Brainstorm

by Robert Wintner

  In a while she wakens feebly and asks what kind of drug is going into her vein. She feels lightheaded. I get Nurse Leah, who smiles and says, “That’s morphine, honey.”

  Rachel struggles up. “Morphine? I don’t want morphine. Which one is it?” Her fingers feel the many lines plumbed into her veins. She is poised, ready to pluck the morphine lead from either arm. Or is it one of those in her calves? Or her neck?

  “Wait! I’ll turn it off. No more morphine.”

  “Yuck. No wonder I feel bad.”

  I tell her I’m going to the grocery for a chicken and some vegetables. I’ll make her a hearty broth. How does that sound?

  “Yuck. I can’t eat.”

  “It won’t be ready for a few hours.”

  “Fine. Go. And take your time. Have some fun. You don’t need to be here.”

  You don’t need to be here. I wonder where I need to be besides there or running all over hell for some goddamn chicken soup. The car won’t stop bonging. It seems louder now, or maybe it’s wearing me down. The lights have spread from the console data panel to the dash to the emergency message center. Time for Service! Service Now! I press the buttons in variable sequence. I would punch the buttons, but that would be foolish. Shooting the buttons would be more foolish and expensive but it has a definite appeal, but I have no gun. I stew, until realizing that this could be the perfect time to get the car serviced. Once we’re out of the hospital, it could be weeks before I get back over. These bells and lights are telling me where I need to be, if only I can listen. I make an appointment for the afternoon. The woman in service says, “You know we’ll have to keep it overnight.”

  I tell her they can bury it for all I care.

  Oh my, she says.

  I apologize, restating my position. “I don’t mind if you keep it overnight is what I meant to say.”

  “Do you need a rental?”

  “No. I can cab it.”

  “If you don’t mind my saying, you sound very stressed.”

  “I’m a bit stressed, yes. We’ve had a . . . medical emergency.”

  “You have a coupon in your glove box good for a free day’s rental. I’ll set it up. I don’t want you to be without a car. Can you be here by three?”

  “Yes, I can.” I speak conspicuously nicely now, wondering how she moved me so easily from angst to gratitude. “Yes. I . . . appreciate your . . .”

  “Don’t you worry. We’ll take care of you.”

  Who’d a thunk it; car people? I proceed to the grocery, because industry is good. I’m relieved but not pleased. We’re on our way out of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, but it still feels like a slog through a very long dream. We’re past the worst of it but not yet in the clear. My mate is on the mend, but tension lingers. I think the tension is mostly mine, and I wonder why it’s become unmanageable.

  Well, the car won’t shut up or leave me be. The little bell rings and lights flash on each start. Wail while you can, you little . . . car, because it won’t be long now—I laugh, perhaps getting at the root of what ails me. It’s self-induced, kind of, a minor crazing brought on by stress. But I think I have everything to pursue a simple, productive task, and making chicken soup should be a positive process. But I have no Thermos, and coming out again for a Thermos for the soup, after returning to the office to prepare the soup, could be negative. As it is I must chase a tune-up and then hurry back to the front, where I may be chided again for my concern or told that the idea of soup makes her want to puke. At least I’m sorting and planning ahead. I’ll stop at U-Sav-Mor for a Thermos. On the way I call Nurse Leah. “How is Rachel doing?”

  “I know it’s hard for you to accept, but she really is doing terrific. You wouldn’t believe how well she’s doing. You would if you could see some of the others coming through that procedure.”

  “Good. I wish she wasn’t so depressed.”

  “That’s normal.”

  “Leah. Depression isn’t normal.”

  “Oh yes it is, if you’ve been through what she’s been through. She’s on her way to angio. She’ll be there for a while. She’s fine.”

  “When will we know about the angiogram?”

  “This afternoon. But it’s not a test. It’s a baseline. They won’t go in again.”

  “Yes. I heard that. Okay. I’ll see you soon.”

  “I’m off at three. Chin up.”

  Yes. Chin up. Make the soup. But the U-Sav-Mor is under remodel. Thermos inventory is in back, packed and inaccessible. “We can’t sell you one if we can’t get to them.”

  “I feel confident that we can get to them. Let’s go unpack one.”

  “Oh, no. We can’t do that.” Apparent here to the casual observer and the store clerk is my insistence. I could explain motivation shouldn’t need to with inventory on hand and a sale waiting to be made. Should it?

  I stew, and the clerk says, “You can try City Market. They have Thermoses.” I look out the window. “It’s easy,” he says. “Straight down this street, three blocks.”

  I go three blocks down and cut over two blocks and come back one, because Bell is one-way from 4th Avenue eastward. I double park at City Market and go in but “No. We have no Thermos Bottles. We do. But we don’t. Not now. Not right now. Later, maybe, but not right now. I mean . . .”

  “God damn it.” I think the young female behind the counter is neither fluent nor lucid, and my expletive is another symptom, because this feels like a conspiracy—not an organized conspiracy but the random conspiracy of the world we live in, the world that doesn’t work much of the time.

  “Hey,” a man says, stepping forward. “What’s with you and a Thermos?”

  “My wife hasn’t eaten in five days. I mean she has, but only intravenously.”

  “She’s in the hospital?”

  “Yes, and she can’t eat what they serve.”

  He stares, perhaps recalling hospital fare. He turns to a shelf and turns back with a Thermos, early 50’s vintage in metallic green with chrome trim. “Here. Take mine. Wait a minute. I’ll rinse it for you.”

  “I can’t take your Thermos.”

  “Why not? She’s hungry. She’s got to eat. Besides, I want a new one. I been thinking about it. I’ll rinse it.”

  “No. I’ll rinse it.” I accept the old Thermos. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hey. Good luck.”

  “Thanks. I . . .” I’m stuck.

  “Go feed your wife.”

  I go. The old Thermos is worn like me, dented and dinged. It’s been aground and sideswiped, but it doesn’t rattle. The grocer used two big hose clamps to affix a drawer pull vertically for easy carrying, and my initials are scratched onto the side of this Thermos, as if sooner or later I was meant to have it. I feel better with a task back on track and better yet, sensing the grocer as a guy throwing a lifeline. It feels odd to be elated over an old Thermos. But the times are raw and testy. My mate is still adrift in heavy seas, and the line I want to throw feels too short. Well, enough of tangling lines and stormy imagery. My inclement disposition should be temporary. I think Leah would agree.

  So I wait under cloudy skies. The fog rolls in and makes no difference.

  The broth simmers. A chicken, potatoes, celery, tomatoes, leeks, carrots, parsley, garlic, cilantro, lemon juice, olive oil and light soy. I eat. It’s too pungent but so am I. I dilute with water, fill the cleaned Thermos and head out in the afternoon. She hasn’t eaten. What if she’s not hungry? What if she’s famished? What else can I do but take the soup? Am I wrong to wonder what I’ll do, where I’ll live and what changes I’ll make, if . . . But enough of that. Nurse Leah said we’re on the mend.

  The service woman at the dealership leans in and holds the set button on my dashboard for four seconds. The ringing stops. What a fool I’ve been. She wants to know what happened and how things are. I tell her, and she shares her own adventure in non-response. She says, “They took my mother last Octo
ber.” She said her mother got to the hospital with unusual but mild symptoms, so the medical staff put her mother under general anesthesia for “observation.” The medical staff then proceeded to exploratory surgery in pursuit of something vague. Then they wagged their heads and said nothing more could be done, because the mother was dead. “They said they didn’t know why.” I hope there’s more here than meets the ear, yet I feel relieved to hear that I’m not the only crazy person out there.

  We commiserate briefly on the roughshod medical system, and I go. The car rental shuttle is waiting. She says the medical staff would not talk to her. They acknowledged her but said they didn’t have the time before, during and after the death. She only wishes for five minutes more, so she could say goodbye to her mother, who would have loved a farewell. “I think they botched it,” she says, tears flowing. “I think they botch it on a regular basis and act dumb to avoid, you know, the consequences. And they didn’t even let me say goodbye.”

  I may be the first person she’s told. I touch her and feel a pain greater than my own, unresolved since October. I take her in for a hug, perhaps the same hug given me only yesterday, and there we stand, two people sharing a lifeline—or maybe it’s only enough flotsam to keep us afloat. It works.

  I tell her they’re a tough bunch; you can’t hate them, but you can’t relax either. I share my view of a Norman Rockwell tableau of them, standing around in surgical scrubs, blushing and shuffling their feet. One is kicking the dirt and another is punching the air. They’re strewn with scalpels and needles, stethoscopes, surgical tubing and suture thread, little saws, forceps, gloves, masks and miles of plastic tubing. Splattered with blood and guts like ragamuffins after a good romp in the gore, they smile sheepishly; they’re the best, but they can be naughty too. The title is Win Some, Lose Some.

  I can’t be certain she appreciates my humor or knows Norman Rockwell. I don’t explain things, because she appreciates my position, which is her position. “I’ll pray for you,” she sputters.

  The shuttle driver is young, early twenties. In the white shirt and narrow tie of a shuttle driver, he grins with official goodwill, helping this car-rental experience to be a good one. We wait on another passenger who says he’ll be right there; he’s almost finished. He pecks at the keyboard on his laptop computer. He holds his chin and thinks. He hits more keys, and so on.

  “Are we supposed to wait for this?” I ask, as the last guy begins his deliberate exit, three minutes worth, because he still has e-mail in his outbox, and it must go out, because it’s very important. I think it’s okay, because after a few more minutes he and I will never need to meet again.

  He sits up front and asks the driver how many seats this vehicle has, and if this is the biggest SUV out there. The driver says ten seats, but Ford has a model that is the largest sport utility vehicle ever made, unless someone came along with a bigger one. The laptop guy says he’s familiar with the big Ford and how it got backlash from the environmentalists, because it gets only seven miles to the gallon. He thinks the jumbo unit is great, and if people buy it, that proves its greatness. “If the environmentalists had their way, there wouldn’t be any cars.”

  I’m an environmentalist. Cars, power lines, franchise foods, the death of nature and overpopulation get my goat. So do people insensitive to these things or the urgency of others. He’s blind to what I see, so I lean forward, avoiding my personal shortcoming to the extent that I’m able. I ask, “What would we have if you had your way?” He ignores me, so I ask again, “What?”

  “Hey! If someone wants to buy it!”

  “If someone wants to buy pictures of your parents having sexual intercourse, should you sell them?”

  “That’s different,” he mutters, and we ease off, repressing personal demons and images of his parents fucking. He looks out the window; who needs a lecture from a maniac? At the rental car place I let him go first.

  Then it’s my turn. “Hi! I’m Lisa, your service representative! Let’s walk around your car to be sure!”

  The car is a del Fuego, and looks like a go-kart with a sheet metal wrapping. It sounds like an eggbeater, and it rattles.

  “A del Fuego. It sounds like something Elmer Fudd would dwive. I mean drive. We don’t need to walk awound it.”

  “Please.” She insists, so I walk around the little car behind her. She wears high heels and a tight skirt and lipstick. She carries a clipboard and keeps smiling, glancing back at me.

  “It looks like a nice car. I think I’m going to love it.”

  She hands me the keys and says, “Have a nice day.”

  It feels like what we’ve come to, and soon I’m on my way in a two-by-two that can go fifty downhill. But it’s a bumpy road on a bumpy day, and I anticipate further challenge up the road at the ICU, both personal and culinary. This is love and what love comes to. With luck, this time will soon be a memory, what we came to and passed through.

  The little car’s radio is preset to Christian stations and one station with elevator music. A Man and A Woman comes on—baaaa daaa daaa da-da-da-da-da, baa daa daa da-da-da-da-da. The movie came out in ’66 when I was still a kid but felt much older, and anything French or Italian seemed sophisticated. So were skinny ties and swingers.

  I ponder a new movie for modern times, A Man and A Woman Part II about this hyperkinetic health-nut woman who has an aneurysm and her husband with floating hostility who wanders the earth while his wife is in the ICU.

  The idea makes me smile. I’d go see that movie. I’d have popcorn. It would be good. It would be over in two hours.

  10

  Stuck in the Valley

  The soup is not my best. It’s too strong with too much garlic. The healing agents won’t help if she pukes. I dilute by half again with water. That’s better, but she’ll still complain, which means she won’t eat it. Still, it’s better than what they’re serving, so I get the soup into the Thermos, and the journey continues.

  Where does the time go? It’s dark again and windy with slanting rain, but it’s not yet seven so I can enter through the ER, through the smoking section on the corner, where the street people patients hang out in hospital jammies, tethered intravenously. They hearken to my arrival, some for the smell of soup but most to see if I’m a smoker who might spare a few. Wouldn’t you just know it; I’m flush with spare change but have no smokes.

  Inside, down the hall and around the corner I enter the elevator and rise. On the third floor two no-nonsense nurses, women in XL, come on with a multi-tiered cart holding hundreds of small trays, each with a combo of pills, tablets, syringe(s), compresses, elixirs, tonics, suppositories, depressants, mood elevators, salves, unguents and ointments. They chide me for helping the cart clear the elevator door. “Don’t touch that! Stand there. There. Hands down, please. Don’t touch.”

  I don’t think contamination is an issue, because the cart looks less than sterile. Maybe they think I want their drugs. I don’t, so I smile. They glare, like I’m interfering. So I ask, “Why are you so glum? The pre-op guys were cutting up like a cocktail party? They have all the fun.”

  They exit on seven. At nine I exit and walk down to the west wing to find that we’ve given up our private room to a little boy who fell and banged his head and isn’t doing well. She’s the last adult on the ward, so maybe things are easing up in the neurology wing.

  The new space is a share, curtained off from a bigger space, though the curtain is five feet short of closing. Another patient nearby may be a woman. In the four hundred pound range, she’s splayed like a frog on a dissection board. Tubes, hoses, spikes, pressure lines, clamps, braces and flex drains confine her. All fluids flush continuously into a main canal. She can move only her vocal cords and bowels. Her waste sump is another flow that joins the flow from her lungs, through a scupper over the main canal. I can’t believe she’s alive, and I can’t look with ease, but the array is too rare to turn away from. The lungs are exposed. Fluids flow. She makes sounds and movements indicating the
end, perhaps seeking it.

  Rachel told the cancer survivors, You’re all doing the right thing. I tell the unfortunate woman, “You’re doing the right thing.” She doesn’t respond.

  The new nurse is Nate, a bright-eyed, friendly fellow. Rachel seems calm, so I take him for a good nurse, but then I see that Rachel is not so much calm as frozen. I walk around to the far side and see the problem. Her face and neck on that side are bruised and mushy as an overripe melon. The eye is swollen shut. She looks as battered as George Foreman in the fourteenth and just as tired.

  The check valve and turkey baster removed earlier from the base of the skull are back in place. Why? So the fluid causing this swelling can dissipate. That should occur in only ten more hours, or maybe twelve. The swelling isn’t necessarily the result of the angiogram, but we can’t be certain. In any event, the final invasiveness is done, the baseline secure.

  Also present is Claudia, the charge nurse. Claudia wears granny glasses, a crewcut and a stern face. She’s smaller than me but won’t look up. “It sounds soothing,” I say. Nate and Claudia turn my way. “Like a Zen fountain.” I mean the layered flushing three steps over. I harken to it, and Nate laughs short.

  Claudia finishes her adjustments and walk out as the splayed patient nearby wails, “Ohhh . . . Whoah . . . Oohh.” Nurse Claudia and Nurse Nate confer in the hall and then leave.

  “My God,” Rachel says. I wonder where the Zen-fountain woman’s family is and who is allowing this application of the healing arts. I set my things down and announce chicken soup, my best yet. Rachel joins the moaning chorus. I assure her that eating this soup is not required. But sooner or later, eat she must. She says she can’t. She keeps her hand on her spherical face as if to realize it, maybe monitoring for deflation.