These scarecrows are real lifelike

     On the way to the main road we saw one farmer who was using a slingshot to ward off the pigeons. The more ingenuous of the human scarecrows, I thought. There were at least fifteen of them in the fields today. Men and women of all ages. Cooing. Yelping. Banging on pots and pans. Sometimes running. Sometimes gesturing wildly in an endless shooing motion. And forever shouting 'Hey!' at the top of their lungs. All to keep these birds from eating their seeds. It seemed like such a futile existence. But then it's not as if I had any better ideas, at least not in the moment. So I bobbed my umbrella up and down and shouted at the closest birds I could find. The farmer wiggled his head approvingly as we passed him by. "Enjoy the rain," he shouted to our backs. The emphasis on 'rain' made it so that I wasn't sure if he was asking a question or wishing us good luck. 

     It was drizzling now and there was no breeze whatsoever. The sun was poking through the clouds, which made it feel even hotter and made holding an umbrella all the more ridiculous. Every taxi and rickshaw that passed us by was taken. I could have sworn the transportation here was on a continuous three-car loop. The words 'waste of time' hung in the humid air. The bus finally showed up and all frustration was forgiven. It wasn't so crowded for a Sunday and the music coming from the one lonely speaker reminded me of the antipasto plate during Italian weddings. I was told it was Goan. The bus sputtered and jerked along. We reached the Mapusa terminal, got off, took no more than fifteen steps and walked straight into the second bus, which was headed for the clinic. This one was packed tight. And the stalky conductor with the glass eye kept packing us in without mercy. At least he was fair in his craft, pushing longer-distance travellers to the very back and forcing two men in the first seat to squeeze in so as to allow one larger girl to stand where their feet should have been. It started raining heavily. Still I wondered if we were really better off inside this vehicle. Everyone was wet and it smelled like the bus had been idling for a month. It was worse than anything I had experienced in any Bombay train. I considered the likelihood of blacking out and decided it was fairly low. Only once the man in the florescent green polo was satisfied no more humans were available for packing did he whistle at the driver to get moving. It was a long seven-minute ride. Puji buried her nose in my armpit and I pressed mine against my forearm. When we reached the clinic he funnelled us out and then smiled at me, his head between the two doors, as the bus took off. He too was forgiven. 

     The rain never smelled so fresh. It made me think the air pollution in Goa couldn't be that bad. We walked up to the outdoor medicine counter. They were out of the rabies medication I had been prescribed. Again. At the entrance one elderly woman warned us against leaving our sandals unattended. Hers had been stolen and she'd have to walk home barefoot. The doctor who double-checked my prescription told me not to worry. The sudden switch was harmless and in brand-name only. She seemed far more preoccupied with figuring out how many shots I had already received and didn't seem convinced until she did her own math. Three, just like I had told her. It had worked out that all five shots would be on Sunday, which was ultra inconvenient given that everything else was closed on Sunday. I asked if we could make the last two a day earlier or later. No, she answered flatly with a smile, understanding exactly where I was coming from. "You shouldn't take Indian doctors and medicine SO lightly."

tonight you can sleep with the light off

Tonight really did not start out looking like a promising hospital visit.

My grandmother was anxious. Really anxious. Her hair had been simultaneously flattened and pulled into a strange kind of matted faux-hawk. She was wringing her hands and almost whispering the words "oggi, mi sento brutta. non mi sento bene" to herself. When I walked into the room, she said she had just been thinking about me. I'm not sure how that was even possible in her state.

I could tell she was more panicked than anything else. There was no pain. Only the sound of someone trying to cram the anxiety back down their throat.

I did my best to be a calming presence. I have stared panic straight in the face on more than one occasion. I did what I could in my broken Italian. A big part of me just wanted to get her talking and keep her talking - about anything, really. Besides, there was a reason I wanted to visit her alone this time. I love listening to her speak about the past. It's just harder to focus when other people are around. Now she had my undivided attention. I just didn't have hers.

She fired off a timely quote about how patients tend to go when doctors are too busy examining them. This from a woman who has been in the hospital for a week awaiting an MRI and sampling various combination of painkillers, sedatives and sleeping pills. In 2012 we try to make the patient comfortable. That's how the gentle Caribbean nurse had put it to us the other night. A guy who comes to the hospital for two hours at a time is in no position to judge that judgment call.

She finally began to calm down. After some unpleasant dry heaves I got her to sit up and we shared a snack: a vanilla berry yogurt for her, a chocolate pudding for me. Then we played Scopa. I dealt for both of us and kept myself at ten points for two extra rounds until she finally beat me.

And then after telling me I should get going, she asked me if I was happy in my new house, living where I was living. There are some questions you never mind answering again and again.

I told her yes, I really was. I told her that Amy and I were planning a trip to Panama and that Davey Cleinfeld was back with his girl and that it felt so nice to be able to walk down the block to get an Espresso whenever I felt like it. She smiled her smile. Her blue eyes welled up. She told me how she never would forget how Amy just sat there without saying a word the day we got into a fight while doing tomatoes some ten years back. We talked about marriage and babies and why I still felt ambivalent about one and unprepared for the other.

When I got up to leave she was no longer frantic. She didn't beg me to stay. We went over the different lighting arrangements one last time and finally settled on lights off except for her small Mother Mary nightlight.

She thanked me repeatedly for coming. I reminded her each time that it was my pleasure.

no Pain. no Gain.

I probably should become resigned to the reality that I won't be visiting my Nonna in the hospital forever. I guess I'm just not that good with reality.

Besides, she really didn't look all that bad last night. There was no dulling pain to complain of, no gut-wrenching nausea to deal with and - general forgetfulness aside - she was actually quite lucid. Her colour was good. She was talkative. Even the skin on her arms and shoulders looked extra soft and creamy - or far less wrinkled than I would have imagined.

My grandmother's fear of Death is what keeps her alive.

My mom tells me she's been this way as far back as she can remember. Always complaining of pain and more than willing to have her daughter drag her from emergency room to emergency room and specialist to specialist to seek out conditions that do and don't exist. I'm not willing to accept that she's a full-blown hypochondriac or some kind of manipulator, as has been suggested by more judgmental elements of my family. We know there is a sist on her pancreas that is causing much of the pain in her stomach. It's just difficult to separate the pain from the fear of the pain. And with a brain like my Nonna's, fear trumps all.

Last night, I could tell she was scared. I could see it in those blue eyes. She kept asking me if I thought keeping the light on would bother the man in the bed next to her. I said no, but I knew the nurse would close it once my brother and I were gone.

I wish I would have thought of bringing a nightlight. She would have liked that.

green. and yellow

I really had to think twice before picking up that phone to dial the recovery room.

I had, after all, only been waiting about an hour or so. Which, when judged against all possible scenarios playing out behind swinging doors, seems a small price to pay. I guess I was simply following orders: "If your father doesn't come out in an hour, then just take a right after the waiting room and find out what's going on." Yes, it's always best to inquire when waiting in a hospital.

The woman on the other end of the line tells me she has no record of my father and suggests the possibility he has already been disharged. Impossible, I reply. I am his ride home. "Well then just come in and see if you can find him." 

I spent a large part of my childhood convinced I was going to become a doctor. I remember visiting Mommy in the physio department and really wanting that life-sized skeleton for my bedroom. I'm not even sure why I never did get it. She would always tell me about studying and dissecting Charlie at McGill and I simply assumed I would do the same. I knew I had the brains and, well, blood and guts were just not issues for me.

Not anymore. Now, I'm 'squeemish guy' at the hospital. (original, I know) I can't even watch people throw up - although I believe I learned that one back in high school.
So I'm walking down this narrow hallway looking for my father, steering clear of  'Intensive Care' doors and used clothing bins. I walk into an open room with beds in all directions and find myself fixated on a middle-aged woman who is pale green. Something about that colour makes me not notice my father waiving from the bad almost directly in front of me. The two-minute day surgery was a success, he tells me, but he's been frozen from the waist down for the last five hours. We make small talk, but I'm distracted by the tiny drops of blood on his gown and the patient moaning "Madame?" to his left. Her toes are curling from the pain. Meanwhile, the green woman is tearing up. I can't make out why. The nurse says her fears are all very normal. It will take some getting used to. Outside, they're removing the fresh fluffy snow so effortlessly.

My father is finally cleared for discharge. He gets changed while the janitor mops the floor around us. I make it a point to smile at the green woman before I leave.