egg drop soup...YUM!
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Monday, January 26, 2009
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Monday, January 12, 2009
Thursday, January 1, 2009
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Removal
My phone rings at 5:30 a.m. My friend’s tearful voice. "He's not going to make it Andrea." "What?" I reply sleepily. "Sorry to wake you." "Who cares? What happened?" "I don't know,” she sobs. “They just called me and said to come to the hospital his heart is failing."
I slide on my jeans as she tells me details, -I walk down the hall and turn on my roommate Marco's bedroom light. He wakes with a start and then sees my face as I point to the phone and mouth "Cheryl.” I pad to the kitchen so Marco can dress and I listen to her sobbing recanting of dialysis and infection and how she thought she was going to be able to talk to her Dad the other night, but when she arrived at the hospital he was back on the vent and no one in her family had told her. Marco walks into the kitchen, watching my face for some clue of what is going on. Cheryl and I say "I love you girl" to each other and I hand the phone to Marco. He works at the hospital where Cheryl's Dad is now dying. After listening to Cheryl, he hangs up the phone looking stunned. His eyes follow a tear as it rolls down my cheek. "She said not to come," I whisper. "We are going," he replies. "I know," I begin to cry and call my boyfriend Drew. “Give me five minutes,” he says. “I'm coming."
The three of us are walking to our cars in the rain. It is the end of September and our first Nor’easter of the season. We caravan to the hospital, -following each other’s brake lights down the dark wet streets. We walk quietly down the corridors, Marco leading the way, showing his id badge, allowing us access where we would normally have none. I hold Drew's hand and squeeze it hard and he squeezes back, our silent way of saying I love you. As we round the corner of the sixth floor we see Cheryl. She lets out a little moan. We surround her in a group hug. It is the only way we know to comfort our friend, to let her know that we are here. The smell of the hospital is cloying and thick, the staff quickly walking by avoiding our gazes. Still in shock we keep repeating, "I thought he was getting better?" I don't know what comfort you can truly give a friend who is losing their Dad. I don’t know any words to dull the pain. I just know, if I lost my Dad, I wouldn't want to be alone.
More than a month earlier Cheryl’s Dad fell asleep behind the wheel and collided with a tree . This wasn’t an old sick man. This wasn't a long time coming, not that it would make it easier, but it might. This was a relatively young man with more life to live; only he won't.
The three of us spend an hour sitting with our friend. We hold her while she cries and try to make her laugh when the crying slows. There is a wave of emotion ebbing and flowing, the wave causing Cheryl’s body to shake, my head to throb, signaling to Drew to grip my hand even tighter. Sometimes the rain hitting the windows is the only sound we hear -I worry that her Mom is driving in this mess. Cheryl walks away to talk to her paternal relatives, relatives that don’t make her feel comfortable, relatives that look down at her because of her education and her unused womb, relatives that scoff because art and writing poetry are her chosen babies. I picture her Dad behind the doors of the ICU, where only family can enter. “He’s hooked up to so many tubes Andrea. There are just so many tubes.” She tells me she hates going in that room. She says that he looks like he is in so much pain that he doesn’t even look like her Dad anymore. I imagine the ventilator, and the sound of air being forced loudly in and out of lungs, the unnatural rise and fall of chest and belly. IV needles in hands. Pulse ox on finger tips, g tube in belly, catheter in penis. Her Dad covered in a jungle of wires and tubes, keeping him from her, the beeping of machines and the long silence when she speaks to him and he doesn’t, can’t respond. All of this technology invading her Dad, changing her Dad, but not saving him. They are making the decision to take him off the vent and I hear her crying loudly. “Are they being mean to her?” I ask Marco as he walks back with pain reliever from the pharmacy where he works. I am feeling very protective of my friend and I am ready to run to her side and say, “Leave her alone!”
“No, they are just talking,” Marco replies. I settle down when Cheryl’s Mom arrives at the hospital. No longer Charlie's wife she has come to comfort her children. Cheryl’s Mom gives Cheryl a hug and instantly they are both crying, sobbing incomprehensible words to each other. After long minutes they break apart and I am now hugging Cheryl’s Mom. It is a good Mommy hug, the kind I get from my Mom anytime I need one. “I am so glad you all are here for her.” “I am glad you’re here too.”
Drew, Marco and I take turns hugging Cheryl and saying “I love you.” I let her know that her childhood friend Kara is on the way before we say goodbye. “Drive safe,” she commands. “You know I’m going to say that for a while now, don’t you?”
I walk back out into the rain. Cheryl’s Mom is by her side and I can return to work with a clean conscience, almost. I would love to say as a nurse I am racing off to save another life, but I’m not. I work at a medical spa. If you have wrinkles, or thin lips, or unwanted hair, you call me. Driving down the highway, my left hand on the wheel, my right hand holding the coffee I made while waiting for Drew, I sip it slowly, hoping each sip will wake me and this will all be one of my crazy dreams. I don’t want to hear the DJ drivel so I turn off the radio, but then I am alone with my thoughts. I can’t believe you’re leaving your friend just so some lady won’t have to shave her pubic hair. What the hell kind of friend are you? But her Mom is there. I’m sure Kara is almost there. What can you do anyway? You can hold her hand. You can give her hugs and tissues. You can cry with her. You can make her laugh; you’re good at making her laugh. These are things her mother and Kara are now handling, you have to go to work. But pubic hair, really, is it that important?
There is nothing like death to make every other activity seem shallow and trivial. That feeling is amplified by the fact that my job is purely for aesthetic purposes. Cheryl is losing her Dad today and I am driving farther and farther away. It’s raining buckets and my windows are fogging up, mirroring how I feel inside. My shirt is wet, and my eyes are wet, and my heart is wet. The constant swish of the wipers is pissing me off. I need to yell so I yell. “Fucking God Damn Pubic Hair!”
I am getting close to my exit and I compose myself, because that is what a professional hard working girl does. She doesn’t come to work balling, dropping her baggage on the front desk for everyone else to see. So I wipe my eyes and straighten my hair. Finish my coffee. I take a deep breath and unlock the front door. It is my job to open the office. I turn on the lights and the fountain, push play for the mood music and adjust the thermostat. My patient arrives; I force a smile and ask her, “How are you doing?” I don’t really listen to hear her reply, just smile and nod, thinking, “I can’t believe she is worried about her hair when people are dying.” I know that I do the same thing everyday, going on about my day doing frivolous things like checking my Facebook or wondering where the couch is going to go when I move in with my boyfriend, all while people are mourning people they love.
This morning, though, my hypocrisy doesn’t matter because today the person dying is my best friend’s Dad. Cheryl is never going to hear his voice again. She is never going to see him smile again. She can’t call him for advice. She won’t ever again pick up the phone and hear him say, “Cheryl, promise me you will buy a lotto ticket!” Where will she go for Thanksgiving when she doesn’t fit in with the rest of her family? She won’t ride in style on the back of his Harley to lunch. None of those things will ever happen again. Her Dad will be dead.
Her Dad will be dead and this stupid bitch is at my office to get her pubic hair shaped into a triangle so it won’t be in the way when her husband goes down on her. What the fuck are you doing here? I scream in my head. But my patient doesn’t know that. She asks me, “How are you doing?” I’m just great, my friends Dad is dying and instead of being with her I am here lasering you. Maybe if you weren’t so shallow I wouldn’t be here today. Maybe if there weren’t millions of people like you, this industry wouldn’t exist and all the money it takes to fuel the world’s vanity could be used to save my friend’s Dad. “Oh fine,” I reply, trying to make it sound believable. I breathe out, not realizing I had been holding my breath. I remind myself that it’s not really her fault my friend is losing her Dad. But in my heart, in some illogical way, I believe that it is.
There are all kinds of women who come into get their pubic hair removed. Some are tired of shaving and having painful ingrown hairs. Some just want that little edge that sticks out of the bathing suit removed. Some are doing it for purely aesthetic and sexual purposes. This woman falls into the latter category. They are always easy to spot because they either remove every stitch of hair or the hair they leave is immaculately shaved into a design, with perfectly even crisp edges. As I smooth the ultrasound gel on her skin, like frosting a cake, I say to her in the most pleasant voice I can conjure, “I’m going to apply a cold gel to your skin to keep your skin cool while the laser heats up your hair. The laser may feel like a pin prick or snap of a rubber band. ” I explain that the laser uses thermal heat energy, which is attracted to melanin, the color in her hair; it travels down the hair follicle and cauterizes the blood supply. That she will have to come back four more times because only about 20 percent of hair is connected to the blood supply at any given time. I normally become a sort of friend with my patients after seeing them so many times. I try to focus on the person I am working on and not the act of lasering, but today I can’t manage that connection.
I hand her protective eyewear. I access her skin type and adjust the laser settings, choosing the proper jules and milliseconds, calibrating the diode laser and its minuscule microchips to the exact fluence needed to destroy her hair and not her skin. The new lasers are so easy to use it takes almost no brainpower. I could do this in my sleep. I slide my protective glasses down from the top of my head to cover my eyes. The glasses provide a barrier between me and the intimate area I am about to laser. I can see and touch any person’s private areas as long as I have on the glasses, the protective coating on the lens shielding more than just my retinas. I lose myself in the rhythm of gliding the laser flush against her skin, smoothing a pattern in the gel as the beam covers an area the size of my thumb nail. Listening to the beep of the laser, watching for her face to grimace or her thigh to tense to know when to pause and give her a break. Seeing her skin begin to redden I say, “You may begin to smell burning hair. That is normal.” The smell of burning hair reaches my nostrils. The old lasers would have caused her hair to crackle as it singed, then pop out of the follicle. New technology affords her more comfort. I can’t help but thinking how I’m sure this laser costs more than the ventilator being removed from Cheryl’s Dad. I see my patient clinch her teeth. “You’re doing great,” I say, trying to soothe her. “I’m almost done.”
When the treatment is over and my patient has gone, paying a hefty fee for the pain I just inflicted upon her, I look out the window and see the rain is still coming down. I check the appointment book and I have one more patient to take care of later in the day. I pace around, and then fold towels, the soft white cotton sticking to my dry, over-washed hands. The clock is ticking so slowly. I text Kara and ask, “What’s going on?” “They just took him off the vent,” she writes back, and I wait. Looking out the window at my desk, I see the patterns the rain makes on the surface of puddles in the parking lot. Leaves are hanging low with the weight of rain, then springing up as the rain slides off. It’s going to flood, I tell myself.
Cheryl told me her Dad left when she was small and it is only in recent years that she became closer to him, going to movies and lunches together. Often times riding to lunch on the back of her Dad’s Harley was the highlight of her day. She would always bring one friend with her to Thanksgiving at her Dad’s. “I have one ticket,” she would say, and seeing her Dad was the grand prize. He came and met us all out for drinks one night and she was so excited to see him, to have him meet her friends. They were finally starting to connect again, after things had soured months before. I can still hear the pain in Cheryl’s voice as she told me that her Dad coming to see her perform her spoken word poetry was less about seeing her but more an excuse to hit on her friend. The words she writes are so intimate, such a part of her that I cannot separate Cheryl from poetry in my mind. You missed your chance Pops, I think, her only recourse to write more.
Her Dad is slipping from living man, to memories and words on a page, while I wait for three o’clock and my next patient. I hate this place more and more every minute. I hate my job and its shallow roots. I hate the fact that I make more money removing hair then I could ever make at the hospital saving lives. I hate myself for choosing money over fulfillment.
I worked at the Children’s Hospital for one year. I was in orthopedics, helping the children with broken bones, with spina bifida and scoliosis. I changed dressings and removed sutures from wounds extending all the way down their little spines. I put on casts and assisted the doctor in setting broken bones. I calmed parents and held crying children. I made a difference and for one year I could not pay my mortgage and my bills. My need to be finically independent was greater than my need for fulfillment and when a friend offered me a job making more money, I took it. I told myself I could be satisfied making women more beautiful and self-assured while having my independence too. Making women more beautiful is the easy part; fixing their self-esteem is like filling a black hole. There is the occasional patient whose life is dramatically changed by my job. One patient told me that for five years she set the alarm clock to wake her before her husband, so she could shave her face without him knowing. Imagining her being woken by kisses from her husband instead of an alarm reminding her she is not feminine is wonderful. But there are few patients like her. Mostly women are insecure or vain and looking for a quick fix to feel better. This is not why I got into nursing.
I methodically pull off the balls of lint that are scattered across my uniform, rolling them in my fingers before watching them float slowly into the trash. My phone dings with a text message from Cheryl. “He’s gone.” My heart sinks further. All I want to do is hug my friend and instead I’m waiting for a patient. A patient that doesn’t need surgery or medicine, a patient that wants the skin on her neck to be tighter, one hour with the radio frequency laser and her jowls won’t sag as much.
Just then the phone rings. It’s my patient canceling her appointment. She doesn’t think it is worth it to drive in this rain.
It’s almost three o’clock. I call my boss to see if I can close the office early. I scramble to shut everything down and I call Kara for an update. We are all meeting at Cheryl’s. Can I pick up some spiced rum because Cheryl wants to make apple cider? It is just like Cheryl to still be planning even in the midst of tragedy.
I stop at home to get a change of clothes, brownie mix, and pain reliever. I go to the liquor store and to 7-11. The rain is still pouring down as I park my car and walk the block to Cheryl’s apartment. My arms full, the rain drenching my pants, a gust of wind blows back the hood on my jacket, wetting my face and hair. I almost drop the rum as I reach to ring the bell. I climb the three flights of stairs, water dripping onto the floor and as I step inside. I say to Cheryl, “Your Dad has a sense of humor. I was walking down the street when all of a sudden this gust of wind blew back my hood and soaked me.” For a moment I fear it may have been too soon to jest, but she laughs and comes to give me a hug. “You’re wet,” she says. Marco chimes in with, “You better march your wet butt back down stairs and get the apple juice!” “You have got to be out of your mind,” I kid back with him. Cheryl hands me a change of clothes and Marco and Kara head downstairs to smoke and get the apple juice. I change and then help Cheryl dig out the ingredients for the cider. I don’t know what to say to her, so I fill the kitchen with mindless chatter as the cider fills the air with the smell of fall.
The moment Cheryl’s Dad died, the hospital’s PA system played a nursery song, meaning a baby had been born. They played it twice because twins were born. We kid with Cheryl that it took two babies to fill her Dad’s spot. She smiles and continues to watch the cider bubble. I wonder if this is any comfort to her, but am too afraid to ask.
The friends keep coming and we all pack into her tiny apartment, pulling out snacks, sipping drinks, watching TV. Marco, Kara, and I take turns snuggling up next to Cheryl on the couch. She holds our hands and stares into nothing, talking infrequently. It is dinnertime and everyone is hungry, but no one can decide what we should eat. That’s normally Cheryl’s job. The ideas circle the room before Kara finally says, “Pizza, that’s easiest.” I bake the brownies as we wait for the pizza. It arrives and we are all nurses, making sure Cheryl is eating; eat pizza Cheryl, eat brownies Cheryl, drink cider Cheryl. It makes no sense that we all feel the need to feed the grieving when they have no strength to even swallow. But the belly is the only spot we can help fill. We can’t fill the hole in the heart, or the empty spaces in the mind, but the belly we can fill. I try not to cross the line, that blurry line between helping a friend feel better and helping myself to feel better by trying. Her silence is deafening and I say to her, “We are not here to keep the sadness from coming out, we are here to catch it when it does.” But of course it can’t come out yet. It is buried under shock.
Before the end of the night every available spot on her couch is taken and the floor is covered with Cheryl’s friends, her self-chosen family. Jamie is snuggled next to Kara who is holding Cheryl’s left hand while I am holding Cheryl’s right hand. Drew’s hand rests on my thigh as his shoulder is resting against Marco’s shoulder, and there are more friends on the floor, all of us somehow connected. Watching as we support each other supporting Cheryl, I feel lucky that we have such a strong group of friends. Then I am reminded how often I take that connection for granted. That connection of people helping other people, that I once found so special, I decided to make it my career. How did you lose that? I squeeze Cheryl’s hand harder and rub her leg, hoping this small act will remind her she is loved.
“The last thing I did with him was watch Batman, and it sucked,” Cheryl had said as we were snuggled on the couch together. Those words keep echoing in my head as I try to go to sleep. I curl up under the covers with the lights on, reading a book, trying to read myself to sleep. I get as far as one chapter when I feel Drew take the book, turn off the light, and climb into bed spooning me. I finally drift off. I wake at 2 a.m. to use the bathroom and I am overwhelmed by a feeling of sadness. I think of Cheryl and I wonder if she is sleeping. I think of the pain she must be feeling. Then I think of my Dad, and how devastated I would be if he were to die. I selfishly feel thankful that it was not my dad, and immediately my cheeks burn with shame. Tears are rolling down my flushed cheeks as I climb back into bed and feel Drew’s warmth under the sheets, his arm reaching out to pull me closer.
“Batman,” I replay over and over. “I don’t want my last memory of my Dad to be a Batman.” I try to remember the last memory I have of my Dad. It was sitting around the table with him, drinking coffee and talking. It didn’t suck and again I am thankful. But that isn’t enough. I know that people die everyday. But there is something about a death so close, so big, that under the covers in the middle of the night it has me in a panic. You don’t want to fill your days working in an industry you don’t admire. You don’t want to feed the neurosis of women. You want more time with family and friends, for yourself, time to share with your Dad.
Sometimes I don’t call my Dad because I have nothing impressive to tell him. I know that he will love me no matter what I am doing, but I don’t. There are so many things I want to do with my Dad. I want more good memories. I have more questions to ask him. I have many things to tell him. I want to just stop this rat race and do all those things, but that’s not how it works, at least that’s not how I know it to work. How will I pay my bills if I leave this job I loathe? I will have to give up my comfy lifestyle. Though with all that my new job has afforded me, what have I been losing? What is there that I can never get back? Thoughts swirl in my mind, keeping me awake: you are like your Dad. You are silly and kind, you are loving and thoughtful. You are sloppy and a procrastinator. You are not that vain, you don’t even like to wear makeup, but somehow you are selling it to other women.
Tears are rolling down my cheeks into my ears as I try and fail to remember a Halloween with my Dad. He and my Mom divorced when I was 5, but I can’t ever remember a time when I didn’t know he was there for me. I think of the time he drove up to help me when I left my husband. He just hugged me and helped me get the job done, and as we loaded the final boxes and I was sitting in his car starring at my former home he played Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down.” We sang it out together while he hit the steering wheel to the beat. It was exactly what I needed to hear and I remember thinking, how did he know that I needed that? My nose begins to run as all the memories flood my mind. I reach for a tissue and I think, tomorrow when I get off from work, I’m going to hug Cheryl so hard because I do know something about that sort of loss. I think of my dad as he carried boxes and didn’t ask questions as I cried and cried and cry.
Thanks to my friend Jesse Scaccia for editing.
Check out his blog at http://jessescaccia.blogspot.com/
For Cheryl
My phone rings at 5:30 a.m. My friend’s tearful voice. "He's not going to make it Andrea." "What?" I reply sleepily. "Sorry to wake you." "Who cares? What happened?" "I don't know,” she sobs. “They just called me and said to come to the hospital his heart is failing."
I slide on my jeans as she tells me details, -I walk down the hall and turn on my roommate Marco's bedroom light. He wakes with a start and then sees my face as I point to the phone and mouth "Cheryl.” I pad to the kitchen so Marco can dress and I listen to her sobbing recanting of dialysis and infection and how she thought she was going to be able to talk to her Dad the other night, but when she arrived at the hospital he was back on the vent and no one in her family had told her. Marco walks into the kitchen, watching my face for some clue of what is going on. Cheryl and I say "I love you girl" to each other and I hand the phone to Marco. He works at the hospital where Cheryl's Dad is now dying. After listening to Cheryl, he hangs up the phone looking stunned. His eyes follow a tear as it rolls down my cheek. "She said not to come," I whisper. "We are going," he replies. "I know," I begin to cry and call my boyfriend Drew. “Give me five minutes,” he says. “I'm coming."
The three of us are walking to our cars in the rain. It is the end of September and our first Nor’easter of the season. We caravan to the hospital, -following each other’s brake lights down the dark wet streets. We walk quietly down the corridors, Marco leading the way, showing his id badge, allowing us access where we would normally have none. I hold Drew's hand and squeeze it hard and he squeezes back, our silent way of saying I love you. As we round the corner of the sixth floor we see Cheryl. She lets out a little moan. We surround her in a group hug. It is the only way we know to comfort our friend, to let her know that we are here. The smell of the hospital is cloying and thick, the staff quickly walking by avoiding our gazes. Still in shock we keep repeating, "I thought he was getting better?" I don't know what comfort you can truly give a friend who is losing their Dad. I don’t know any words to dull the pain. I just know, if I lost my Dad, I wouldn't want to be alone.
More than a month earlier Cheryl’s Dad fell asleep behind the wheel and collided with a tree . This wasn’t an old sick man. This wasn't a long time coming, not that it would make it easier, but it might. This was a relatively young man with more life to live; only he won't.
The three of us spend an hour sitting with our friend. We hold her while she cries and try to make her laugh when the crying slows. There is a wave of emotion ebbing and flowing, the wave causing Cheryl’s body to shake, my head to throb, signaling to Drew to grip my hand even tighter. Sometimes the rain hitting the windows is the only sound we hear -I worry that her Mom is driving in this mess. Cheryl walks away to talk to her paternal relatives, relatives that don’t make her feel comfortable, relatives that look down at her because of her education and her unused womb, relatives that scoff because art and writing poetry are her chosen babies. I picture her Dad behind the doors of the ICU, where only family can enter. “He’s hooked up to so many tubes Andrea. There are just so many tubes.” She tells me she hates going in that room. She says that he looks like he is in so much pain that he doesn’t even look like her Dad anymore. I imagine the ventilator, and the sound of air being forced loudly in and out of lungs, the unnatural rise and fall of chest and belly. IV needles in hands. Pulse ox on finger tips, g tube in belly, catheter in penis. Her Dad covered in a jungle of wires and tubes, keeping him from her, the beeping of machines and the long silence when she speaks to him and he doesn’t, can’t respond. All of this technology invading her Dad, changing her Dad, but not saving him. They are making the decision to take him off the vent and I hear her crying loudly. “Are they being mean to her?” I ask Marco as he walks back with pain reliever from the pharmacy where he works. I am feeling very protective of my friend and I am ready to run to her side and say, “Leave her alone!”
“No, they are just talking,” Marco replies. I settle down when Cheryl’s Mom arrives at the hospital. No longer Charlie's wife she has come to comfort her children. Cheryl’s Mom gives Cheryl a hug and instantly they are both crying, sobbing incomprehensible words to each other. After long minutes they break apart and I am now hugging Cheryl’s Mom. It is a good Mommy hug, the kind I get from my Mom anytime I need one. “I am so glad you all are here for her.” “I am glad you’re here too.”
Drew, Marco and I take turns hugging Cheryl and saying “I love you.” I let her know that her childhood friend Kara is on the way before we say goodbye. “Drive safe,” she commands. “You know I’m going to say that for a while now, don’t you?”
I walk back out into the rain. Cheryl’s Mom is by her side and I can return to work with a clean conscience, almost. I would love to say as a nurse I am racing off to save another life, but I’m not. I work at a medical spa. If you have wrinkles, or thin lips, or unwanted hair, you call me. Driving down the highway, my left hand on the wheel, my right hand holding the coffee I made while waiting for Drew, I sip it slowly, hoping each sip will wake me and this will all be one of my crazy dreams. I don’t want to hear the DJ drivel so I turn off the radio, but then I am alone with my thoughts. I can’t believe you’re leaving your friend just so some lady won’t have to shave her pubic hair. What the hell kind of friend are you? But her Mom is there. I’m sure Kara is almost there. What can you do anyway? You can hold her hand. You can give her hugs and tissues. You can cry with her. You can make her laugh; you’re good at making her laugh. These are things her mother and Kara are now handling, you have to go to work. But pubic hair, really, is it that important?
There is nothing like death to make every other activity seem shallow and trivial. That feeling is amplified by the fact that my job is purely for aesthetic purposes. Cheryl is losing her Dad today and I am driving farther and farther away. It’s raining buckets and my windows are fogging up, mirroring how I feel inside. My shirt is wet, and my eyes are wet, and my heart is wet. The constant swish of the wipers is pissing me off. I need to yell so I yell. “Fucking God Damn Pubic Hair!”
I am getting close to my exit and I compose myself, because that is what a professional hard working girl does. She doesn’t come to work balling, dropping her baggage on the front desk for everyone else to see. So I wipe my eyes and straighten my hair. Finish my coffee. I take a deep breath and unlock the front door. It is my job to open the office. I turn on the lights and the fountain, push play for the mood music and adjust the thermostat. My patient arrives; I force a smile and ask her, “How are you doing?” I don’t really listen to hear her reply, just smile and nod, thinking, “I can’t believe she is worried about her hair when people are dying.” I know that I do the same thing everyday, going on about my day doing frivolous things like checking my Facebook or wondering where the couch is going to go when I move in with my boyfriend, all while people are mourning people they love.
This morning, though, my hypocrisy doesn’t matter because today the person dying is my best friend’s Dad. Cheryl is never going to hear his voice again. She is never going to see him smile again. She can’t call him for advice. She won’t ever again pick up the phone and hear him say, “Cheryl, promise me you will buy a lotto ticket!” Where will she go for Thanksgiving when she doesn’t fit in with the rest of her family? She won’t ride in style on the back of his Harley to lunch. None of those things will ever happen again. Her Dad will be dead.
Her Dad will be dead and this stupid bitch is at my office to get her pubic hair shaped into a triangle so it won’t be in the way when her husband goes down on her. What the fuck are you doing here? I scream in my head. But my patient doesn’t know that. She asks me, “How are you doing?” I’m just great, my friends Dad is dying and instead of being with her I am here lasering you. Maybe if you weren’t so shallow I wouldn’t be here today. Maybe if there weren’t millions of people like you, this industry wouldn’t exist and all the money it takes to fuel the world’s vanity could be used to save my friend’s Dad. “Oh fine,” I reply, trying to make it sound believable. I breathe out, not realizing I had been holding my breath. I remind myself that it’s not really her fault my friend is losing her Dad. But in my heart, in some illogical way, I believe that it is.
There are all kinds of women who come into get their pubic hair removed. Some are tired of shaving and having painful ingrown hairs. Some just want that little edge that sticks out of the bathing suit removed. Some are doing it for purely aesthetic and sexual purposes. This woman falls into the latter category. They are always easy to spot because they either remove every stitch of hair or the hair they leave is immaculately shaved into a design, with perfectly even crisp edges. As I smooth the ultrasound gel on her skin, like frosting a cake, I say to her in the most pleasant voice I can conjure, “I’m going to apply a cold gel to your skin to keep your skin cool while the laser heats up your hair. The laser may feel like a pin prick or snap of a rubber band. ” I explain that the laser uses thermal heat energy, which is attracted to melanin, the color in her hair; it travels down the hair follicle and cauterizes the blood supply. That she will have to come back four more times because only about 20 percent of hair is connected to the blood supply at any given time. I normally become a sort of friend with my patients after seeing them so many times. I try to focus on the person I am working on and not the act of lasering, but today I can’t manage that connection.
I hand her protective eyewear. I access her skin type and adjust the laser settings, choosing the proper jules and milliseconds, calibrating the diode laser and its minuscule microchips to the exact fluence needed to destroy her hair and not her skin. The new lasers are so easy to use it takes almost no brainpower. I could do this in my sleep. I slide my protective glasses down from the top of my head to cover my eyes. The glasses provide a barrier between me and the intimate area I am about to laser. I can see and touch any person’s private areas as long as I have on the glasses, the protective coating on the lens shielding more than just my retinas. I lose myself in the rhythm of gliding the laser flush against her skin, smoothing a pattern in the gel as the beam covers an area the size of my thumb nail. Listening to the beep of the laser, watching for her face to grimace or her thigh to tense to know when to pause and give her a break. Seeing her skin begin to redden I say, “You may begin to smell burning hair. That is normal.” The smell of burning hair reaches my nostrils. The old lasers would have caused her hair to crackle as it singed, then pop out of the follicle. New technology affords her more comfort. I can’t help but thinking how I’m sure this laser costs more than the ventilator being removed from Cheryl’s Dad. I see my patient clinch her teeth. “You’re doing great,” I say, trying to soothe her. “I’m almost done.”
When the treatment is over and my patient has gone, paying a hefty fee for the pain I just inflicted upon her, I look out the window and see the rain is still coming down. I check the appointment book and I have one more patient to take care of later in the day. I pace around, and then fold towels, the soft white cotton sticking to my dry, over-washed hands. The clock is ticking so slowly. I text Kara and ask, “What’s going on?” “They just took him off the vent,” she writes back, and I wait. Looking out the window at my desk, I see the patterns the rain makes on the surface of puddles in the parking lot. Leaves are hanging low with the weight of rain, then springing up as the rain slides off. It’s going to flood, I tell myself.
Cheryl told me her Dad left when she was small and it is only in recent years that she became closer to him, going to movies and lunches together. Often times riding to lunch on the back of her Dad’s Harley was the highlight of her day. She would always bring one friend with her to Thanksgiving at her Dad’s. “I have one ticket,” she would say, and seeing her Dad was the grand prize. He came and met us all out for drinks one night and she was so excited to see him, to have him meet her friends. They were finally starting to connect again, after things had soured months before. I can still hear the pain in Cheryl’s voice as she told me that her Dad coming to see her perform her spoken word poetry was less about seeing her but more an excuse to hit on her friend. The words she writes are so intimate, such a part of her that I cannot separate Cheryl from poetry in my mind. You missed your chance Pops, I think, her only recourse to write more.
Her Dad is slipping from living man, to memories and words on a page, while I wait for three o’clock and my next patient. I hate this place more and more every minute. I hate my job and its shallow roots. I hate the fact that I make more money removing hair then I could ever make at the hospital saving lives. I hate myself for choosing money over fulfillment.
I worked at the Children’s Hospital for one year. I was in orthopedics, helping the children with broken bones, with spina bifida and scoliosis. I changed dressings and removed sutures from wounds extending all the way down their little spines. I put on casts and assisted the doctor in setting broken bones. I calmed parents and held crying children. I made a difference and for one year I could not pay my mortgage and my bills. My need to be finically independent was greater than my need for fulfillment and when a friend offered me a job making more money, I took it. I told myself I could be satisfied making women more beautiful and self-assured while having my independence too. Making women more beautiful is the easy part; fixing their self-esteem is like filling a black hole. There is the occasional patient whose life is dramatically changed by my job. One patient told me that for five years she set the alarm clock to wake her before her husband, so she could shave her face without him knowing. Imagining her being woken by kisses from her husband instead of an alarm reminding her she is not feminine is wonderful. But there are few patients like her. Mostly women are insecure or vain and looking for a quick fix to feel better. This is not why I got into nursing.
I methodically pull off the balls of lint that are scattered across my uniform, rolling them in my fingers before watching them float slowly into the trash. My phone dings with a text message from Cheryl. “He’s gone.” My heart sinks further. All I want to do is hug my friend and instead I’m waiting for a patient. A patient that doesn’t need surgery or medicine, a patient that wants the skin on her neck to be tighter, one hour with the radio frequency laser and her jowls won’t sag as much.
Just then the phone rings. It’s my patient canceling her appointment. She doesn’t think it is worth it to drive in this rain.
It’s almost three o’clock. I call my boss to see if I can close the office early. I scramble to shut everything down and I call Kara for an update. We are all meeting at Cheryl’s. Can I pick up some spiced rum because Cheryl wants to make apple cider? It is just like Cheryl to still be planning even in the midst of tragedy.
I stop at home to get a change of clothes, brownie mix, and pain reliever. I go to the liquor store and to 7-11. The rain is still pouring down as I park my car and walk the block to Cheryl’s apartment. My arms full, the rain drenching my pants, a gust of wind blows back the hood on my jacket, wetting my face and hair. I almost drop the rum as I reach to ring the bell. I climb the three flights of stairs, water dripping onto the floor and as I step inside. I say to Cheryl, “Your Dad has a sense of humor. I was walking down the street when all of a sudden this gust of wind blew back my hood and soaked me.” For a moment I fear it may have been too soon to jest, but she laughs and comes to give me a hug. “You’re wet,” she says. Marco chimes in with, “You better march your wet butt back down stairs and get the apple juice!” “You have got to be out of your mind,” I kid back with him. Cheryl hands me a change of clothes and Marco and Kara head downstairs to smoke and get the apple juice. I change and then help Cheryl dig out the ingredients for the cider. I don’t know what to say to her, so I fill the kitchen with mindless chatter as the cider fills the air with the smell of fall.
The moment Cheryl’s Dad died, the hospital’s PA system played a nursery song, meaning a baby had been born. They played it twice because twins were born. We kid with Cheryl that it took two babies to fill her Dad’s spot. She smiles and continues to watch the cider bubble. I wonder if this is any comfort to her, but am too afraid to ask.
The friends keep coming and we all pack into her tiny apartment, pulling out snacks, sipping drinks, watching TV. Marco, Kara, and I take turns snuggling up next to Cheryl on the couch. She holds our hands and stares into nothing, talking infrequently. It is dinnertime and everyone is hungry, but no one can decide what we should eat. That’s normally Cheryl’s job. The ideas circle the room before Kara finally says, “Pizza, that’s easiest.” I bake the brownies as we wait for the pizza. It arrives and we are all nurses, making sure Cheryl is eating; eat pizza Cheryl, eat brownies Cheryl, drink cider Cheryl. It makes no sense that we all feel the need to feed the grieving when they have no strength to even swallow. But the belly is the only spot we can help fill. We can’t fill the hole in the heart, or the empty spaces in the mind, but the belly we can fill. I try not to cross the line, that blurry line between helping a friend feel better and helping myself to feel better by trying. Her silence is deafening and I say to her, “We are not here to keep the sadness from coming out, we are here to catch it when it does.” But of course it can’t come out yet. It is buried under shock.
Before the end of the night every available spot on her couch is taken and the floor is covered with Cheryl’s friends, her self-chosen family. Jamie is snuggled next to Kara who is holding Cheryl’s left hand while I am holding Cheryl’s right hand. Drew’s hand rests on my thigh as his shoulder is resting against Marco’s shoulder, and there are more friends on the floor, all of us somehow connected. Watching as we support each other supporting Cheryl, I feel lucky that we have such a strong group of friends. Then I am reminded how often I take that connection for granted. That connection of people helping other people, that I once found so special, I decided to make it my career. How did you lose that? I squeeze Cheryl’s hand harder and rub her leg, hoping this small act will remind her she is loved.
“The last thing I did with him was watch Batman, and it sucked,” Cheryl had said as we were snuggled on the couch together. Those words keep echoing in my head as I try to go to sleep. I curl up under the covers with the lights on, reading a book, trying to read myself to sleep. I get as far as one chapter when I feel Drew take the book, turn off the light, and climb into bed spooning me. I finally drift off. I wake at 2 a.m. to use the bathroom and I am overwhelmed by a feeling of sadness. I think of Cheryl and I wonder if she is sleeping. I think of the pain she must be feeling. Then I think of my Dad, and how devastated I would be if he were to die. I selfishly feel thankful that it was not my dad, and immediately my cheeks burn with shame. Tears are rolling down my flushed cheeks as I climb back into bed and feel Drew’s warmth under the sheets, his arm reaching out to pull me closer.
“Batman,” I replay over and over. “I don’t want my last memory of my Dad to be a Batman.” I try to remember the last memory I have of my Dad. It was sitting around the table with him, drinking coffee and talking. It didn’t suck and again I am thankful. But that isn’t enough. I know that people die everyday. But there is something about a death so close, so big, that under the covers in the middle of the night it has me in a panic. You don’t want to fill your days working in an industry you don’t admire. You don’t want to feed the neurosis of women. You want more time with family and friends, for yourself, time to share with your Dad.
Sometimes I don’t call my Dad because I have nothing impressive to tell him. I know that he will love me no matter what I am doing, but I don’t. There are so many things I want to do with my Dad. I want more good memories. I have more questions to ask him. I have many things to tell him. I want to just stop this rat race and do all those things, but that’s not how it works, at least that’s not how I know it to work. How will I pay my bills if I leave this job I loathe? I will have to give up my comfy lifestyle. Though with all that my new job has afforded me, what have I been losing? What is there that I can never get back? Thoughts swirl in my mind, keeping me awake: you are like your Dad. You are silly and kind, you are loving and thoughtful. You are sloppy and a procrastinator. You are not that vain, you don’t even like to wear makeup, but somehow you are selling it to other women.
Tears are rolling down my cheeks into my ears as I try and fail to remember a Halloween with my Dad. He and my Mom divorced when I was 5, but I can’t ever remember a time when I didn’t know he was there for me. I think of the time he drove up to help me when I left my husband. He just hugged me and helped me get the job done, and as we loaded the final boxes and I was sitting in his car starring at my former home he played Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down.” We sang it out together while he hit the steering wheel to the beat. It was exactly what I needed to hear and I remember thinking, how did he know that I needed that? My nose begins to run as all the memories flood my mind. I reach for a tissue and I think, tomorrow when I get off from work, I’m going to hug Cheryl so hard because I do know something about that sort of loss. I think of my dad as he carried boxes and didn’t ask questions as I cried and cried and cry.
Thanks to my friend Jesse Scaccia for editing.
Check out his blog at http://jessescaccia.blogspot.com/
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