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Yardwork,
Salal, and I cannot remember my first memory though I know it’s
there, my startling introduction to the world and then to me. It is
buried in the labyrinth of the neuron’s synaptic maze. My earliest recollection
is but the third or fourth car in the locomotive’s long torn trailer.
It is there in those first few dim cars that the inscrutable instructions
were laying down the narrow tracks on which I was to travel through
the wide world, all the way to today, to two hours ago, when I buried
the one I had lived with for eight years in my back yard next to the
wood pile. The reason I did that was not, of course, a reason
at all, but the fugitive forces of those first forgotten filaments of
being. I buried her for the simplest purpose, she was dead and I have
an intrinsic disinterest in ceremony, not because, again, of some reason
but because though the force of those ghostly filaments is forgotten,
their form and frame remains, commanding, outside my intention,
my every action. Free will is merely consciousness’s somewhat delightful
awareness of its action masquerading as choice. I just forced the shovel into the ground and displaced
the earth and then I did it again, and then again, until a grave, through
the gradual disappearance of earth, appeared as cleverly as though it
was the result of my complete, discreet action rather than a combination
of unremembered influences which had accumulated as invisibly and effortlessly
as lint. I may get caught and have to explain from the beginning
my ‘how’ and ‘why’ like God did in Genesis, and my answer will be as
ultimately unsatisfying as God’s was, when, after all, the question
is merely begged again. Philosophy, like prayer, may be one of the finer
expressions and confessions of human powerlessness but unlike prayer
its power is limited to the reach of understanding, the way a walk on
a fishing pier is limited to the length of the pier. It is strange how beginnings never seems to begin at
the beginning, just the way things don’t really seem to happen till
a while after they have happened. My beginning, or that is, the recollection
of my tardy beginning ( since, to repeat, my real beginning, though
mine, was denied to me, as to all of us ) began with the sight and smell
of sea salal. All of my attention shrunk its focus to those thick, sharp,
dark green, oddly lush bushes that surrounded the sidewalks of the small
seaside town I found myself deposited in. Even my mother exists in their
background. Whenever I recall her I see salal. I don’t know where she
is now, she’s been dead for some time, that is, some time for me. For
the dead I imagine it must be like you’ve always been dead, outside
of time, which is why the peace passes understanding, all of life being
so sudden and all. I always hated having my beeper paged on the way to
the cafeteria when I was in the Hospital. One Sunday I was particularly
hungry and the ‘Jesus Christ’ that slipped out of me at the sound of
my beeper was louder than usual drawing disapproving glances from two
nurses walking down the hall about twenty feet in front of me. “Respiratory,
call 3 south intensive care 311.” I stopped at a wall phone outside
the cafeteria and called. They wanted me to come up and look at the young girl
in bed 2. She had been coughing up a little blood from her tracheotomy. When I arrived I pulled her chart to see what
I could see. She was a 19 year old MVA who had been transported from
the Dalles two days ago for multiple internal injuries. They had done
a spleenectomy yesterday and she’d had an unremarkable post op course
and was expected to recover nicely. Home Health was already working
on her discharge which was planned for the end of the week. I saw that she had had a bronchoscopy in the morning
and told the nurses that the bleeding was probably secondary to that.
I called her attending, Dr. Elsin and told him. He agreed but asked
me to change her trach as they had put one of the old metal ‘Morsch’
tubes in her at the Dalles. We agreed on trying a number 8 Portex. I
went into her bedside. Her mother was sitting in a chair beside her
knitting. I told them that I was going to put in a newer trach tube
that would be much more comfortable. Her mother rose and set her knitting down in the chair
and said she was ready for a stretch and would go down to the cafeteria
for a quick bite. “How long a bite should I take,” she said smiling.
“About 15 minutes including dessert,” I said. She gave a squeeze of
her daughter’s foot at she passed the foot of the bed and pointed at
her knitting, “Watch my masterpiece,” she said and sauntered out. I went and got the trach tray and laid it out on the
bedside table. “You looking forward to getting back to the Dalles?”
I asked. She nodded with a glad look and flashed me a thumbs up. She
seemed unworried with just a slight look of nervous anticipation. “You’ll like this tube a lot better, you can talk with
it.” I said. She raised her eyes in a delighted smile. I raised the head of her bed up a bit. “This will be
real quick but it might make you cough a little bit.” I said, “just cut that string around your neck and its ‘out with
the old, in with the new.’ She gave a small anxious ‘whatever’ sigh
with her eyes then reached for her pad and pencil and wrote, ‘clichés
make me cough.’ I smiled and cut the string. “Gonna put this suction catheter down for a quick vacuum
job and bring them both out together.” The suction catheter caused a strong spasmodic coughing spell. I pulled the trach out quick and had the new one half way in when a force of projectile blood flooded through it and around it. I put the suction on ‘high’ but it just kept coming in larger pulsating streams. My stomach tightened before the small alarm in my mind started going off. I noticed her eyes quizzically monitoring mine for
signs of ‘it’s nothing’ reassurance. A sudden gusher forced the new trach out onto her gown.
I tried to put it back but couldn’t even see where her stoma was at
first then finally forced it in and kept trying but failing to keep
the suction ahead of the blood and avoid her eyes which had moved through
a trust in me, in my white coat, in the Hospital, to a small suspicion
of ‘something wrong’ to an involuntary animal fear. The knot in my stomach
had become cement, the thought ‘artery’ terrorizing me. I kept inflating
more air in the cuff but it didn’t even slow the constant flow. “Nurse,
I need help now!” Two came running in at the sound of my fear. “Get
another suction and call the surgeon on call stat.” I turned my head
back to her again, now blood was coming out of her eyes and ears and
nose. I froze. We locked eyes, an accident, for an instant,
the panic in mine delivering a terrifying knowledge beyond both our
comprehension yet somewhere within it. That was the last time I saw
her. I never looked at her again. The surgeon arrived. I left. I went
into the break room behind the unit and sat down on something. Fear. That was all I felt. Just fear. All I ever felt
was fear. I couldn’t stop it. Not for almost the whole week afterwards.
The surgeon pronounced her in three minutes. He came back to me and
put a hand on my shoulder, “innominate artery, nobody could have done
anything. I’m on call all night, you need to talk , come to me, you
understand!” I forgot about the Mother. I didn’t even remember her
for several years. Now she’s there in the oddest places, at street intersections
when I’m waiting for a red light, or in the dentist chair, or stepping
into the bath, or eating in a cafeteria. It’s odd but I can’t remember
her daughter’s face. Not at all. I thought for a while it was because
we were really just strangers but then so was her mother and I can see
her as clear as if she were sitting in front of me knitting. |