September 26, 2009; ...a piece of gauze...

...a piece of gauze...

...after all the rage (at me, at doctors, at Mook B), after all the crying and pain, after the lost year, the lost income, the lost creativity, after all the visits from the nurses, the sleepless nights, the hopeless days, after all the pacing and waiting and visits to the hospital, after all the silliness, the absurdity, the to-ing and fro-ing...

...a piece of gauze...

So off Mook A went to the hospital, Thursday morning, with Mook B having rented a car for the day. No one knew what was going to happen, so I was being as good a dog as I could be, and when they set up my sad little carpet in the kitchen and headed for the door, I made no scene because I didn't know how long or how short my day alone was going to be. I just knew that the next time I saw A he would be different. It was all a mystery if it would be different-good or different-bad because everyone was saying they wouldn't really know what they were going to find until they cut him open. So there was tension, shall we say, and it had been expressing itself in the last couple of days by a kind of silent, deadly rage and let me tell you I was keeping my head down and trying desperately to stay out of the way. This low-profile served me well because A was on the edge and his moods were going everywhere: from despair one minute to a kind of hysterical laughter the next (reflecting just how off-balance he was and how apprehensive we were all getting about the whole fucking business). He wasn't saying much but the fear was that this might be serious and it might go on and on and on and then where would I be while he was grabbing even more attention than he has been getting in the last weeks. I'd be in the corner waiting my turn...again! The thing that worried me was that maybe we were dealing with of those new super-bacteria you keep hearing about; the ones hospitals (where he virtually lives, these days) are full of and because of which some people go into the hospital but don't come out (if you know what I mean and I think you do).

They left at about ten for an eleven a.m. operation. B came back at one to walk me and play with me a little and then skedaddled back to the hospital. I later found out that when he came home for my walk, A had still not gone under the knife and was, instead, wandering around the waiting room in a johnny-shirt, desperately wanting a smoke and not daring to sit down anywhere because of his wound.

I was getting more and more apprehensive as the shadows lengthened across the kitchen floor and I did the most intelligent thing I could think of doing in such circumstances: sleep.

At about eight I heard the door downstairs open and when the door to the kitchen was unlocked I could see B and then, just behind him, A. I went on a lick-fest because in the darkness I could also see that A was smiling and though I didn't know, then, that it was from a drug-haze, it was nevertheless a good sign. I did him my little dance and he picked me up (which was also a good sign) and hugged me so hard I snerfed. He gave me a big kiss on the nose. This made me a little nervous because I was thinking of all those hospital germs he now had all over him.

A was glad to be home and he hugged B and me over and over again and then he hit the phone and that's when the story came out.

This time he got an anesthetist who did not fuck around and asked him how they were to proceed. He told him, "I want to be out, out, out." And so he was. When he came to, they had done some deep slicing. They had decided to open the three wounds (two healed and the new one). That's when they found it...

...a piece of gauze...

Let me say that again:

...a piece of gauze...

Tiny, yes, but oh-so-nasty. It had somehow parted from a larger piece of gauze the home-nurses had been using to clean the wound. It had somehow avoided being picked out with the tweezers or flushed out by their irrigations of the wounds. It had somehow allowed flesh to heal above it and had somehow remained there. And, of course, the havoc it created had to find its way to the surface and—voilà! (as the frogs say)—a brand new, needle-narrow wound that was driving nurses, a surgeon and Mook A right round the bend. So the offending little piece was removed as was all the surrounding tissue and there you have it: a spanking new hole in the fucker's kiester, the size of the Grand Canyon.

Happiness abounds.

Now, two days later, Mook A doesn't know what to do with himself. Sure, he has to see my beloved home nurse every day and maybe for a good long while, but the bigger question is what to do with all that rage that he has lived with—and for—day after day after day?

For now he's being really nice to me and B. He's laughing a lot. But, from what I've seen in the last 8 months, school-girl giddiness is not in his nature. So, being no fool, I'm still keeping a low profile. When he walks me, I behave. When he calls me, I come. When he kisses me, I kiss back.

...but...

...tick tick tick...