Monday, November 16th

I checked in for surgery. Blood, blood and more blood...all collected in neat little tubes by a lab tech who looked like Ving Rhames with shaky hands. Miz Roo huddled down in a chair next to me, trying to be brave while simultaneously trying to keep me out of trouble. Hey! They gave me my very own hospital gown and I'm too old to be modest, so it’s nobody’s business if I sashay down the hallway like Lawrence of Arabia.

A nurse and a doctor came along and offered me something to make he relax. Real...goooood.....stuffffffffffffff.

Monday, I think. It might still be Monday. People everywhere. Pain everywhere. Beeping everywhere. Oprah Winfrey is in my room, hovering on high like an avenging angel and casting gifts to the true believers. “Turn that off,” the doctor tells a nurse. He stands over my bed and asks me, “Do you know what day it is?”

"Yup!" I tell him.

"Well?”

“Well what?”

“What DAY is it?" he asks me again.

I said, "I thought YOU knew...isn't this a test or something?" He said something snippy but the morphine hit and I'm back on Stray Dog cruisin' down the hallways of Franklin Delano Roosevelt High School and all my friends are envious and all my clothes are on.



Tuesday, November 17th

“Wiggle your toes.”

It’s the doctor again. He’s holding onto my left foot and frowning.

“Wiggle your toes.”

“I did.”

“Do it again.” No emotion in his tone.

I crunched down five stubbies and did a footie finger wave.

The doctor looked at me from the far end of the metal hospital bed. He clearly wasn’t happy.

“Wiggle the toes on your LEFT foot, dammit!”

“Oh, sorry.”

The Physical Therapist came in. Her name was Jessica…Jessica Mengele. She gently lifted my left leg off the bed and asked whether there was much discomfort.

I shook my head and smiled at her. As she peeled off the covers, I winced a bit. She gripped the ankle and guided my leg further out, away from the right one. Little bumble bees started to stab at my hip. I jumped and squealed

Then she pulled it out some more. And then some more.

I asked her ease off a bit. She snorted a cute little **** snort.

I offered money. She smiled and shook her head.

Back and forth she pulled my leg, back and forth. Agony flashed across my hip again and again.

Real tears dripped down my cheeks. Overhead, the television silently blasted an old episode of “I Love Lucy”, closed captioned. Jessica pulled me further and further apart.

I tried threats. I told her when I get out of there I’ll hunt her down and kick her unconscious. She told me that I’d need TWO good legs to do that and there was a waiting line.

Back and forth. My pelvis creaked under the increasing strain.

“This is HORRIBLE,” I screamed. “What do expect this to accomplish? What do expect from me?”

She laughed, “Expect? Why, I expect you to CRY, Mr. Boots!”

I told her I was important, that I knew things. She laughed. “What would you know that might interest me?” she scoffed.

“It’s not what I know,” I said. “It’s what your handlers don’t know…uuggh…yet!”

“My handlers?” she huffed. The torture stopped completely for a brief moment. Then, more devilish flexing back and forth, back and forth.

I held my groans and pressed on her momentary weakness. “They’re ignorant, but they’re not fools, you know.”

Back and forth, faster and harder.

“What do you think will happen to you…uuggh… when they find out that you’ve struck out on your own…uuggh…when someone tells them about your little secret project?”

Tiny droplets of sweat formed on her smooth brow. She sped up the “exercise.”

“You’ll never tell them anything,” she said. My feet were split nearly 45 inches apart.

“My superiors know what I know!” I tried bluffing for real this time.

“You know nothing!” she countered. Pull, bend, crack.

“I…we know about…unggh…Operation WISHBONE!”

All movement stopped. The pressure on my pelvis eased but still threatened to break me in half. Jessica leaned over my face and hissed, “Two little words you my have overheard during post-op recovery…two words that can’t possibly mean anything to you, Mr. Boots.”

“Can you take that chance?” I spat back.

Jessica dropped my legs and gestured to a small oriental nurse with “April May” on her name tag. They discussed my chart briefly.

“Perhaps you’re right,” Jessica said. “You may be of some use to me after all.”

She left the room. April May walked to my bedside and leveled a small dart pistol at my chest. I heard it spit with a BLOOP and everything went black.



Wednesday, November 18th.

I had never seen the gentleman before in my life. He was trim, well-dressed, with close-clipped gray hair. Light flowed into the room from behind him. “Good morning,” I said.

“Good morning.” He stood silently with his hands folded. “My name is Brother Six and I am here to pray over you.”

I hit the morphine button and woke up in darkness.

On my left was an almond-eyed nurse dressed in tight-fitting white scrubs and lit by the gentle red and green of the IV machine readouts. Shimmering blond hair cascaded over her half-exposed shoulders. Her nametag said, “Summer”. She was fondling my morphine drip.

“Don’t mess with that,” I told her. “I finally got it adjusted right.”


Thursday, November 19th.

They took away the morphine drip today. When the little bottle was finally yanked loose, the nurse ran out of the room holding it high up over her head. I could hear cheering from the nurse’s station.

Two bikers with bibles came over. Their church had been praying for my health, so naturally I opened with some light-hearted banter about the number of the beast being a phone number in Canada. They left a religious tract about going to Heaven or Hell (but the latter was underlined in pen and was signed so I guess I know the answer).

I found the Outdoor Channel at 11:30, ate a spoonful of buttery chicken soup, and tried to sleep a little. The gentle sounds of Wisconsin moose hunting buzzed in the background. I dreamed in chrome and blue and black leather.


Friday, November 20th.

Two more days to go before I can get home. Two more days of torment by Jessica. Two more days of food that looks good when it isn’t, and vice versa.

My stream of visitors has dried up. I haven’t got any time for visitors anyway. Too much to do with physical therapy, respiratory therapy, skin care therapy, bandage changes, blood chemistries, vital signs, and those endless, fruitless trips to the bathroom.

I look nine months pregnant.

I’m always ready to blast an air horn, but too often it’s either a false alarm or The Bad Surprise. Pain, boredom, and gas…The Devil’s Playground. I wrote “No Open Flames” on my door and took another nap.


Saturday, November 21st.

The doctor walked in at 7:30 AM.

“Go home,” he said.

I’m on the road by noon.

The ride home was slow and painful and happy. I slept deeply that night, except for one time when I woke up. It was dark outside. My own feet had woken me up. The left one was going “tap-tap-tap” first up and then down. The right one was tapping out a much slower melody with a completely different rhythm. My hands were shaking…no, not so much shaking as what looked like “playing the piano.” The spasms quit after a few seconds and I went back to sleep.

The next morning I told Miz Roo about the strange movements. She laughed and shook her head.

"It was a dream," she said. “You were driving Stray Dog.”

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Thanks, everybody, for the prayers and well-wishing. Special thanks to Geezer Glide 56

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