Welcome to My World

by Curtis Bunn

BRENDA

  I couldn’t sleep. Again. The talk with Rodney haunted me. It scared me. But, in some kind of twisted way, inspired me.

  I couldn’t sleep because Rodney was heavy on my mind—his look, his mind, his pain. It was obvious he did not share his story often. But he welcomed me into his world. And I was haunted, scared and inspired by that.

  Pain could break or empower. Rodney was broken in one sense, devastated and saddled with guilt. But he had so much on his brain. And it was needlessly going to waste. I felt so bad for him.

  And I felt bad the next morning when I went to McDonald’s and Rodney was not there. Chester was, however, and he said: “I don’t know” when I asked about his friend.

  “He said somebody was following him,” Chester added. “He was scared. Said it was the FBI. Or the CIA. I don’t know. Never seen him like that. He just ran.”

  That made me scared. Chester had mental issues, so it was hard to determine if what he said was true. But he was right about Rodney having been arrested.

  Rodney had seemed fine the night before. Clear. I was no expert on bipolar disorder, but I knew the effects of it could rise at any time.

  I was amazed that I had cared so much. I cared when he was in jail when I didn’t know him at all. And, after speaking at length with him, I cared more. Not knowing where he was bothered me.

  I had no way of contacting Rodney. I had to trust that he would be at McDonald’s when I got off work. And the uncertainty made my day go slowly.

  I was distracted by thoughts of what could have happened to him. The only place I knew he seemed comfortable was at that McDonald’s on Ponce. So, instead of eating lunch, I drove over there, hoping to see him.

  I didn’t.

  Neither Chester nor any other homeless I had seen lingering were there, either. I went back to work and functioned OK, but my mind floated to Rodney every free moment I had.

  I headed to the elevator at six o’clock; I was anxious to see if he had returned to McDonald’s. My third time of the day there brought anxiety. I needed him to be there.

  He was not. I was so caught up that I did not eat—a major feat. I just sat there, looked at every person who came near the restaurant. Before I realized it, it was seven o’clock. I finally drove home in silence—except for the questions that rattled around in my head.

  Was he OK?

  Where could he be?

  How could I find him?

  Why did this bother me so much?

  I spent another Friday night at home alone and bored—the thirty-second weekend in a row. I contemplated if I should look for him. But I knew it was a silly thought: There was no telling where he would be.

  Saturday morning, instead of sleeping until I couldn’t sleep any longer, I woke up before seven. Rodney was on my mind. The possibility rose that I might not see him again, and that kept me up.

  Finally, around eleven, I got up, made something to eat, dressed and made my way to Piedmont Hospital to see my sister. It was part of my routine.

  The family members who visited her when she first slipped into the coma many months earlier had long since stopped coming. The nurses told me I was her only visitor.

  I couldn’t blame them. It was hard to see Theresa like she was—limp and unconscious. And with the prognosis not bright, it almost seemed pointless to come. But I needed to.

  I had nothing else in my life.

  Theresa and I had a conversation once. She said, “If someone says I committed suicide, don’t believe them. I would never do that. If I’m on life support, don’t pull the plug on me too soon. I could just be resting.”

  We laughed about it, but I told her I felt the same way about both cases. So I was not eager to pull the plug—no matter how grave the situation looked. People had come out of comas after years. I was giving her time to rest, just as she said she might need.

  It was quiet in her hospital room, but not peaceful. It was eerie, actually. The sounds of the machine that breathed for her and the other that monitored her brainwaves broke the silence and created an air of death.

  So I always prayed with Theresa before I sat down.

  “Dear Lord, this is my sister, Your child. I ask that You wake her up and let her live out her life praising Your name. She has so much to offer, God. She has so much to do. Bless me with the gift of her life. I ask this knowing You are capable, only You, of opening her eyes and freeing her from this deep, deep sleep. And I believe in Your time You will bring her back to the world. That is my prayer. In Jesus’ precious name, I pray . . . Amen.”

  Sometimes I struggled with what to speak to Theresa about or whether to just sit there with my mouth shut. But something in me told me she could hear me. So I talked. And, of course, on that morning, Rodney was on my mind.

  “So, Rodney, the homeless guy, is missing. Well, I can’t say he’s missing because he doesn’t have an address. He’s homeless. But, you know, he’s becoming my friend. He opened up to me two nights ago, telling me about his past, his horrible past.

  “He is devastated by the death of his family—two girls and a wife—from a car accident when he fell asleep while driving. What a horrible burden to carry.

  “Then, Theresa, there’s the fact that he is bipolar and likely schizophrenic. I have no idea how that plays out, but I was told he ran from another homeless guy saying he was followed by the FBI or CIA. So, that sounds like something not normal. You know what I mean?

  “But I listened to him really closely, Theresa. Really closely. And in almost every word, I could hear the pain and suffering in his heart. He doesn’t know how to deal with it. And I ain’t no damned psychiatrist, but I want to help him. I can help him. If only I could find him.

  “I know what you’re thinking, sis: I need to work on myself and not focus on saving someone else. And I understand that view. But here’s the thing: Helping him would be helping me. I don’t know how I have linked his getting better to my feeling better, but they are linked.

  “I need to save him to save myself. And the reason I think I can do it is because he talked to me Thursday night. He talked. Said he hadn’t talked about his accident in the two years since it happened. But he told me. He told me. That means something.

  “And I take it to mean he wants to be helped. He wants my help. I can sense it. I can read people, and I can read this man.

  “But I can’t find him. I don’t know if he’s in jail or dead or just decided to hang somewhere else . . . Maybe he doesn’t want to be my friend. Maybe he opened up to me knowing he would never see me again. Or maybe he opened up and had time to look back on it and figured he didn’t want me to know that much about him. I just don’t know.”

  It would have been great, amazing if Theresa responded to me. But she couldn’t.

  “I’m going to take a walk,” I told Theresa. “The doctors are due to come in here any minute. I’m going to stretch my legs and think.”

  Not sure why I wanted to do that because I always considered hospitals the second-saddest place on earth. Graveyards were the saddest. And usually, if you were in the hospital long enough, the cemetery was your next stop.

  But I really needed to walk. When I told Rodney about my life, I started by recalling how I used to look. I did that because I wanted him to know I wasn’t always obese and I wanted him to know that I was aware of my issues. Being aware was the first step to doing something about it. That was the only step I had taken, however.

  It was hard for me to not glance into the hospital rooms as I walked the halls. It may have been morbid and sad, but it confirmed that as bad as my life was, it could have been worse. I hated that I used other people’s troubles to feel slightly better about myself. But that’s how down I was; I needed something, someone, anything, to pull me up.

  What the hospital should have done was inspire me to stop eating. I needed to get my jaws wired, have liposuction done and do Weight Watchers—all at once. I was so sick of myself. Looking into the mirror below my neck was something I stopped do
ing.

  And yet there I was—standing outside the cafeteria. Eating was the last thing I should have been doing. But it was habit. A bad habit. I tried to turn around and go back up to Theresa’s room. But it was too hard. I was not starving, but I was in need of fulfilling the habit of eating. Using all the willpower I could muster, I left without getting so much as a candy bar. That small feat was an accomplishment.

  I headed back upstairs to read and talk to my sister. At the elevator, though, I could see a patient in a wheelchair out of the corner of my eye. A nurse pushed him. I didn’t want to make him uncomfortable, so I didn’t stare. But then I heard a voice.

  “I know you.”

  I turned, and to my amazement, I saw him.

  “Rodney? Rodney, oh my God. What are you doing here?”

  He just looked at me. No expression. I looked at the nurse.

  “You know him?”

  “Yes, he’s my friend.”

  “Friend?” Rodney said.

  “Yes, friend. What happened?”

  “Appendectomy,” Rodney said.

  “Emergency appendectomy,” the nurse chimed in.

  “Oh, my. Are you OK?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “Unfortunately?” the nurse asked.

  “Don’t mind him,” I jumped in. “He’s always peddling doom and gloom.”

  “The truth doesn’t give a shit about your opinion,” Rodney said. “I heard someone say that.”

  The elevator opened and we all entered.

  “Why you want to be mean and nasty?”

  “We are who we are?”

  “Really? You think you’re mean and nasty?” the nurse said.

  “No, he doesn’t. He just doesn’t want to be happy. He doesn’t know how to be happy.”

  “What do you know?” Rodney wanted to know.

  “I know what you told me.”

  “Well, this is our floor,” the nurse said as she wheeled him out of the elevator.

  “What’s his room number? Can I visit him?”

  I held the elevator door open as she spun the wheelchair around, so he could see me. She motioned to Rodney. “It’s up to him.” “Rodney, I looked for you the last few days. I was so worried. To see you here is a miracle. I wasn’t sure if I would ever see you again.”

  “How can you be mean to someone who wants to be friends with you?” the nurse asked. “You’re better than that. I can tell.”

  I looked into Rodney’s dark eyes for a few seconds. “Room 306,” he said. I smiled. He didn’t. The nurse turned and wheeled him away.

  The emotions that came over me were many. I was stunned to see Rodney. I was relieved to see him. I was happy to see him. I knew from all that the man had become important to me. Was not sure how it happened, but it did.

  I got back to Theresa’s room in a daze.

  “Sis, you’re not going to believe this. I almost don’t believe it myself. What are the odds? I saw Rodney. He’s here. He had appendicitis. How crazy is that? Not that he was sick, but that he is here. And we ran right into each other. What are the odds? It has to be meant to be that I find him.”

  I had almost forgotten that Theresa could not respond. I was looking forward to her saying, “Girl, there are no coincidences, only realities.” That was one of her responses when I would point out the irony in something.

  Making sense of seeing Rodney there was something I could only chalk up to “it was meant to be.” I wondered how he got there. How was he going to pay for the surgery? He didn’t have an address to have them send the bill.

  I had a bunch of questions for him. It was just a matter of deciding the best time to go to his room.

  It took all the discipline I had—and some I didn’t know I had—to not get up right then and head to Room 306. “Should I go now?” I asked Theresa.

  It was a game I played with myself sometimes when I visited her. I pretended she responded based on what I knew of her personality, views on people, relationships, politics, religion, life.

  In that case, I thought Theresa would ask, “What’s the point of waiting? Go for it. It can’t hurt.”

  That could have been me rationalizing leaving then; I couldn’t be sure. But I waited another thirty minutes, reading Uptown magazine about a wine-tasting event it was having in Napa Valley. “This would be something we could do together,” I told Theresa.

  I shared about a feature on Seattle Seahawks’ Russell Wilson and his new wife, Ciara—Theresa loved sports and music. I shared other news and information with her until I finally succumbed to my desires to visit Rodney.

  I was not sure what to say to him. I was not sure how he would receive me. I was not sure if I should have actually gone down there.

  But my feet moved toward the door, despite the questions and doubts that floated in my head. My need to see him dominated any concerns.

  The door was slightly open to Room 306. I wondered why my heart pounded? Rodney could sense someone was at the door.

  “Who is it? Come in.”

  That was enough for me. As I slowly open the door, my throat dried and I sounded like a mouse. “It’s me, Brenda.”

  He didn’t answer, but I walked in to a sight I didn’t expect: Rodney was lying on the floor.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Never seen a man sleep on the floor before?”

  “Not in a hospital room, no.”

  “I don’t deserve a bed.”

  “But you need to be in one. That can’t be good for you.”

  “As long as I’m resting, it doesn’t make a difference. I’m about to get out of here anyway.”

  “They are releasing you already?”

  “I can leave when I want. This is a sad place. I don’t need to be here.”

  “Actually, you do need to be here until the doctors say you can leave. I’m going to talk to the doctor. I know they rush people out of hospitals these days, but you should wait until they tell you to go.”

  “You need to worry about yourself. I don’t see you losing any weight.”

  “So you’re going to be mean to me, when I’m here out of concern for you? I thought we were beyond the insults. I don’t insult you and, believe me, I could.”

  “You insult me by being here, like you have a stake in my life.”

  “You just have to be mean, don’t you? You have no control of yourself.”

  “I do.”

  “No, you don’t. If you did, you would thank me for caring. I don’t see anyone else here visiting you. If you had control, you’d get into that bed and let your body heal. But you’re totally undisciplined, like a child.”

  “That sounds like an insult to me.”

  “Well, good. I have several more to catch up to you.”

  I was not playing nice anymore with Rodney. I didn’t know why, but I felt a strong need to be there for him and to be honest with him. Maybe it was to give me something meaningful to do. Maybe it was my heart that my sister always talked about. Whatever it was, I couldn’t let go and didn’t want to let go. He made it difficult, though.

  “Listen, Rodney. I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to be your friend, going to try to be your friend. I’m going to help you as much as I can, in any way I can. That’s just who I am. Accept it. Embrace it. I will only make your life better.”

  I believed every word I shared. I had to be strong to be a positive force in his life. I had to stand up to him.

  Rodney pulled himself off the floor and got into the bed.

  “Why?”

  “Because I care about you. I genuinely care about you. I didn’t care that much before we had that talk that night. You welcomed me into your world, which I took to mean something big. I have welcomed you into mine. After all that sharing, how can we go back to just people we see and move on? It can’t be like that. It won’t be like that. I won’t let it.

  “And here’s the thing: You don’t want it to be that way, either. You just have so much pain built up in you tha
t you can’t figure out how to release it.”

  Rodney closed his eyes and curled into a fetal position, his butt exposed from the open back of his hospital attire. I was not sure if he went to sleep that quickly or if he was faking to get me to leave. Either way, he clearly didn’t understand my resolve.

  I was the woman who was caught off guard when I was downsized out of my human resources manager position at AT&T. I was devastated that my livelihood could be snatched from me without any regard to how I would eat or pay my bills. It wasn’t just business to me. I took it personally.

  But instead of crying about it, I’d gathered my belongings, dumped them in a box, and went to my car in the parking lot. I’d pulled out my cell phone and I’d placed calls to all the job leads I could think of. Some of them were cold calls. Some were strategic calls made to people I knew or people of people I knew. I’d attacked the situation and by the time I’d left, I’d believed I had done all I could do to change my plight. I was in my car for ninety minutes.

  That was my resolve. Rodney going to sleep or faking sleep was not going to discourage me from being there for him. He wouldn’t tell me that he needed me, but I felt it. The man lost his family at his hands. His wife’s family made him persona non grata. His family was nowhere around. And he left any friends he had behind, destroyed by grief.

  There were many people who had just a few people in their lives . . . including me. Rodney was the first person I had come in touch with who had no one.

  I had to change that. I sat there and watched him sleep for several minutes before I dozed. I wouldn’t leave him.

  “Oh, damn. You scared me,” I said to the nurse who walked into the room. “But I’m glad you’re here. Do you know he had been sleeping on the floor?”

  “What did you do to get him into the bed? He started in the bed, then was on the floor. He’s been here three days; I think most of the time he was on the floor. He’s homeless, right? So sad.”

  “Looks like you all have cleaned him up a little.”

  “We did. And we have some donated clothes for him hanging in the closet. What’s your relationship to him?”

  “We’re friends, new friends. I still can’t believe I ran into him here. I didn’t know he was here. My sister is upstairs and I was visiting her.”