Dragonflies

The day started with dragonflies, whose ending might someday give rise to a legend, 'Dragonflies in the morning mean death in the afternoon,' or something equally ominous. I don't believe it for a moment, but I fully support the need for humans to wade into the mystic. By noon, my fig tree had been trellised, my seedlings transplanted and most of the steady pain that has been dogging me lately had subsided.

We lied down to take a nap, every window in the house open so that the curtains could perform their somnolent dance. Alex had to leave, to spend time with her mother on her penultimate day in the States, but she couldn't rouse the boy.

At 7 or so, Tristan came into my room crying, discovering the treachery of being left behind, and demanded I make whatever phone calls might be necessary to get him to where he wanted to be. I felt the final pop somewhere in my side. A wave of nausea like I've never known, I crawled and felt all my energies leave.

Just barely conscious at this point, I told Tristan to call his aunt if I should pass out.

"What does 'pass out' mean?"

"It means like if I go to sleep all of a sudden and you can't wake me up."

He backed out of the bathroom, not very happy with the atmosphere. I didn't blame him.

"If I hear a loud crash I'll call."

THAT'S MY BOY.

* * *

He eventually did have to call.

* * *

I do not like going to the doctor. I don't like knowing what I have, because I'm perfectly content with going out blissful and ignorant. I don't like the guilt, knowing that I've willingly purchased all that ails me, aisles 2-6 at the liquor store. Mostly, I don't like their fingers.

I held my brother-in-law and sister-in-law at bay as well as could be expected from my place on the bathroom floor, but it soon became apparent that no matter what, I was going to end the evening in the ER. I stalled long enough, though, for Alex to call, and she made it home so that she could repay me for the last time I drove her to the emergency room, which she later recalled was last year on MOTHER'S DAY.

* * *

What I love about the emergency room are the stories, the carrying whispers and being rolled around on your back from hall to hall, as you watch the lights on the ceiling flutter by overhead like a reel-to-reel running through its final frames. I enjoy a recorded voice telling me to hold my breath as I am dipped repeatedly through a rotating wheel, and imagining that I can control my new magnetic powers.

But it takes a while to get to that point. From 9 pm to around 3:30 am, Alex and I wait in a room that is appropriately enough called the WAITING ROOM. We spot no fewer than three 'emergencies' return to the receptionist and say in loud overtones, "WE WILL BE TAKING OUR EMERGENCY ELSEWHERE." Saturday night in Olympia is a red day, with several car accidents that take priority over my 6 on a scale of 1-10 pain. I'm not complaining whatsoever, because I've pulled shifts at the ER when I was an EMT; I know they're trying to convince people to stop killing themselves on the streets with their automotive vehicles.

A girl is wheeled in by her mother. She seems so little, so fragilely young, and when her pain becomes too unbearable, she crawls from her wheelchair and lies on the floor, sobbing. They eventually take her inside just as I am having my blood pressure ascertained (105 over 55 for those of you keeping score), and the attendant whispers why she was in such pain, and it won't be mentioned in this forum.

Back in the waiting room, an older woman is gathering the growing winds of cabal, when another woman exclaims, "Hey! You were my 2nd grade teacher!" The reminiscences between the two are joyous as to cure those in the room who are blind and leprous.

A young fellow walks in on his own accord, wrapped about his head in what appears to be an heirloom quilt. I think he might have a Le Fort fracture, one of the most gruesome ways to lose your face, and moments after they take him into the ER, a doctor enters and follows. The attendant whispers, 'PLASTIC SURGEON.'

* * *

Over the next 6 ½ hours, I sleep on every inch of Alex's available arm, leg and shoulder space, wishing I could convince her to go home and sleep herself. Instead, she tells me stories about her grandmother's propensity to make use of items not belonging to her, including a pair of glasses with only one lens discarded by her mother, whose visual powers she swore mitigated 60 years worth of Type II diabetes. I don't remember ever laughing so heartily in an emergency room.

Next to me is a National Geographic, and being as how my own subscription has recently run dry, I am eager to catch up on the mating habits of dragonflies, the male of which is so intent on protecting his mate from others that he uses a special set of claws on his abdomen to hook the female around the head and neck. The researchers found that in most cases, the embrace was of such fiery intensity as to leave holes pierced in the poor girls' heads and eyes.