Then, Lilly suddenly said, "I want to go."

"Go where?"

"To see Obama. I want to go."

I looked at her. Shrugged. "Okay. Let's go."

All the sudden she was on fire to leave, nagging us. "Come on. Hurry. "

"Jesus, Lilly."

Nick dropped us off. We started walking toward campus, getting caught up in the flow, the crowd, going faster and faster. I called Jay. "We decided to go."

He laughed. "Me, too!" I could hear the crowd over the phone. "I'm here, too! You won't be able to find me--but I'm here, too."

But we did find him. That's the funny thing about Jay and I. We always make the same decisions--turn right, turn left. We instinctually follow the same path. Jay took turns lifting Lilly and I up on his shoulders, and I could see Obama--far away.

It was a nice crowd. Easily 50,000 people. Everyone polite. Everyone happy. Good feeling. I hope he wins.

The thing is, though, with Obama, I always expect him to say something else. I don't know what it is. But somehow, I don't get what I expect. It doesn't move me. Maybe I'm cynical, maybe I'm tired. But the words don't roll. The words don't ring. Just about--but they never go over the top. Almost...almost...

Well, we'll see. I hope he wins. I hope he keeps his promises.

We need a lot. We need so much.

I want this to be the country of the kind. I want the hungry fed. I want there to be dignity for the poor. I want us to be reasonable. I want the hate to disappear. I want things to be...real again. I'm tired of turning on the television and seeing these fake lives. I'm tired of our aspirations centering on material gain instead of ideals. I want there to be earnest young men running around college campuses again. Where are all the earnest young men?

I don't know. I want change, but I'm afraid to even hope for it. Something in me has copped to the fact that politically, I don't count. That the best I can do is duck and cover, and scrape out some small place for me and mine.

What if things were fair again? What if that was the expectation? What if the poor weren't villified? What if? What if? What if one out of three people didn't get cancer? What if our sick were cared for? What if we woke up again to the conviction that if we wanted to, we could make a difference? What if we didn't have the inner certainty the cards were stacked against us from the beginning?

Interesting.

That's my 1/2 hour.

That's my 1/2 hour.

My 42nd Birthday

It was my birthday yesterday. I got sick.

I dropped Lilly off at her school, did my accounts. Every day, I look at how much I have to spend and how far I am in the hole. I am about 1200 in the hole this month. I had a bill from the university I wasn't expecting, and Elka had to get repaired.
"Next time, " Stavros says, "please to bring me the car for the roof before the rain storm!" $435. Brakes, windshield wipers, and roof. I was okay driving it without the wipers and brakes, but you gotta have the roof working in Little Dixie in October. It rains all the time.
I was doing pretty well until that bill. But, guess what! I had enough in savings to pay for it! It didn't go on a card--so I consider that a small victory.
I watch Lilly walk into the school--it's an old red brick building downtown. She's getting too thin. She has almost straight A's this quarter--the first time ever in her life. Hard classes, too. AP European history, Latin...but she just keeps losing weight. Every time I go back to school, Lilly falls apart in some way. It's this constant gnawing worry. No lightness possible. I watch her walk up the stairs, jeans hanging off her. Then I pullout into traffic. My parents wanted to take me to breakfast at Ernie's. I don't really have the time to go--I have to work on my research proposal and really need the time--but, I think. It's my birthday and having breakfast with my aging parents is more important in the universal scheme of things than going to the library and working on my research proposal.

As I pull into the left-hand turn lane, a pick-up truck turning right across the street from me by Senior Hall slams on its brakes, and a bicyclist goes down under the wheels. She hits her head on the bumper and sort of rolls and twists in a forward tumble onto the street.

"Shit," I think.

I start to get out of the car right there, but then think about all the other people in back of me. I drive over instead, pulling onto the sidewalk and get out, running to where she's fallen.

"Call 911" I tell the stricken driver. (Just like in the training video!) Then I make her lie down and stablize her neck. She's completely coherent. "I knew that." she tells me. "I knew I should do that. I'm a physical therapists. I know you!" Her pulse is racing, but not too fast. She doesn't appear to have any injuries. I put my jacket under her and put another coat over her and wait for the calvary to arrive.

"Don't move," I tell her.

The fire truck arrives and the paramedics get out. I get out of the way. This bald guy in carhart overalls kneels over her and places his hands on either side of her head. Then the ambulance from Crockett County Hospital--our nemesis--arrives and this sort of fat, middle-aged guy gets ou.
"Stand up." He tells her.

"Don't you think you should put a collar on her, first?" I ask politely.

"Ma'am," the bald guy says to me, "please leave this to the professionals. We know when she needs a collar."

She needed a collar. Right away. C2 fractures can destablize--look okay--then, crack, hi! You're a quadraplegic!

But I'm not going to get into it. I gather my coats and leave before they can get my name or interview me. I've done my duty.

But I'm angry. I call my unit educator. Tell her the scenario. "She needed a collar, right?"

"Of course she needed a collar."

Crocket County Paramedics. Bunch of morons. Horrible hospital. There was a van wreck 3 years ago--18 illegal Guatemalans. Crockett's ambulances were first on the scene. Took them to Crockett first, before ours, Crockett turned them away. Refused to even triage. Some of the victims were level 3's, could have been easily treated at Crockett--we lost precious, precious time, sifting through them, transporting them across town--a woman died, bled out. If we'd gotten her in time? If Crockett had done their job instead of practicing wallet triage...no legal risk, right? They were only illegal aliens. How on earth do you call yourself a nurse and do that? How do you wake up and look at yourself in the mirror?

Then I get to Ernie's. My parents aren't there. But my friend Alice (Alice the doctor who hung up her MD pretty much and now communes with plants) is. With a handpainted table cloth.
"Figured you'd be here on your birthday."
We wait for my parents. I finally call. They forgot. I'm their only child!
"No worries--" truel. Actually, I'm relieved. I didn't have time for a long horrible breakfast at Ernie's, smiling at my mother's snipes.
But they arrive anyways.
My mother launches into it right away. "It's just ridiculous that you're encouraging Nick to apply to all these colleges. What is he going to be? A history teacher? He should go to community college. You can't afford it. He'll never be able to afford it. This whole thing is stupid."

The tirade continues through breakfast. My mom. The mean fairy.

Alice excuses herself. She gives me a hug. "I love you like a sister, " she whispers, "I don't know how you ended up okay."

I don't react, eat my breakfast. My stomach hurts. Kiss everyone goodbye. Go to the library.

Xavier's best friend, Saul, has tracked me down, I find. He's emailed me a picture of himself, taken on a train in China. Golden fields behind him. I look at the picture and so much comes rushing back. Like a ghost wind over grass. Saul. Creaky and dear. Prematurely grey. Cuban. Jewish. We both loved Xavier equally. In a way, we were more partners than Xavier and I ever. United in our caretaking. 10 years since I've seen him. Oh, there was so much that I loved in Miami and left behind.

"How are you? Happy birthday."

Nick calls me. He's skipping school to take me to lunch. No studying today! What do you do? I go to lunch with Nick at Nino's. We get the soup.

I decide not to go to the library. I go to the Dakota instead. Lilly calls me and informs me she's going to hang out downtown with her friends. Okay.

The Dakota's internet doesn't work, so I walk over to the Pear Street Bohemia--another coffee shop--a little more upscale than the Dakota---leather couches, fake fireplaces. That sort of thing. There's only one table with an outlet. I plant myself there, and immediately, the guy at the next table starts hitting on me. This used car salesman type. I mean, he won't stop talking. God. I try all these sort of polite ways to shut him down. Finally, I text Jay to come over. He does. Pick-up over. But so is studying.

Lilly comes by the Bohemia, we go home and go for a run together. She literally runs circles around me, but I make about three miles--pretty good for not running for 2 weeks.

Nick is working on his college essay for Tulane. He's blocking it.

I have a date with Jay. He's made dinner, but I can't eat anything. He gives me this beautifual card with nice loving things written inside. I don't understand why he can write "I love you" but can't say it. Oh well. You take what you get. He gave me a silver and white turquoise bracelet, nestled in desert sage and lavender that he picked in the Nevada wilderness. I'm definitely running a fever at this point, but find it in me to make love anyways. Funny how that works. Saul pops into my mind, briefly, right afterward. I send a blessing. I never feel guilty about things like that. The subconscious is exactly that...sub.

At 3 am I wake up, head pounding. Mouth dry. Feverish. I call into work. Sleep in. Too sick to even drink coffee.

It's grey and cold. Now I'm home. Lilly is doing situps. Postal Service is playing.

42. That's what I did on my birthday. And that's my 1/2 hour.

Homecoming

Nick is back from Tulane. He went there with his grandfather. I think they had a good time. They took a streetcar to Bourbon street and had alligator sandwiches. But he's not talking too much about it. I think the whole college application thing makes him very nervous.
My friends say it's good that he feels secure enough to go away. I'm not sure how we'll pay for it. He got a 31 on the ACT, which is enough for him to get a full scholarship to our state university, so that may be it.
I've never been to New Orleans. I feel really terrible that my dad is the one taking him on college trips instead of me. I shouldn't have gone back to grad school. It's too much. 8 weeks ago I was really happy, feeling like I'd bet on all the right horses. Now I'm a mess. Lilly got her braces off, and dropped 8 more pounds. Her periods have stopped.
"Lilly's too thin," my mother says on the phone tonight, stating the obvious. "I took her out to eat and she only had a peanut butter sandwich."
My mother is having trouble with Nick growing up, too.
Both of my folks retired this year, and they're going crazy. They paved over their entire front yard with decorative bricks. They also put up a gazebo, decorated with party lights and artificial autumn leaves. Then they turned their attention on me.
My mom showed up at my house at 6 am on Friday.
"What are you doing here, Mom?"
"I'm going to sit with Lilly."
"Lilly's sixteen."
"You're putting Lilly in danger. You shouldn't be working weekends."
I finally convinced her to go, but not before she'd made me late to work.
I told my friend Ileana about it at work. I knew Ileana in Miami and she remembers me vaguely--which is just fine with me. My days as a club rat were fine, but nothing I really want showing up in my life here. She probably feels the same way. Except for the cafe con leches, we don't talk much about Miami at all.
"Just love her," Ileana tells me. "My mother just died. Heart attack. I'd just been on the phone with her."
How much more Ileana can take, I don't know.
She has four children under 6. Her husband is sick. I think he's dying. She won't tell me what he has. I'm guessing AIDS. No income. She took a paper route. She gets up at 2 in the morning on the weekends and takes the kids with her to deliver papers. She just had a miscarriage. Everytime it seems like they've hit the bottom, the bottom drops out.
"What do we do?" Wiz asks me.
"Did you know about the paper route? That's why she's late all the time."
"Oh, Christ."
He doesn't tell the House Mom when she's late. We just cover until she gets here.
We've got a troubled crew. Lots of single mothers. Marcy's kid's in rehab, Sara drives an hour to get here, is in grad school full time, has two little kids, and is going through a divorce. Phoebe's boyfriend is a quadraplegic, and an asshole. She's having an affair with Baggins. Anne(the one who hid my cup)'s husband has cancer, they think. They don't really know. Carmen just lost her second pregnancy.
I'm amazed at how cheerful and resourceful everyone remains. How we can all still smile and give. The people I work with are nicer than I am. They're better and faster and kinder. I'm really lucky.

My mom showed up again this morning.
I didn't say anything. Just a nice hello. I kept putting on my makeup.
She left after about 15 minutes. "I'll come back and take her out to breakfast." She tells me.

I don't know...
That's my 1/2 hour

Sangha

I think I wrote already about my disappearing Sangha.

Not that I was the most diligent member.

Zazen was usually held at 7am or 5:30pm, and if you're a single mom, it's sort of hard to explain to your kids they will have to find an alternate way to school so you can go sit. So I would go when my kids were out of town, but then I started seeing Jay and staying out at the farm when they were away, and, when it really came down to it, I didn't want to crawl out of his warm arms and drive 25 minutes to the zendo, not when sleeping there is so rare.

Oh, sometimes my heart just aches for a normal life and another adult to curl up with.

So, my visits became even rarer. And the last time I went, there was a sign on the door. "Final practice will be May 31 at 7am."

It was June 16th. So I called. No answer. And sent an email. No answer. Then, in Little Dixie fashion, I sent a nice little card through the mail. "Hope all is well." No answer.

What had happened?

The house is on the way to Lilly's best friend's house. So I drive by it frequently. A "for sale" sign appeared.

It's strange, you know, because I almost never went. I usually get up at 5am and sit in the peace room in my basement, or, now that Nick has started sleeping there, I sit on the bijar in front of my bed. I light my incense, sound the bell, but in my heart, I am somehow connected with both New Moon Dharma Zendo and Hokukuan. I sit in both those places, too. And with no Hokukuan, somehow, my practice felt very lonely. And a little crazy. I felt a little bit marooned.

So while I was at the library, I started trolling through the campus calendar, looking for other buddhists. College students are always into buddhism, right? And sure enough! There was a campus buddhist association. Met Wednesday afternoons. It didn't say whether it was Zen or not, but I went anyways. I got there early, sat on a bench outside the room, waiting.

And then I heard people coming up the stairs, I heard Seido's warm Boston voice and with his alcoholic "heh heh" I've always thought he was a bit of an ass, a little arrogant, a little lost. Tarred and feathered with that East coast snobbery that judges before it even knows what it's looking at. And I was so happy to see him.

He looks a little frayed. He's grown himself a little beard and let his hair grow in. He doesn't look as crazy, but he looks a little sad. His eyes are bright and black and have that bemused look my burn patients have when they come back to visit. He looks like he's been through something.

"Are you okay?" I ask him, after we get through our pleasantries.

"I'm okay, I guess." He says, with the 'heh heh'

Afterwards, he walks out with his students. With his cape. A cape! The best of us are fools.

He had a great image in the talk he gave today--that we're only looking at the world through our experience--like using a vanity mirror, holding it front of our faces so we could interact with others, but only peripherally, while keeping our eye on ourselves at all time.

So true. I'm guilty of this. Me who started sitting because I thought it would keep me from getting wrinkles (it has). I try to offset this with service, so at least I'm not doing any harm, but this blog is like that--it's a vanity mirror.

Oh, man. What do you do? Who ever knows anyone? Who ever knows you? I love him anyways, that he is still doing this, keeping this going, sharing himself and his teaching. I sat today and felt I'd accidentally made it home.

That's my 1/2 hour.

Mormons

It's late and I should really go to bed. Lilly and I spent 3 hours tonight shopping for a homecoming dress. It's really hard to find a dress in this town. There are only about 6 stores that carry dresses. Lilly got invited at the last minute by her friend, Milton Hollingsford, otherwise known as Hollingsford. For years I didn't know his first name. Hollingsford is the youngest son in a big Mormon family here in town. Apparently all the boys are called by their last names by their friends, so when you call the house, according to Lilly, it can get confusing.
Hollingsford is in love with another girl, Lilly told me. "Why don't you go with the girl you really like?" she asked him. "Don't be an idiot, Hollingsford. Take the girl you like."
He got pissy. "It's complicated, Lilly. Just be my friend and go with me, okay?"
Whatever. Hollingsford just left St. Xavier's to go to public school this year, and has done nothing but hang out at St. Xavier's. We don't think he likes his new school very much.
He used to be sort of dorky--the kind of kid who would show up at parties and spend all his time in the kitchen talking to me--not that I mind that--but then he learned how to play base, grew six inches, got his braces off, and took care of his acne. From my ancient perspective, I would say that Hollingsford now qualifies as Very Handsome.
"Oh, yuck, gross." Lilly says, when I mention this to her. "He's mormon."
I don't really see what this has to do with anything. All religious systems are equally insane. So what if he's mormon. He can still be handsome. I tell her so.
"Oh, I don't know," she says in this new petulant tone she's developed this fall. "They're all so toothy and do-right."
Okay, toothy and do-right was a big turn-off to me at sixteen. At forty-one it's interesting. I know there's a lot of buzz about the religion, but honestly, I like every mormon I've ever met. Good family values. Nice. Easy to talk to. They all seem emotionally stable.
One of our residents is mormon. One morning he said, out of the blue, "I've been thinking about you, Haley. What you need is a nice husband. Your life would be a lot easier if you were married. You're such a nice person. You should get married."
"Why, that's a great idea!" I said brightly. "I never thought of that. I'll start looking right this minute."
"Come to my church. We'll get you married off." He said.
I bet.
But you know, it kind of hit me in a soft spot. I know he was being kind. I didn't have the heart to tell him about the zen.
In the world, I'm mostly even and friendly. I'm sort of nondescript, too, but I'm pretty and clean with shiny, honey-colored hair and short clean nails. At first glance I do seem like I would be a great wife. I'm funny, and I listen really well, and I'm generally pretty good at smoothing over conflicts.
But anyone who knows me for awhile eventually realizes that I'm all twisted and lonely and tortured, etc. I'm Virginia Wolf without the talent, and too self-centered to ever put rocks in my pockets and float out from shore. Or...sink. Who will ever get close to this voluntarily? Not a soul.
It's okay. It is what it is. I do what I can. I try to make myself my own partner. I wish I'd pick up my god damn socks. I look at myself in the mirror. No sags or bags. No wrinkles. But some fine lines, all the sudden. Like the ghost of a web around my eyes. It'll go, the prettiness, eventually. It has too, right? And then I won't have any cover. Scary.
That's my 1/2 hour. I'm going to smear renova all over my face now.

Growing Pains

It's crazy time for me.

I'm back in grad school, Nick is on a college trip with his grandfather. He's going to visit Sewanee. One of my favorite people at church went to Sewanee. George Holleran. He's a retired history teacher. He has a daughter that looks and talks like Gracie Allen. He has a wife who is one of the most beautiful fat women I have ever seen in my life. She radiates purity and goodness. I don't know how else to put this. Her skin is translucent and she has short grey curly hair and when I see her I always feel like the world isn't so bad after all.

When I was putting myself through nursing school, I worked as math grader for standardized tests. George had fought a winning battle with terminal liver cancer (ha! they were wrong!), had quit his job as a history teacher at a local boarding school, and was grading tests with me. It was a great job. Everyone I worked with was really smart, but they were all screwy in some way. Some of them were leftist activists who were trying to support their ummm...activities, some were bored housewives, some were students, some were retired, some were zen monks, some were working on their novels...an eclectic, smart bunch. Multi-racial, multi-aged. Since there was no hope for promotion, there were no politics. We were all there only because we were all smart. When there are no politics, no one is careful about what they say, and the lunchtime discussions would get pretty heated and interesting. It was interesting! It was like being in my freshman dorm in college again. I brought a badminton set and set that up in the empty field behind the warehouse where we all worked, and we would play that, too, and yell at each other. That's where I heard all about Sewanee and decided it might do for Nick.

Maybe if we're all poverty stricken, our national conversations will get liberated. Maybe that's a good thing.

So he and my dad set off yesterday. I got a call at Lilly's tennis match (she won--don't ask me how. Lilly plays tennis like the ball has just appeared like a magical object in front of her--Poof! Look! A fairy! Boink!) My mom showed up and watched her. "She looks exactly like Jackie Kennedy in her tennis whites--that is until she starts to play. Then I don't know what the hell she looks like." Lilly joined the tennis team expressly for the dress, and, I hate to say this, but it really shows. "Why are you both giggling?" she asks us, midway through the match. "No reason."

So, off Nick goes. Raising kids is hard. We watched Elena last night, Jay and I. It was fun, but then we had to drop her off with Hali, who was sitting in the organic restaurant, looking beautiful. She ignored me, talked to Jay about the photographs on the wall, which are by some mutual friend of theirs from their couple days, quizzed him extensively about what Elena had eaten (christ) and then looked at me, "Hello, Haley, how are you doing?" like I'm the fucking nanny.

She's in the pretty mommy/nice little girl accessory phase of motherhood. Just wait. Maybe she'll never get out of it. Dangerous.

What do you raise children for? What is the purpose of education? You raise them to function in their society, to be productive and responsible in the most quotidian sense. They can't find happiness unless they can participate to some extent in the goals of the culture to which they are born, but you also raise them with an eye to the eternal. You also try to find that seed of soul, that part of the heart that is beyond parents and city blocks and homework assignments, and clear space for it and say--this is outside of it all. This will save you. I want my children to be carpenters with the soul and consolations of the artist. I want them to be able to lose all their money, step outside the bank, and still love the turning leaf on the tree. I want them to succeed at it all in some measure, but I want them to know that it is not really important if they do or don't.

I try to give them the tools to do this. I think a liberal arts education is key, and then, I don't care what they do after that. You grow the spirit, open the mind, then your labor is informed.

Money, money, money, money.

If only it didn't buy so god damn much.

What's that funny movie, Our Man Godfrey. "Money, money, money, money, money," Don't let it get you down. WAMU just folded. Of course, that's credit card I actually paid off. Why can't Chase collapse? Lose my debt....fantasies.

OK. This post was pretty random. Got to get back to my research proposal.

Doctors and Nurses

It's the most beautiful fall day.

School started three weeks ago. I went back to graduate school. I have discovered that the best way to be at peace about my messy house is simply not to be in it.

This works on 2 levels: 1)If you're not in it, you don't see the fuzz and cat hair on the rugs or smell the dogs. Since you're not in it, you can't do anything with your precious study time--like vacuum or do laundry. 2)If you're not in it, you also can't mess it up.

We'll see how this works. I don't know. I've been getting up early in the morning and running while the kids are getting ready for school. Lilly is making peanut butter and yogurt and fruit smoothies (these are a lot better than they sound) for breakfast. Then, if we're running early, we take the bus into town and Lilly goes to school and I go to the library. All day. If there's a yoga class in the middle of the day, I hit that, but pretty much I'm just parking myself there for 8-9 hours. So far, I'm not behind on anything...but I don't really feel on top of anything either. After school, I belong to the family and the schoolwork can just go hang itself. Except for Tuesday. Tuesday, my instructor has scheduled some god damn mandatory class chat, which is a huge fucking pain in the ass. There was also no help from the school in finding preceptors, so I've spent a lot of precious study time cold calling--something I thought I left behind when I went from PR/sales to nursing.

Don't tell me we're all salespeople. Sales culture sucks. It's so desperate and grinning and anti-intellectual. Sales culture has ruined this country. It's dulled our senses and veiled our hearts. There's a place for the market--sure--but the market shouldn't be in your heart or psyche.

I finally found two preceptors. One is my doctor. She's from Belize. Her name is Dr. Pitney. The other is Elizabeth Crane, a nurse practitioner. You can't imagine two more different women...doing basically the same tasks.

Dr. Pitney is small, black, with a British accent, and a little bit of a lisp. (Thywoid for thyroid, for example). She is absolutely correct, all the time. Correct in the social sense--she doesn't always have to be right. The limits of our relationship are very clearly delineated. I arrive in her waiting room and she comes and gets me when she's ready. When she has paperwork, that is my tacit signal to go someplace out of the way and study. I can only come during the morning one day a week. If a medical student needs her, they will have priority. She doesn't talk very much to me, and she seems unsure of my training. For example, she taught me about bowel sounds today. I felt like laughing. I mean, I'm a trauma nurse. I assess patients all the time. That's okay. She was kind enough to give me clinical hours. She never talks about the patients outside the room to either her staff or to me unless it's to discuss their clinical picture. That's it. No judgement. Bad or good. She's also imperturbable. While she was assessing a two year-old today, his four year-old brother kept hitting her leg with his coloring book. She utterly ignored it. She listens impassively, stays clinically focused. Lets the patient talk. Doesn't interrupt. Dresses conservatively, but with a little "african" touch--she always has something--today she wore a black and white skirt with a tribal print. Last week she had hair extension dreds. A cowrie shell necklass with a St. John suit. It's interesting--it's her only sort of personal touch. I like it. No make-up. Why don't female doctors wear make-up?
Elizabeth Crane, on the other hand, is a whole different story. She's my age, maybe a year older, and she's pretty but she's really let the sun do a number on her skin. She looks like Kim Basinger, only 40 pounds heavier and with bad feet. She's a little stooped (because, Christ, she's been laboring as a nurse all these years) and she has short frosted hair--frosted the way we all frosted our hair in 1983. She wears scrubs--the pants and the jacket--not the tunic top--generally over a grey ribbed tank top that shows her slightly leathered, but still generous and attractive cleavage. Like most nurses (like me) she's got a saint's medal resting there. Her mascara's a little clotted and she talks and moves non-stop. Fast. She tells me every part of her reasoning process, pulling things out from patient's charts at a dizzying speed--("See? back in July, she had another UTI--and there was blood in the urine, but it was her period--so big whoop--oh christ. Delbert's out in the waiting room? Tell him he needs to make an appointment like everybody else--so now she's back UTI blood in the pee--way bigger deal--find a lot of bladder tumors that way--No, Claire! I'm not coming out! Jesus Christ....) Dr. Pitney saw 8 patients. Elizabeth saw 15. Elizabeth let me eat lunch--called me ahead of time and told me not to bother bringing it ("pharmaceutical reps bring us lunch almost every day") There was lunch at Dr. Pitney's office, but I was very firmly dismissed to my own reconnaissance.

Interesting.

Well, that's my 1/2 hour.