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the avra valley dispatch: October 11 2004 -- You Can't Always Get What You Want / What a Drag it is Getting Old
If his name had not been on door, I wouldn't have recognized him. They did something to make his skin look healthier -- but his big Yosemite Sam moustache is gone, and he looks small. And there are the tubes and the ventilator: not good, not what he wanted. Also, the fidgeting was a little unnerving. Must be the drugs.
I think he knew I was there -- he tried mouthing some words, but then zoned out, "talking" to things that weren't there and oblivious to me. I held his hand for awhile and tried to find a cheerier tv channel than the weather / time / elevator music placeholder station it was tuned to. After several rotations, I finally settled on the Cartoon Network, and left.
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On Wednesday morning, I took a photo of his angel tree and printed it out on the colour printer at work. I rummaged around his trailer and grabbed an afghan, his hippie abalone crucifix, and an unfinished pair of DIY moccasins donated by "Help Hospitalized Veterans." I started to lace them together at lunch, but it was more time consuming than I expected. Hospitalized Veterans probably have a much longer lunch break than Cubicle Girl does.
On my way to the nursing home, I bought a cheap radio at Walgreens and a St. Michael candle at Food City. The boyfriend met me at the nursing home, and we went up to room 212 together. On Tuesday, I had either overlooked the sign on the door that instructed all visitors to wear a gown and gloves, or, because he hadn't had any visitors, there had been no sign posted.
Buster was a little more alert this time, and his attempts to have me understand him were more desperate: he methodically and repeatedly mouthed the same thing to me -- I could tell that much. Frustrated, he rolled his eyes and shrugged. I held his hand for a bit through the latex gloves.
"I'm not sure if they think I'm going to give you cooties, or if you're going to give them to me."
He sort of smiled and then spaced out, talking again to those things that weren't there.
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Buster had just been released from ICU when I finally learned his whereabouts. Over a month attached to tubes and machines with bags of goop dripping into him -- a great way to wake up when you didn't want to be resuscitated in the first place.
He's drugged up, he didn't have a single visitor, he's missed two months of Playboy and he's gone through the DTs and hasn't had a cigarette or meatloaf since the end of August. He can't talk with the ventilator stuck in his neck, and since he was in restraints for a month, his arms are partially paralyzed, so he can't write.
I can't read lips very well, but I think he's royally pissed off.
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