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By Misti Date: 2005 Jun 08 Comment on this Work [[2005.06.08.02.20.2286]] |
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in pre-op we make silly jokes imagine ourselves on the tropical beach on the curtain a nurse shaves your right thigh smears it with iodine marks it with a blue x the blue paper booties on your feet make you look even more vulnerable I push away the dark thoughts what if i lose this man what if he dies during surgery please oh please i do not want to sit on a pew in the chapel and pray but don't let him die the anesthesiologist appears I kiss you bye I love you I return the dvds to Hollywood Video down the street I sit down in the waiting room read Word of Mouth your dad sits down beside me works on his laptop your doctor the movie star shows up sooner than I expected to tell us that the surgery went fine your hip was angry, inflamed but you are alive with a new hip a happy hip a bionic hip, you call it your dad buys me a Subway sandwich for a celebration tells me state jobs and city jobs are incestuous I do not tell him I am on unemployment in your room you are smiling I kiss your face all over gladly then the anesthesia wears off you scream and curse your pain raise the bed up and down trying to get comfortable searching in vain for relief they give you morphine it isn't enough you talk to yourself Relax, Michael, Try To Relax I try to love you talk you out of it I fail the little lion and get well card I bought in the gift shop do not help your mother shows up hours later tears spill from my eyes I think of the scene in "Terms of Endearment" the mother screaming at the nurses to give her daughter, dying of leukemia, her pain medication I tell the nurses the morphine isn't enough you need Percoset they refuse the night shift nurse is humane she gives you more morphine and Percosets you finally drift off to sleep your roommate, Manuel, begins to yell something about a bowel movement that is long overdue I hate Manuel I want to kill Manuel can't he shut the fuck up can't you have one goddamn minute of peace the world is crawling with fuck face fuckers too many people too many mouths but this is not Manuel's fault Manuel needs to shit I walk away from you feeling guilty past admissions I see young couples walk by talking the women are holding pillows must be Lamaze good for them I am not bitter only dead tired and wistful and a little bit envious I have a daughter who will turn nine in early December but she isn't mine and you have a son who will turn nineteen in late November but he never calls I fight sleep on the fold-out sofa bed in your parents' hotel suite I watch a funny reality show weird people running amok in airports some are drunk some are deranged all of them are grounded I feel empathy with a haggard crazed blond looks like a Hollywood Boulevard hooker she says that L.A. hasn't done her any favors she says goodbye to California like me apparently she has burned one bridge too many today we watched "Butterfield 8" the first time for both of us I guessed it would end in tragedy for Elizabeth Taylor any idiot could have figured that out before Julia Roberts hookers didn't get happy endings not that call girls are hookers god is in the details. |