Sometimes, my Tuesdays don’t go like I plan them. Ever since this fall’s TV line-up started, most of my evenings (days and weeks also?) have revolved around the careful orchestration and execution of a television-watching strategy. Yes, it’s lame, but I’m going through a socially withdrawn phase at the moment--this is just temporarily symptomatic. Soon I’ll be back to reading romance novels obsessively and tempering them with As I Lay Dying to ease my elitist conscience.
Tuesday is my day off from television, however. There’s nothing on I feel the most remote commitment to on TV, so I use Tuesdays for laundry and dishes and things I should have done a week ago but figured I could put off until next Tuesday. Things like back-up my e-mail to my hard drive, which I haven’t done in at least a month. Things like burn that R. Kelly CD I borrowed that I’ve been saying I’d do for a month.
Two weeks ago, on a Thursday, not a Tuesday, I got a phone call at work. I thought it was my vet. My cat was having even more teeth removed, and I anxiously expected a call with a surgical update, including the number of teeth extracted. The magic number turned out to be three. He now has one canine left, and it makes me laugh every time he meows. He’d look like a pirate if I made him an eye patch.
But it wasn’t the vet who called; it was Jonas. I was surprised. I was so surprised, I was quite rude to Jonas and said, “You’re not who I was expecting.” His feelings were hurt, but I bet he wouldn’t admit it.
He told me, “Hey, I’m calling for a favor. A couple of weeks ago I got my nose broken in a boxing match.”
“Oh my god! That’s terrible!”
“Well, I’m getting it fixed on Tuesday, and I wondered if you could pick me up from the hospital.”
“Of course,” said.
He told me, “It’s on your way home from work, and I’ll be done at six exactly, so you can swing by and just grab me when you get out of work for the day.”
I thought: “Surgery doesn’t really work that way. Nothing ever happens on time, and you don’t just cruise into the hospital to retrieve someone who was recently anesthetized.”
I said: “OK.”
The Monday before, I got nervous about the schedule. I arranged to go to work early, leave by 4:30 pm, and be waiting in the hospital lobby with my fluffy British novel (Vince and Joy, described on the dust jacket as High Fidelity meets Bridget Jones’ Diary, much more like the latter, not much like the former, except there *was* a guy in it who I guess listened to music.).
Last Tuesday arrived. I was nervous and on edge. Sure, I wasn’t the one undergoing nasal reconstructive surgery three weeks after I had my nose broken in a white-collar boxing match, but as described in a previous e-mail exchange I shared here, timed schedules where things happen at allotted intervals really freak me out. I’m not really known for my casual, breezy grace. My intimates know me better by my levels of panicked-ness.
With the exception of the part of the day where I left at 4:30, everything did not go according to plan. I massively overestimated how far away the hospital was from my office. I also significantly overestimated the traffic congestion between my office and this hospital. Being so early—it was about 5:30 at this point—I called my husband who works nearby and asked if I could pick him up from his office. We circled around the neighborhood until we found a doughnut slash ice cream shop where we could park for free and eat snacks that will one day necessitate our own visits to the hospital. I sat my cell phone on the table, and waved my fingers at it like a commanding hypnotist, shouting “Ring!” I was eager to do my patient retrieval duties and get home to unscheduled non-events.
At last, at 6:30, the phone finally rings. “Is this Christine?” asks a mysterious woman.
“Yes I am.”
“And are you Jonas’ ride home from the hospital?”
“Yes I am.”
“Well, he’s just now about to come out of surgery. He’s not going to be ready to go home until 7:30 or 7:45.”
I think my face turned blue. It felt blue. It felt empty and tingly, just like the calories in all that ice cream I finished a half hour before. Another hour trapped on scheduled event island? Irritating, slightly expected, survivable.
I drove dear Matthew home so that he could walk our poor dog, and I hopped back in the car to head back to the hospital, surmising I’d still have time to read about Vince and Joy’s English romance escapades.
And I did. In spades.
I called from the designated patient pick-up zone to the designated recovery nurse’s hotline, and was told to keep waiting, that they’d get him down to me in a little while. The poor nurse sounded so anxious for inconveniencing me. Of course I wasn’t really discommoded by the hospital waiting, that’s what friends do, pick them up from broken noses, but I am a little nuts so I really was psychologically inconvenienced. But I never told her that of course. I will admit A LOT of crazy things to total strangers at chance encounters, but I would never confirm something bad a person was thinking about me if it caused them discomfort. I was all telephone smiles to the friendly nurse.
I waited and waited, got another call from the nurse that they’d be right down, and waited longer. Logically, I knew that this was exactly how retrieving a sedated person from a large hospital would be, but I did wish it were over already.
And then, through the parting sliding glass doors, they appeared, Jonas slumped in a wheelchair and pushed by a nurse in navy blue and white uniform. And I was shocked. Somehow, Jonas didn’t look like I expected. I knew they were rebuilding his nose, but I imagined movie plastic surgery like in LA Confidential when the girl with the plastic bandage and tape over her nose with black circles under her eyes tells the guy, “Mister, it’s not what you think.” I’ve seen enough Dr. 90210 episodes though that I probably should have done a better job guessing what he’d really look like. And once I asked an EMT what his “most ER moment was in real life,” and I know from experience now that medical reality and medical fiction are a gulf of human emotions apart.
Jonas was a bandaged human with guts blood and medical accessories sticking out. Huge swabs of thick cotton gauze swaddled his nose, taped down securely in several layers. Blood was already accumulating where normal noses would have been dripping snot, staining the gauze pillow under his wrapped nose a watery red. Two thin white tubes with little valves on the ends curled out from his bandaged nostrils like Salvador Dali’s swooping waxed mustache. Behind the gauze and tape, his face was already swollen, and his eyes were unfocused from the anesthesia. “Christine, thank you so much for coming to get me. I’m so sorry you had to wait for me.”
My heart broke in sympathy. He sounded exactly like a drugged-up, nasal-bandaged Jonas would sound—thin, wispy, deflated. “There but for the grace of god go I,” I couldn’t help thinking, over and over. All those times I begged my parents for cosmetic surgery to reduce my ponderously sized proboscis, bless them for never giving in. All those times I’ve bonked my giant nose on inanimate objects thrown into my path by wicked circumstance, thank you, nose, for never breaking. And for that one time I actually got into a fight in high school, thank you, mean girl, for not actually getting near my face. “There but for the grace of god go I.”
I got Jonas home last Tuesday, but only barely. At one point, when he insisted on walking down the sidewalk by himself, I saw him stagger and grip a wrought-iron fence. I thought, “If I can just get him through the gate to his yard, and then if he falls down, he’ll be safe, and I can go get help.” I like to plan for misfortune when I can.
Last Tuesday didn’t exactly happen according to plan. My hope is that tonight, my fresh and new Tuesday, will not involve any calls from hospitals, broken bones, or bloody bandages. Smelly laundry and dirty dishes have taken on a quiet simplicity I can newly appreciate. Thank you for the perspective, Jonas. My life isn't so bad after all.
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