other times i am sitting on a stone chair in an icu waiting room and taking big drugs and glossing over and gliding through every branch of the hospital, getting lost in the secret ugly snarl of service hallways behind the cafeteria, trying and failing to be friendly to the smiling orderly who gets me un-lost and wants to make conversation.
my father had a heart attack and a bypass and a bypass and a bypass and a bypass and his aorta fell apart in surgery so they made him a new one out of paper clips and lunch meat. then he almost died again a bunch of times and then technically i guess he did die so they smacked him until he came back and then they thought he was going to die from this other thing but then he was ok? it ended well but it took forever. it's still 2009? ludicrous.
dr. brown came to find us after surgery. tired eyes from 10 hours of struggling and fixing and re-fixing. hoarse. he told us some facts; some people crumpled. i stayed behind to ask him the terrible questions. he was kind enough to draw a picture, in smeary ballpoint, of what he had done, where it had gone wrong, and where he made up a new plan from scratch with his hands inside a human being's chest.
i had this terrific moment with my own idiocy. i suddenly knew that i was the dumbest monkey in the building. i had been thinking this already as i walked and walked, thinking about the impossible knowledge of bodies, all the stuff i could never possibly contain or focus enough to learn, the facts contained inside every nurse whose eyes i did not meet, every orderly, every person in scrubs, even the janitors and even the ugly ones. the terrifying universe of data i could not hope to know. a gerbil touring nasa.
dr. brown drew me a picture like i was a caveman. i grunted and ate a bug. dr. brown asked if i had any more questions and i said no, and then i said the dumbest shit that has ever come out of my mouth, the lamest, the funniest, i said "uh, thanks."
i wish to god i had added "...dude" to make it the stupidest thing anyone has ever said. thanks... dawg. bro. man. mandude. sup. my father's life. word. upnod. nice one. sweet.