I stuffed my arm back into its sling, walked out of the physical therapist’s office, and crossed the street to the theater.
Looper had already started, but the box office girl said there were twenty minutes of previews.
I bought a ticket, the doorman tore it in half, and he checked my bag for weapons.
“Just drugs,” I said. “Painkillers.”
There was no way I could carry my large soda and popcorn myself.
“Jeremy,” I said, reading the boy’s nametag. “Got a minute to help me to my seat?”
He carried my drink, I thanked him, and the movie began.
Category: My stories
Open For Dinner
I wanted some chicken in my vegetables, so I pulled out a can of chicken and fumbled with the can opener in my one good hand.
I can’t close it and turn the handle at the same time.
And wishing I had an electric can opener doesn’t do squat for me right now.
So, I use the can opener to rip around the lid, taking five minutes to get it open.
Then, I poked a fork into the lid, prying it off.
And dropping the can on the floor.
Chicken… everywhere…
“Dinner,” I call to the cats, eating my vegetables.
One or Zero
The pain scale goes from zero to ten.
At zero, you feel no pain or discomfort.
At ten, that’s all you feel.
It’s not easy, coming up with an objective measure for a subjective experience like pain, but when you’re in pain, you’ll come up with a number pretty damn quick.
There were times in the hospital when I was rolling around in agony, calling for the nurse to bring me pain pills.
You don’t calmly say nine. You growl it, you whimper it, or you scream it.
Then, relief comes… slowly…
One and zero never felt so damned good.
The Meal Plan
Back in college, the meal plan covered weekday breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
On weekends, there were just the noon brunches, and we were on our own for breakfast and dinner.
Most of us slept through breakfast, or we loaded up on beer at the tailgate parties for football games, but the truth is I never grew out of having milk and cereal.
Sometimes, it was corn flakes, but usually it was Lucky Charms.
Whatever the cereal, the cockroaches always found their way into the box.
Green clovers.
Blue Diamonds.
Yellow stars.
And brown insect corpses.
Yeah, they were magically disgusting.
Poker
My cat Nardo would wait until I was covered up and almost asleep before reaching out slowly and poking me in the nose.
He’s gone now, and I miss him.
For the first few days, I’d hear him jumping up on the bed, or I’d think he was about to poke me in the nose.
Nope. Just a ghost.
When I broke my arm and took very strong opiate-based painkillers, I had vivid dreams, and I hoped I’d dream him.
Nope again.
But last night, our cat Bruwyn poked me in the nose. And that’ll have to do for now.
Delicious
While dirty, grimy starving children crawl in the alleys picking through garbage piles for food, El Presidente draws his silver sabre and slices a gigantic cake, his generals and wealthy friends standing around him and clapping.
The applause was so loud, nobody heard the screams inside the cake.
Except El Presidente himself, who saw the blood on his sword and smiled.
The CIA agent had tried to seduce him. And failed.
Uniformed servants bring out plates with slices from another cake.
El Presidente declines a piece, preferring to lick the bloody frosting from his sword.
And smiling even wider.
“Delicious.”
Stripey
Every day, a silver tabby jumps over our fence and walks up to our sliding glass door to ask for treats.
We call him “Stripey” and he’s really loud. He gets louder when we’re close to him.
Our two cats don’t mind that he comes to visit. They give him a wide berth as he eats from his pile of treats.
When he’s done, he usually wanders back to wherever he hangs out.
But right now, he’s laying outside the door, eyes half-closed.
Watching me watch him.
I won’t try to pet him, though. I’ll just let him sit peacefully.
Taps
Regulations state that every burial gets a bugler.
The problem is, the enemy took out Rogers and Menendez – the only two guys who play the bugle.
“Who knows anything about playing music?” shouts the company commander.
Washington stood up. “I scratched a bit in clubs.”
“Sit down!” shouts the commander. “Anybody else?”
I nudged Washington. “Think we can rig something up?”
He nodded.
And I stood up.
Washington and I rigged up a bugle to play a track out from a speaker in the bell.
And it worked great
Until it rained, and the damn thing shorted out the camp.
Daisy
Her name was Daisy, but she preferred roses.
Nobody asked her what flowers she liked, so everyone gave her daisies and she’d smile and thank them for the flowers.
When she’d get home, she’d give them to the old woman who lived on the third floor. Or if the old woman wasn’t there, Daisy just tossed them in the dumpster in the alley.
Then one day, a guy finally gave her roses and she was so thrilled, she had a stroke and collapsed.
Now she’s in the hospital completely unresponsive, a vase of daisies on the table by the bed.
The Tape
The nurse cut away my splint, unwrapped the bandages, and snipped out the stitches one by one.
Then she swabbed the incision before covering it with strips of tape and wrapping it with another bandage.
“You can stop wearing the bandage when the incision is healed,” she said. “The tape will fall off soon after that.”
And sure enough, the first scab-encrusted strip is coming loose right now.
I plan on putting it under my pillow for The Medical Waste Fairy.
I hope to get at least a quarter for it.
(But enough to pay my deductible would be better.)