Do it yourself

Speaking of grocery carts, Steve and I found ourselves (last) Friday, at the Kroger Pharmacy where I pointed out (with mock accusation) , a sign to him upon which was written:

All grocery carts are the property of the Kroger Co.

He said he thought they might be missing a few.

Also, a guy passed us on a bicycle with half a plastic shopping cart hitched to the back of it. The wheels on the cart had been replaced with bicycle tires. Steve identified it as originally having been "the property of Home Depot".

(Note: Originally, these words were posted on my other blog, with a picture of Barney carrying a giant yard bag full of laundry. This one, his personal laundry/grocery cart, had already been posted. The whole conversation reminded me of the designer chairs being chained together. In fact, I use that imagery sometimes just for a good giggle. )

How would you rate your pain?

"I've been reading about cirrhosis of the liver."

"Did it say on there that it'll kill you?"

"Yes."

"Did it say it was a long, slow, painful death?"

"Yes."

"Nothing that a length of rope and one of them tree limbs out there wouldn't fix."

"You better be careful with those tree limbs. They're rotted. You'll hit the ground and that tree limb will follow you right down."

"Then I'll wake up and somebody'll be saying:
'Mr. Grady, on a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your pain?'"

Sitting

When we all get up to Heaven, St. Peter is going to be on a lunch break. Instead, there's going to be a guy there, that goes by the name of Shorty. He's gonna' be kicked back in one of those collapsible nylon chairs you get at Wal- Mart, with a 40 oz. Natural Ice in one hand and a cigarette in the other. I think a lot of people are going to be very surprised.

My apologies for leaving you all sitting. Lots of things have been happening and first I should say thanks for the kind words and e-mails of late from a wide variety of people. Your thoughts and comments are not only appreciated but many times thought-provoking and educational.

The last three weeks have been something of a blur. There are too many stories to tell and not enough time to sit and write but eventually, I'll have to tell them because there is beauty and humor, even in the worst of it. Also because there are a couple of people who will hound me like a dog, if I don't.

To answer the pressing question of my last post... Yes.

Steve dialed his family from my cellphone that day and although it was an emotional experience for everyone, I believe it went very well. The good thing (and with someone else it might have been very different) was that they were happy to hear from him. It allowed him the chance to reconnect in his own way and it spared them the phone call that for years, they believed would eventually reach them.

Yesterday, Steve returned to the hospital and was admitted once again with another round of complications. At the moment however, he is resting comfortably, in the care of some good nurses on the fifth floor.

A few days back, he saw this photo on my computer screen and announced:

"I know that's in a rich neighborhood."

"Really," I answered, "how can you tell?"

"Well" he said, "them chairs ain't chained together. If they were in my neighborhood, they'd be chained together."

Phoning home

"Your appointment with the liver doctor is April 6th."

"My brother's birthday", he said.

"Your brother, is he older or younger than you?"

"He's about five years older."

He went back to reading. Then looked up from the book and said (with regard to the computer)

"Do you think you could find Tina on there? She's into that computer stuff too."

I found an address and telephone number for his brother and sister-in-law in about two minutes, wrote it on a post-it-note and handed it to him.

He lit a cigarette and studied it carefully. He laid it over on the table and still looking at it from a distance, he said,

"She don't like me to call collect but I could send them something I guess, letem' know I'm okay."

Without looking up at his face, I reached for a cell phone that was between us and turned it slowly, to face him. A beat later, I shifted my gaze to meet his.

"Free," I said, pointing to the phone.

He lifted his eyebrows. "Really?"

"Uh-huh. I pay one price regardless of who or where I call."

(So okay, that was mostly true.)

"You can use it if you want to."

I went back to typing, held my breath.

The goal was to remain neutral and let it be his decision. Journalistically speaking, in this case, I've already broken a number of rules. There are some rules about being a decent person though, and one of them is: Don't deny a man a telephone to call his family if he wants to.

"How long since you've talked to anybody?" I asked him.

"Must be close to ten years by now," he said, reaching for the phone.

Things we take for granted

I was whining yesterday about how I was going to sell something to buy a digital voice recorder and Steve, who humbles me regularly, in case anyone isn't hip to that yet, just looked up very matter-of-factly and said,

"Aintcha' got a pencil?"

"Well, yeah, fine," I said, feigning aggravation and reaching for the keyboard. Then as if that weren't enough, he agreed with me that it probably would be better hearing him tell it (which was the absolute truth and exactly my point). Here, in his words, is a story about a street dog he once knew called Buddy.

A lotta' people out there knew Buddy dog. I'd go out pickin' up cans and hit them motel dumpsters all along Murfreesboro Road there and he'd go right along with me. He'd go as far as Continental (Motel) with me, get his stomach full and lay down out there in the sunshine. When I got done and it was time to go, he'd look at me like I was crazy. So, I'd just say, I'll see you when you get home Buddy and go on. And he would be, sure enough. He'd be layin' right there in the yard by the time I made it back to camp.

I knowed him since he was a little bitty pup. He started out somebody else's dog. They abandoned him on the creek bank and that's when he took up with me. He wasn't like no regular dog. We go through them dumpsters and he didn't gobble up the bones or just anything because he always knew there was more to come. After everything was gone - then he wasn't shy of that bone but up til then, he'd pick little bites off a chicken or a pork chop and keep going.

Most people remember him because he run up and down the road there a lot of the time, with a quart bottle in his mouth. He was a labordaor retriever and all we had, down there to throw in the creek for him was quart bottles. He'd go out after 'em and then he wouldn't give'em back.

Went down to Spur one Sunday morning, get me some cigarettes and Buddy tagged along. We got there and there was a crackhead standin' in front of the air machine, he told me when I come up, he said,

"Get your dog."

I told him he wasn't my dog.

Then I looked over at Buddy and I told him, I said,

"Watch 'im Buddy."

Dog hunched down and stared in the man's eyes.
I went on in the store. I come out a few minutes later and him and that dude was still looking at each other. I figured it wasn't gonna' be til twelve o'clock I'd get back by and I hated to leave ol' Buddy standing there til' then, so when I got to the corner of the parking lot I looked back and I said,

"C'mon Buddy"

And we went on down the road.


(Note: The dog in the photo is used for illustrative purposes only. He's a lot dog as opposed to a street dog and his name is Chopper. That was terribly amusing three months ago, when he was a puppy. Thanks to Barney, he is occasionally seen sporting a four-dollar rawhide bone.)

Blinders

He sat in the chair reading the contraindication pages given to him with four different prescriptions. He laughed and read aloud:

Tell your doctor immediately if you become thirsty or confused. Hell, he said, that's my whole problem.

The doctor always prescribes a few things that aren't covered by his limited insurance. It's a nice gesture, wasted; a cookbook version of treatment. I don't know why it doesn't occur to them that the only money he's got is the bus fare they're going to give him when he leaves. Even then, sometimes people act like they're doing him a favor. Like, hey here's a dollar forty-five so you can get back over to that bridge you've been living on for the last few years. Don't forget to weigh yourself regularly and have your blood pressure checked and oh, by the way, stop drinking.

On the other side, and there is another side. There are some health care professionals who actually get it. They're hard-working, bright compassionate people who'd do just about anything for anybody they could. Their only limitation is the broken system. The one that discharges you on a Sunday knowing you can't get any medicine until Tuesday. The one that says we heard you say you'd like to try rehab so why don't you make an appointment for a month from now.

Three days ago, the Tennessean printed an article with a headline, General Hospital needs image transplant. Straight from the mouth of the Metro Hospital Authority's chief executive:

"We want to get the public to perceive us differently," Coopwood said.

How? The hospital has made some low-budget strides with a television commercial. They have a new slogan: "Experience the new General. Get to know us."

Does anyone actually believe that a new slogan is going to fix General's problems? That's the mentality that probably drove it into the ground in the first place. General Hospital needs a staff transplant. Again, let me make it perfectly clear, I believe there are competent, well-trained people working there. Unfortunately, they're surrounded by a cloud of complacent, irritable, employees drowning in bureaucracy and underfunding. By all means, spend tens of thousands of dollars on a commercial. When the ambulance driver asks Dr. Coopwood what hospital he'd like to be taken to, what do we think he's going to say?

Emergency room

Down the hall there was a little boy screaming. It lasted the better part of four hours. I stared at the pattern on the linoleum floor while Steve nodded off on the gurney. He'd sleep in two minute intervals for a while then wake up for fifteen or twenty and we'd have another conversation. He was hurting all over this time. Grouchy, but apologetic.

On the way to the emergency room, a girl crossed Eighth Avenue in front of us and after she'd almost gone, he said,

"I wish I could still walk like that."

There was a long silence and then he added, "but it's too late for me."

My arm instinctively turned off the radio and we crossed over the train yard, surrounded on all sides, by the lunch time traffic.

"If they drain this fluid off when I'm there," he said, "maybe you could take a picture of that. Maybe it would stop some motherfucker from drinking himself to death."

The next light came and I studied a familiar profile, sleeping on the bus stop bench by the offices of our daily newspaper. It was seventy-four degrees and the man on the bench couldn't take off his winter coat because someone would've stolen it, in a matter of minutes.

I tried to relax my jaw and said, "Maybe ".

The message on my answering machine the day before was cryptic. Could I come by sometime tomorrow? He didn't say Hey I need a ride to the hospital. Or hey, my liver is about to make my stomach explode.

He said "Hey, Sue could you come by tomorrow if you've got time? "

In the message, he was very drunk. He didn't know how to hang up the cell phone and the ensuing conversation between he and another man gave me great pause. It was a five-minute dialogue that I could have gone my whole life without hearing. I couldn't begin to describe it here.

His voice has changed dramatically over the last two months. Sometimes it heaves like the old garbage disposal under my sink. Rocking gently between homelessness and alcoholism, death and now a subtle form of hopeless regret, he would talk for the next nine hours, seven of which were spent in the emergency room, waiting patiently for a double shot of arrogant indifference. I foolishly believed it wouldn't happen but Steve knew better. He laid it all out beautifully, before we even got there.


(In memory of Wayne E. Frampton, who died in an abandoned car, on the morning of Saturday, February 25, 2006. He was fifty-five years old.)