The Harm in Asking: My Clumsy Encounters with the Human Race (32 page)

The nurse gave a knowing nod. “They’re all really hot, am I right?” she said.

“Yes!” I said. “But
why
?”

The nurse went on to explain that, by her estimation, the orthopedic surgical field drew the “hot jocks.”

“They’re the guys who played sports in high school,” she explained. “The ones who played sports but are also pretty smart, and who decided to go to medical school. They’re into sports, they’re jocky, so they pick a surgical field that’ll let them work with athletes.”

“Right,” I said. “I see.”

“Also,” she said. “They have to be physically strong. They’re getting in there, breaking bones, resetting bones, amputating limbs, and so on. Wander past an operating room when they’re doing orthopedic surgeries, you hear electric saws. You hear”—and then she made that noise people make, that signifies either (a) an electric saw, or (b) a car going fast—“and you think, Oh. Right. They’re just carpenters.
Of the flesh
. They’re just
sawing
things. Like your ankle. I mean, like,
literally:
They saw
through
the flesh, and
through
the bone, and …”

“Right,” I said. “Thank you. I think now I understand.”

After ten hours alone, my parents arrived. They entered the hospital room I shared with Terri to find me looking slightly thinner, I’d like to think, but otherwise not great. I couldn’t move much. I had various IVs. My leg, for the moment, was wrapped in miles of gauze and had been suspended at a seventy-degree angle from my body. It wasn’t an ideal setup, but it wasn’t cancer either. Nonetheless,
when my dad saw me for the first time he released a traumatized gasp, which he then followed up with the sputters of willfully restrained hysterics.

So my mother shuffled him back out. They huddled right outside my doorway.

“Joe, take a breath. And do your crying here, okay? This—right here—is
your
little spot. Ask a nurse for a chair if you need one.”

My mother came back in.

“Hello,” she said. “I think you look well.”

“By ‘well’ do you mean ‘thin’?”

“Maybe a bit. What I meant, though, is you’ve had a bad twenty-four hours, but you seem, you know, coherent. Aware.”

To prove her point, I asked, “Is Dad okay?”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “He’s fine. He just … went out. To get himself … a coffee.”

My dad’s spot for crying was a mere ten feet from where I lay in my hospital bed. So although I couldn’t see him, I could hear him: Sniffling. Breathing. Gasping.

“Dad, I can hear you,” I called.

“JOE, SHE CAN HEAR YOU,” my mother called.

My father took this as his cue to come back in. He did so with his hand cupped over his mouth to show he was working to restrain himself. He sat in a chair at the foot of the bed.

I heard Terri rustle behind her curtain. She whisked it back and looked around.

“Hello,” she said. “This you momma and you daddy?”

“Hi, Terri. Yes. These are my parents, Lynn and Joe.”

“Hello,” they said.

“Hello,” Terri said. She pointed a finger at my dad. “You too sad,” she said. “But you don’t gotta be too sad. You seem rich, and okay.”

My dad sniffed, and wiped his eyes.

“Thank you,” he said.

“You welcome,” Terri said, and then waddled past my mother and me, and over to my dad. She hugged my dad, and
as
she hugged my dad, he stared at us, wide-eyed, from over Terri’s shoulder.

“She seems nice,” my mother whispered.

“She is,” I whispered back. “But the smell.”

“Yes. Wow,” she said. “The smell.”

We stayed silent for a moment.

“What is it, anyway? Vomit?”

“No,” I said. “She
looks
like she’s
going
to vomit. But the smell itself is actually more like manure.”

My mother sniffed the air.

“Right,” she said. “Now I can smell that you’re right.”

The days rolled on. I’d spend them in surgery, or recovering from surgery. My father would sit in the chair at the foot of the bed, bleary-eyed mostly, but more composed than he’d been when he arrived. My mother, for her part, would stand at my bedside and perform what she referred to as “my Reiki.” In recent months, she’d been studying Qigong at her local senior center, and was now of the opinion that the skills she learned in seniors’ Qigong were Reiki-translatable.

“I’m going to recite the script from my Qigong class,” she told me, “but I’ll do it with my hands near your face. It’s very calming. Okay. I am doing it now: I am wind.”

I’d close my eyes. Not because I was supposed to, but because I was troubled by the sight of my mother moving her hands above me like some Ouija-packing schoolgirl.

Although I like poking fun at the seriousness with which my mother approached her Reiki, the fact of the
matter was that she managed the impossible task of maintaining focus while in a hospital bedroom. Terri was always watching
The Price Is Right
and screaming her own bids at the television screen. A nurse was always coming or going with a shot, a pill, or a fresh bedpan. My dad was always puttering around, drinking coffee, sniffling. And through it all—and provided it was Reiki time—my mother focused in.

The only thing that broke her was when Terri started smoking.

By hospital standards, it had been a day like any other. I had watched TV and my mom had done her Reiki. As per usual, she’d referred to herself as the wind.

“I am a broom of wind,” she’d said. “The broom of wind moves through you, through us all.”

The broom of wind did move through us all, but only for a minute. It stopped moving through us all when Terri found a cigarette.

Terri lit the cigarette and started smoking.

My mother opened one eye, then the other.

“Is someone … smoking?” she asked.

Terri was huddled near the window surreptitiously puffing away. The weird thing, though—or, rather,
one
of the weird things—was that she had not opened the window. She had placed herself near the window, but she had not opened the window. In an instant, the whole room smelled of smoke.

A situation like this is tailor-made to explode my mother’s brain. Her temper, and her brain. My mother is put off by any and all lit cigarettes, even the more reasonable ones—those smoked out of doors and/or on the property of those doing the smoking. Even in those situations, my
mother will perform a cough and say some combination of the words “son,” “deadly,” “asthma,” and “selfish.”

I am therefore happy to report that when confronted with Terri’s legitimate smoking violation, my mother’s head did not explode. I am happy to report that she behaved—at first—like a completely normal human.

“Terri,” she said, “would you please put out your cigarette?”

Terri smiled, but said nothing.

So my mother tried again.

“Terri,” she said, “we’re in a hospital room. Would you please put out your cigarette?”

This time Terri glanced up and feigned surprise.

“Oh. Yes,” she said. “Yes, yes, yes, yes,
yes
.” But then instead of putting out her cigarette, she shuffled into our shared bathroom and slammed the door behind her. From what I could smell—from what we all could smell—she then continued smoking.

My father and I stared at the bathroom door, our mouths agape. Not at the in-hospital smoking, so much as the sight of my mother being flagrantly ignored. It’s not a thing that happens to her often, and that is because it is not worth enduring her response. My mother reacts to being ignored like you or I might react to an unanticipated butt plug: There is shock, and a sense of having been rudely abused.

Terri ignored my mother and stole away into the bathroom, and my mother, in response, ran shouting out of the hospital bedroom.

She literally ran. And she was literally shouting.

“I NEED HELP!
HELP!
I NEED A NURSE WHO IS A MOTHER WHO WILL UNDERSTAND! SOMEONE’S
SMOKING
IN MY DAUGHTER’S ROOM!
SOMEONE HELP ME SAVE MY DAUGHTER!”

I looked at my father.

“This is embarrassing,” I said.

But my father just shrugged.

“Say what you will,” he said. “Your mother gets things done.”

My father wasn’t lying. My mother gets things done.

It was only a matter of minutes before she returned arm-in-arm with what appeared to be a Hispanic catalogue model.

“Hello,” said the man. “I am Angel.”

My mother was wide-eyed with delight, with a face that said,
Oh, don’t mind me. I just went for one of my rage jaunts, and came back with a MALE MODEL on my arm
.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hello,” my dad said.

“Angel,” my mom said. “Here is
mi hija
, Sarita. Sarita is
so
sick in the leg, and she must breathe good air for to be
fuerta
again. The
mujer
who do the smoking, she in
el baño
now.”

Angel nodded in response, then knocked on the bathroom door. When Terri didn’t answer, Angel reached into his pocket for what appeared to be a master key. He unlocked the door himself and went inside.

He closed the door behind him.

“Well,” said my mom, and let out a satisfied sigh. “So about him?”

“Who is he?” I said.

“
What
is he?” my dad said.

“A physical therapist,” my mom said. “I ran into him in the hallway, and he said, ‘
Mami
, you’ve got to calm down.’ And he was just so cute! I thought, Okay! For you, I
will
calm down!”

Minutes later, Angel emerged from the bathroom with a subdued, nonsmoking Terri.

“Ms. Terri, she is finished smoking now,” he said. “She will not smoke again.”

And he was right: She didn’t. Terri never smoked again.

Angel had that sort of control over people, and that, I was learning, was a gift he owed to the combined effect of his handsomeness and warmth. The orthopedic surgeons had their own aforementioned brand of detached, robotic sex appeal. But Angel was different. Angel was
as
empirically attractive, but with the added bonus of being sensitive and socially adept. Dr. Dean would make his rounds every day at 4:00 p.m., and every day Angel would swing by almost immediately after. The process of seeing one and then the other felt always like wrapping oneself in a heated Puerto Rican flag after a dip in frigid Aryan waters.

Every patient in the orthopedics department was assigned a physical therapist following his or her surgeries. There were dozens of therapists employed by the hospital, and the process of pairing them with the individual patient wasn’t a choice of the patient’s so much as it was the luck of the draw within the hospital system.

The luck of any draw leaves my mother feeling less in control than she desires. As such, my mother used her connections to the Midwestern branch of the Underground Network of Jewish Hypochondriacs to reach her way through the East Coast branch of the Underground Network of Jewish Hypochondriacs. And, lo: She learned that her friend Marci Goldfarb knew Julie Glick, who knew Carol Feinstein, whose sister-in-law, Deborah Kagan, was on the hospital’s board of trustees.

Deborah Kagan made a call on my behalf and requested
that I work with Angel. For this I was—and still remain—very, truly grateful. Working with Angel was the singular part of my hospital reality that in any way mirrored my hospital fantasy. Here was a kind and handsome man who’d visit every day for the primary purpose of lavishing me with attention. We’d do a series of ankle mobility exercises and chat about a wide range of subjects up to and including my mother’s love of Central and South American cultures.

There was one afternoon in particular when she, my mother, brought up the continents’ approach to swimwear.

“I have traveled extensively throughout
mucho
of Central and South America,” she began, “and so do I know that the men of the south prefer the tiny swimsuit. Here, though, they do not.”

Angel and I nodded. My mother motioned toward my father.

“For example, Joe, my husband, does not prefer the tiny swimsuit.”

“It is true,” my father said. “I do not prefer the tiny swimsuit.”

“But Angel,” said my mother, “do
you
prefer the tiny swimsuit?”

Angel nodded. “
Sí
. Yes,” he said. “I do. I wear many tiny swimsuits. Many ‘Speedos,’ they are called. For me, though, I say ‘Speedoritos,’ because to wear them nicely, I no can eat Doritos!”

We all laughed.

“Oh, Angel. You’re so funny!” I said.

“He really is!” my dad said.

“Angel,” my mom said. “Did you say ‘
many
Speedos’?”

“
Sí
. Yes,” he said.

“How many?” she said.

“Very
mucho
many,” he said. “Maybe eight? Maybe nine? Maybe ten?”

“But why so
mucho
many?” she said.

“For to use them in the competitions.”

“The … competitions?”

“
Sí
, yes. My Mr. Puerto Rico competitions. In 2001, I did win.”

“You did … win?”

“
Sí
. Yes. I did win.”

“I’m sorry, Angel. To be clear: You’re saying … you
won
the Mr. Puerto Rico competition?”

“
Sí
. Yes. In 2001 I did win the Mr. Puerto Rico competition. So then I go on to the Mr. Model Millennium competition. But then, when I am there, I did not do so good. Because, you know, I’m
muy peludo
 …”

“Very hairy.”

“
Sí
. Yes. I’m very hairy. So when I am there, I am in my Speedorito, and another man in the competition come by and say, ‘Ay yay yay! Your back is wild. You want for me to shave?’ And I say, ‘Okay, brother.
Gracias.
’ And then he shave my back.”