Waving Not Drowning

She hits the down button. Two hospital admin types, young women in almost stylish outfits, the ones afforded on entry level salaries, wait on a car going up. The elevator arrives, doors open, she steps on then realizes she's going up. Force of habit, she says aloud to no one in particular, pavlovian response. The two women sort of smile as they study the floor, suddenly intensely awkward and private. She gets louder as she backs out of the car. Doors close and she hovers her finger over the already illuminated down button. Right, just did that. It's quiet here, far from the madding crowd. Emerg was busy, mainly the geriatric crew. A few indigent and drunk and disorderlies draped over chairs, hanging out of gurneys, buried under sheets and gowns, moaning, rambling incoherently. It's the large-and-in-charge paramedic night: 4 teams of doughy young men stand sentinel with their wards, buried in paperwork, bored with the hurry and up wait logjam of daily deliveries. ...

Eva skiffles into the kitchen, doing an improvised side stepping booty shake, singing at the top of her lungs to Hold On blasting from her computer. Old school rhythm and blues quells the melancholy. How can one stay down when rockin out to Sam and Dave? The kettle screams to life, undercutting the horns then rapidly overriding them, a shrill alarm. Eva pirouettes and hooks two fingers under the handle intending to slide it off the flame and onto the stove but her sock foot catches a sticky spot of maple syrup on the kitchen floor, a leftover from her gluten free buckwheat pancake disaster of the morning, and she trips into the counter. Her fingers slide off the kettle knocking it sideways, sending it crashing to the floor. Boiling water gushes out at a furious pace. Eva jumps back and crashes into the fridge, both feet flying out from under, landing on her tailbone in a pool of boiling liquid, scalding her hand and leg halfway up her left shin. Talk about ass over tea kettle. Stunned ...

It's been 3 months and she's slowly getting better. Rae comes in every day, checks in with the ICU nurses and spends about an hour, maybe 2 if she's got the strength of will. She rolls the reclining sleep chair over and sits next to her mom's bed, surrounded by a ventilator, all kinds of monitors and machines, flashing, beeping, keeping score. Today's a good day. Her levels are high, whatever that means. This seems to be progress. The nurses are exceptional. Patient, kind, and above all, frank. No bull, no patronizing, just the facts with a wry sense of humour and a seemingly endless supply of answers. Whether they're the ones Rae wants to hear or not is a moot point; at least they're communicative. The doctors on the other hand are elusive, cryptic. Disinterested and halfway out the door. It makes Rae crazy. She doesn't speak their language so she stumbles and sputters. On a bad day Rae weeps openly, embarrassed by her complete inability to articulate w...

A certain stirring lingers deep in her gut. Nat can't shake it but for the life of her she can't name it, either. Hour after hour of plugging straight through and now she hits the pillow at night and wakes up oblivious to her surroundings. At least she's sleeping. Deep, dreamless exhaustion. If only she'd strung herself out like this months earlier she'd have saved herself the anixiety of insomnia and long dark nights of the soul, counting down minutes til sunrise and the dawn of a new day. Another cycle completed. The world keeps turning regardless of how mired in stasis Nat is. There's hope in that, she thinks. She charts the shape of the moon. Full, half, quarter, crescent. On cloudy nights she draws the curtains and drowns herself in Rachmaninoff, headphones cradling her ears on the pillow. When sleep won't come the music lulls her into a semi catatonic state. Nat's not sure it's restorative or meditative but it drowns out the interior noise whic...

Two more steps and he'll make the couch. Three if he shuffles. This pain, this never ending intense ache deep in his bones, radiating like a searing beacon of Hey Stupid, Way To Go. Feet. Dang. So many small bones, all jammed up, tight together, a perfect symmetry when everyone gets along but one unexpected twist and fall and bam, thanks for playing but this is where you get off. Such bad timing. Eight weeks of work coming up after a blissful, recuperative month off; now he has to figure out how to shuffle gracefully in a hidden cast on camera while pretending to be grounded, solid, whole. Easy peasy. Ha! And the itching, oy. The chopsticks and wooden spoons and modified backscratchers jammed down the cast. Inflate, deflate, elevate, ice, compress, release, oh my god why did this have to happen NOW? Sigh. Ah well, a hitch in his giddy up, a tilt in his hips, an even slower, purposeful gait. S'alright, s'allll good, what evaaaaah. This will wind it's way into the myriad ...

Her scars poke out from under her bikini, crescent shaped trails curving alongside each hip, dotted like braille, telling the story of Christine's new hips. It's deceptive. Her youth and vigour belie a lifetime of debilitating pain and compromised mobility. She's funny, hysterically so; a double-yourself-over, laugh-til-you-cry-and-snort-then-end-up-on-the-floor-begging-for-mercy funny. A clown. Literally. Christine has an entire tickle trunk  of costumes, props and wigs. To her kids, as she calls them, she is Sparkle Susie, Princess of Unicorns and Bullfrogs. As a child Christine didn't run or play the way her kids do with her in her drama art camps. Injections, braces, medicines, trial after trial after experimental test group defined Christine's youth. Autoimmune inflammatory disease with delayed onset stenosis of facet joints and femoral acetabular impingements culminating in osteoarthritic symptoms. Her bones fail her. Her joints are angry, uncooperative. At 23...

Two weeks til the bandages come off. She's been here before. This is the hard part, the next few hours, in and out of consciousness. Floating above the recovery room in an Atavan induced haze. At least this time it's just a nerve block or four. The spinal last time was a disaster, completely numb from the waist down, disembodied, powerless. Then the side effects- the spinal headache and projectile vomiting, mainlining straight morphine and oxy for 2 days until she thought she'd throw up the lining of her stomach.This is the last time. That's what the surgeon said. Mind you, he said that about the last three surgeries. Apparently her superpower is regrowing any and all bone removed from her body, at a ridiculously rapid pace. It could be worse, it could be terminal in some way. They could have to lop off a limb or find some inoperable tumour. After eight years of xrays and follow up she's waiting to see what side effects come her way. The irony. Oh joy. Then the atro...

So much red wine. Dead soldiers litter the kitchen floor and drip  precariously from the counter ledge. Happy birthday to Ryan. Every year's a bloody miracle. He spends so much of his time trying to annihilate himself that making it to next weekend is never a safe bet. He can't even remember who was at the party. Janet, Su, maybe Rick and D, but Nat's still asleep on his floor tangled in last night's stockings so obviously she made it. It's his Jesus year. Never thought he make it past 27, the year all great players die. Not that would deign to compare himself to a Jimi or Janis or Jim or Kurt. Fuck, 33 is really old. It's time to man up, put on his big boy pants and deal with his shit. That's Nat's voice in his head. She's one to talk, a mess of tequila soaked heartbreak on the rug. Damn. Careful not to light the stove nearby or she may spontaneously combust. Christ, how did they get like this? East side piss poor wanna-be Sid and Nancy. He was goin...

Some days are a struggle, plain and simple. Getting out of bed, feeding the cat. Days like this Amy's thankful she doesn't have a dog. The thought of having to get  dressed  for this minus stupid weather so she can stand around waiting to pick up dog crap with a plastic swathed mitten repulses her. Honestly, the main deterrent to Amy's adopting a dog is the pooping and scooping. At least with a cat she can use a long handled scoop. Still, she's thought long and hard about getting that dvd and kit that teaches your cat to use the toilet like a human being. Much more civilized. Rupert could do it too, she thinks. He's smart. Wily, at least, with the way he jimmies open the cat food cupboard at 4 am. That cat has some serious burglar ing skills. Ha. Cat burglar. Amy hiccups an aborted laugh into her pillow. Seven forty five. Too late to hit the snooze bar. Six weeks is a long time to wait and see if these meds will be different. Six long, bleak, grey mid-winter weeks. ...

Five more steps then a right turn, hop ten more steps then a slight dip. Damn. Shoddy work, this bit here- the threshold's uneven between the kitchen and living room, a downright trip hazard, Gord thinks. That's what you get for cheap rent. Stupid landlord thinks makeshift is satisfactory. If you're going to do something.....Eight weeks in a full leg cast and he's mapped out the entirety of his 500 square foot apartment down the inch. How many steps to the kitchen, how many degrees torque required to open the fridge door while balancing on one leg as he tries to finangle open the crisper without taking a header into the freezer. His own private choreography, a bad two-minute bit from some lame busker who could never master juggling more than 3 balls. Fuck! Damn, piss, shit, crap...the jar of tomato sauce slips from his grip and explodes on the tile, sending red sauce up the front of his cast, inside the fridge shelves and all the way across the backsplash. Perfect. Thi...