NO WAY OUT

I was with Sweetheart yesterday on the rounds between NH-VT hospitals and the battery of her tests. This is all a ragged trail continuation for a year and a half now fighting Lyme disease and one mysterious ailment followed by another that has come with the bugger. You'd rather not be a head-case, if you don't mind, but you are. I am, perhaps, more than Sweetheart as I try to protect her, get her to appointments, swim salmon up-river with the medical riff-raff. More tests tomorrow: a CAT scan. Next week the colonoscopy. The staff are all middle-aged women and devoted, the doctors are these things locked in their cells. They won't give an inch until they've supplied the insurance companies with a galaxy of costs and put the patient under the proverbial thumb. The new-fangled hospitals are all like cheap coated luxury motels. The elderly decked out on the mezzanine floor in box seats, piped in music of some sort, shit head carpet, junk art on all the walls. The whole contraption just breathing in and exhaling out two scummy words: heart and cancer. There's no evidence of real heart anywhere, just the flagging one. But like I say, the ton of pleasant professional women as receptionists and nurses etc are holding the whole place up. And probably back at home, too. They are truly a new salt of the earth quality all to themselves. There's a million ways into the place, wide glassy doors, but no way out.

(so get playful)

I went into another hospital two days later and gave three vials of blood. It should do me for the next 4-5 years or so, except for the prostate which I stay up on. Though I am reading more on the iffy of all prostate tests. I decided to do all the tests to be a good sport while Sweetheart is dragged into her own test after test — be a true companion during this miserable rut. The nurse on call was extremely pleasant. She saw the new Flannery O'Connor biography I had as traveler with me for all the waiting I would be doing that morning and asked immediately what I was reading. I put Flannery down on the bench nearby and pointed back at the book and said "Flannery O'Connor", the same way Columbus said "America". With pride. She said O I don't know her work, should I? I said you most definitely should, but later I realized as with Celine or Beckett even Flannery has to ride with a footnote: can you take artificial niggers and the violent who bear it away? If not, don't go reading. She then asked me why I would read such a book...was I a teacher or?...and the words stopped there and her eyes widened as she searched mine. The coast looked clear so I told her I was a writer. Being a very pleasant woman she said "Oh" and really meant it. She then asked if it was possible to find my books in the local libraries and I told her it would be and I drew a map on my palm just where the books were in the library, what shelf, last dusted and how long the books have sat there untouched. I told her there were a few libraries in the area with said books of this blood giver. I also offered that the fine book store on Main Street had my books. She didn't look ready for me to tell her the store also had Cid's selected poems and it's been there for two years. Untouched. Even after Sweetheart put it on display (taking down someone like Heaney who has had enough exposure). All the while this was going on the poor woman couldn't find my vein. Well she found it, but it kept "slipping away". She dug deeper and poked a bit harder. I saw her walk in at 9:30 and she took me in at 9:40 so I was her first patient and I was only sorry she had to get a slippery one so early in the day. She told me I would probably bruise and I smiled knowing she was going off at the end of the day to buy all my books and start her poetry library...what's a bruise?

Bob Arnold says, if you can muster it, go to a doctor with a song in your heart