Not a nice picture.
Then the separation and divorce, which didn’t change that vision. I simply saw myself ALONE and drying up and getting progressively poorer. Which most likely was a big motivation for me to leave Ohio, to move on to someplace else where something, SOMETHING might happen; where I could possibly MAKE something happen.
At the moment, things are happening all over the place. I’m calm, that’s about as much as I can say. Mr. M is lying on the back seat of the Jeep with his foot propped up on the window. It’s bundled up in a few dish towels, because by the time I got to him he was bleeding pretty freely. There’s going to be one hell of a mess to clean up back at the house, but that’s the last thing on my mind.
We’re driving to an Emergency Care place that Mr. M knows of. It’s local, in fact, I can see it, and it’s open twenty-four hours a day. He mumbled something to me about it, about having gone there for some bee stings, but I wasn’t paying that much attention, I was trying to get him to let me call 911. He was adamant about that, though. No. I was not to call 911. Just get him over to Emergency. All in all, he’s been pretty good about everything, not complaining when I wrapped his foot, leaving the glass in it, it’s pretty deep and pretty thick. He didn’t make a fuss about getting into the Jeep, either, which wasn’t that easy. For a small person, he’s not light and I didn’t want to give him any more pain than he already has. And he’s not making a sound now, but for the occasional sigh when we hit a bump in the road, or right now, when I’m driving into the parking lot.
“We’re here,” I say.
We look like we’ve been in a bloodbath. It’s all over me, my skirt, him, his clothes, the towels are beginning to soak through, and it’s on the seat of the Jeep. Jesus Christ.
“Help me out,” he says.
“No, stay here, I’ll get someone.”
“Just help me, please,” he says, struggling to move. The thing is, I don’t know how to help him, he’s in there and I can see no way of doing this without his behind ending up on the ground. I can’t lift him, he can’t move himself that much. But here he is, twisting around in the seat and bringing his bloodied, wrapped foot out. I grab him at the knee to keep his foot from hitting the ground, and he slips out of the car with a motion that’s almost graceful, reaching an arm out to put around my shoulders.
I look at him. I haven’t looked at him since I rolled my eyes at him in the storage room. He’s gone whitish green. Maybe it’s the light in the parking lot.
“Can you walk?” I don’t think he can, but he settles his foot down on his heel and nods.
“Slow.”
Slow it is. We manage to hobble into the waiting room, and for once in my life there’s no waiting. It’s a melee of people, of gurneys and wheel chairs. We must look like a walking car wreck. They even throw me into a chair and take me back with Mr. M to get worked on.
“Not me, I’m fine. He’s got glass in his foot,” I say.
The bulk of the attention focuses on Mr. M, then, with only one nurse left to listen to my explanation of what happened.
I’m very careful with my words. It’s nobody’s business how the glass came to be broken. I tell this person, who has very understanding eyes, that a coffee table broke and the glass dropped on his foot. She probes no further. Doesn’t ask why we drove instead of calling 911, doesn’t ask how the table broke. I know that those questions might come later, and I hope that they are directed to the man on the table who is saying ‘fuck, fuck, fuck’ under his breath as they unwrap the towels and have a good look at his foot.
It’s now that I want to be sick. Now that we’re here and he’s in capable hands I want to vomit, and I must look like it, because the nurse hands me a plastic contraption ‘in case’. I don’t like blood. Never have. When I had Tish I didn’t want to watch it, and asked the doctor and nurses to please take the mirror out of the room. I closed my eyes for the whole thing, opening them only once to see her once she was out of me. I didn’t cut the cord. I don’t like medical procedures. But when Tish fell and opened up her forehead on a playground when she was three, or when Errol sliced off the end of his thumb with a saw, I did what I had to do. Same here.
“Shi?”
“I’m right here.”
“C’mere,” he says.
“I don’t think I can, Mr. M, I’d be in the way.” But they tell me it’s all right, they’re all looking at his foot. I get up and stand beside the table, avoiding all the tubes and machines they have for more serious emergencies. One look at him and I see that I was right, he’s whitish green. He looks worse than I feel.
“Call Juliette,” he says.
“All right.”
“Like, now. Have her meet us at the house in a coupla hours.”
“I think I left the phone at home,” I say. I think I did, in fact, I don’t remember taking my bag with me. It’s sitting in the kitchen where I always leave it. Mr. M reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone.
“Here, speed number two.” He hands me the phone, then grabs onto my hand, and closes his eyes, his face knotting up, because they’re touching the piece of glass. “Fuck that hurts,” he says from between clenched teeth. “How bad is it?” he asks me.
“I don’t know. How bad is it?” I ask the people working around us.
“Not too bad. Some stitches, four, maybe five. It’s deep, but it’s clean. Could be worse, it could have been on the bottom,” one of the doctors says. “You’re lucky it didn’t take off a toe or two.”
I can’t watch this, they’re moving the piece of glass, and the blood keeps running out of the wound. Mr. M is hurting my hand. All of a sudden he goes rigid.
“SHIT!”
“Glass is out. We’ll get you cleaned up,” the doctor says. Then there’s a lot of talk about tetanus, thread, needles, and things that I block out because I don’t want to hear them. And Mr. M doesn’t either, I can tell, because his eyes are closed. He’s still holding onto my hand and doesn’t let go, not even when they roll up his sleeve and give him a shot, that makes him wince.
“What’s that?” he asks.
“Tetanus shot,” a nurse says, giving the both of us a nursey smile, that bland, plastered on smile they save for those of us who aren’t all that sharp in these situations. For some unknown reason, I find it comforting. Mr. M’s grip relaxes.
“I’m going to call Juliette while they fix your foot,” I tell him.
“Okay.” But he doesn’t let go of my hand.
“It’s going to be all right, it really doesn’t look bad at all, now that the glass isn’t sticking out of it.” I’ve said this with a straight face, I’ve meant it in all sincerity, but Mr. M opens his eyes and we both begin to laugh. Nervous, hysterical laughter. We both know it, I can see that, but neither of us cares, either.
He lets go of my hand and I leave the care area for the lobby so I can call Juliette, who I’m sure is just sitting up by the phone waiting to hear that Mr. M is in the emergency room.
~~**~~**~~***~~**~~**~~
Two hours and seven stitches later we’re back in the Jeep for the short ride home. I’m running on pure nerves now; it’s been a long day and an even longer night. Things that I wasn’t thinking about before start drifting into my head, like cleaning the mess in the living room, and will the blood come out of my clothes, and how glad I am that Tish was somewhere else tonight.
Mr. M is quiet. I don’t think they’ve given him anything stronger than a Tylenol and I know that his foot is hurting. After what went on tonight, I think a lot more is hurting him. There was no way I couldn’t overhear what was going on, even when I went out to the terrace to have a cigarette, the voices carried.
“I’m sorry about all this, Siobhan,” he says, breaking the quiet.
“It’s all right,” I tell him. I guess it is. I mean, I would have liked a decent night’s sleep, and I could have done without the blood, or even listening to him fight with that girl. But here we are and there’s nothing either of us can do about it. “Good thing someone was around.”
“Yeah. Thank you.”
“It’s okay.” I’m too tired to even think to complain. It was an accident after all. I don’t think that he intentionally meant to put glass in his foot, although I’m not really sure if he intentionally got into the fight with this ‘Sarah’ person. She didn’t seem like any bed of roses herself, so it’s hard to say, and I really don’t care. I’d like to get some sleep before Tish comes home tomorrow. And I’m figuring that any plans I had are cancelled, because someone has to clean up the debris, and that someone is me.
I park, and help Mr. M out of the Jeep. They’ve given him some crutches, but I can see that he doesn’t like them, and instead, just leans on me the way he had in the Emergency Care Parking lot. At the front door, I realize that his bedroom is at the other end of the house. Upstairs. Several odd flights of them.
“Just help me to the den,” he says, reading my thoughts.
The den’s not far. I can do that. We do it together, him hobbling, me holding him up the best I can, trying not to slide on the glossy wood floors. We make it up and down the few steps we have to maneuver to that room, and then I ease him down onto the sofa.
“I’ll be right back,” I tell him, and I go to the Jeep to get the crutches. That’s one more thing that has to be done straight away, the inside of the Jeep needs to be cleaned out so the blood stains won’t take. Damnit.
In the den he’s propped his feet up on the coffee table and has the television on. He looks small there on that enormous sofa. And the room feels cold to me.
“I’m going to get you a blanket.”
“Could you get me somethin’ else to wear, too?” he asks.
“Sure, what would you like?”
“Just some sweats and a T-shirt.”
“Will do.” I leave him there and make a detour to the living room. Glass everywhere. I’m not going to even try to walk through the wreckage, I don’t know how I managed to not cut myself getting to him in the first place. This is going to be an all day job. I have no idea about getting the blood out of the carpet. Crap.
I find the things I want easy enough, I know where everything is in his room and closet now. I even remember his medication, which I doubt he’s taken for the night, and take the pill box with me, too. And a pillow. And when I get back to the den he’s asleep.
I leave everything well within reach. He can arrange himself the way he wants. I want to go home now. It’s late, well after two, and I need to get some sleep. Unfortunately, I’m confronted with the kitchen and all the uneaten food. The chicken is a dried up lump in the oven, the vegetables, hell, I never even got to cook them, but they’re warm out on the counter and I just don’t see any need in trying to salvage anything. It takes me no time to dump everything in a trash bag. I’ll put it in a can on my way to the pool house. The coffee is still in the pot, and that’s still on. I don’t even think about it, I take it off its burner and clean it, set the whole thing up for the morning, timer and all. One last thing I won’t have to deal with later today.
And I’m thirsty. I don’t want coffee, it would keep me awake, and I’ve dumped it down the drain anyway. There’s a lot of bottled water in the fridge, though, and I help myself to one, then realize that Mr. M has nothing to wash his pills down with. I’ll leave him some water. Even if he doesn’t wake up to have it cold, he’ll have it.
Only he’s awake again, just pulling the T-shirt on. His bloodied clothes are in a heap on the floor and for once I’m not disturbed by that, it seems perfectly fine.
“I brought you some water,” I say.
“Thanks.”
“Do you need anything else? If not, I’m going to head home.”
“No, nothing,” he says.
“Try and get some sleep. I’ll be back in the morning to deal with the mess,” I say.
“Forget it. I’ll get someone else to...”
“Just get some sleep, we can talk it all over in the morning.” I don’t want to go back and forth about who’s going to clean what. I want to sleep. “G’night, Mr. M.”
“Siobhan?”
“Yes?”
“It’s Alex. Call me Alex.”
“Then g’night, Alex.”
“’Night.”
~~**~~**~~***~~**~~**~~
~~**~~**~~***~~**~~**~~
My living room is wrecked, my foot is fucked up, that bitch took my dogs, and it’s three o’clock in the morning. And I’m not gonna get any sleep because I’m throbbing from the pain.
Shit happens.
Good think Shi was here.
~~**~~**~~***~~**~~**~~
~~**~~**~~***~~**~~**~~
© 2003 Chandrah, Inc.
© 2003 (*> Baby Bird Productions, Inc.
