September 22, 2014 scottcjones 10Comments

There was a bit in the last section that I’d like to reclaim. I used the word “frightened” to describe myself in the moment when I saw my mom and dad’s faces for the first time and subsequently interpreted their appearance as a symbol of how dire things were for me. I don’t think that’s right. I don’t believe that I ever felt scared, or frightened, or sad, or angry, or anything that a healthy person would probably have been feeling throughout this. Inside me, there was only this: a static indifference. It was like a white noise, like a box fan being run at higher and higher speeds, and swallowing everything up. No, I was never genuinely “frightened” at the beginning, not really, not even when things turned grim as they soon would.

A regal Chinese surgeon named Dr. Yee came to my room and told me and my parents what he was going to do to help me. It involved an operation on my heart and a few other treatments that I honestly did not understand. It sounded OK to me. Then Dr. Yee left. Then Dr. Yee came back again later on and said that the heart operation was cancelled for various reasons that I, again, did not understand. Again, fine. Then Dr. Yee came back again the next day and said that he had good news: the original plan to do the operation was back on again. He would operate on me the following morning.

And again, fine.

I was sleeping around the clock, curled in my hospital bed like a hibernating bear. I had a series of roommates during this time. I’d fall asleep and I’d have one particular roommate, and then I’d wake up and I’d have a completely different roommate. This happened all the time. The roommates all looked exactly the same to me: gray eyes, snow-white whiskers on their chins, frowns hanging like upside-down horseshoes on their faces, bedsheets hiked up to their necks. They were old drunks mostly, or maybe addicts; Vancouver has plenty on both counts. They looked like a series of derelict Santa Clauses.

One day two coworkers from the office came to visit. I slept through their visit mostly, so this detail is something that they shared with me later: During their visit, the derelict Santa in the next bed began furiously digging underneath his blankets. He continued this digging for several minutes. It was impossible to ignore, according to my coworkers. Then, after a great deal of effort, the man produced a pair of underwear which was obviously filled with shit. The man had shit himself and had made an attempt to clean himself up, which, I suppose, is an admirable thing to do. Then the man did something which was not an admirable thing to do at all: He held the pair of shit-filled underwear above his head for a few seconds. Then, aiming for the laundry bin in the corner, the derelict Santa launched it. Yes, he launched it, and he missed the bin by a mile, leaving a shit-stain that resembled an impromptu Rorschach test—I see two wolves kissing—on the room’s ivory wall. The resulting odor, my coworkers would report, rendered the room uninhabitable. As I said, I mercifully slept through this. My coworkers, however, will probably think twice before visiting a hospital again anytime soon.

There would be more roommates in my future, including “Wombat,” who I’ll tell you about soon enough. I did have one roommate from that period who I can remember. He was a young guy. He had a girlfriend, which further distinguished him from my other cohabiters, because he was obviously still young enough and attractive enough and sober enough to be worthy of a girlfriend. I enjoyed it when the girlfriend would visit him. She would lie in bed with him and they would talk quietly in an open, tender way. They were quietly making plans for the rest of their lives once the man was out of the hospital—where they should live, what kind of house they should have, what they should do for work, and so on. Oh, these little lovebirds talked for hours, which is something that would have normally irritated me. But for some reason it didn’t irritate me at all.

One night as I was drifting back to sleep, I thought I heard them mention my name. It was the guy’s voice. “That guy, Scott,” he said, “the one over there. He seems like a really good guy. I hope he gets through this OK.” I can’t tell you how great it was hearing my name mentioned out of the blue like that. It was like hearing Walter Cronkite say your name on the evening news. This roommate had noticed me—I knew that now—and he was aware of me and my plight, and he felt sympathy for me. Somehow that pierced the static indifference surrounding me. Hearing my roommate say my name made me feel hopeful. I was growing further and further away from the world all the time; I knew that. But hearing my roommate say my name, strange as it may sound, made me feel like the world somehow wanted me back again.

As I fell asleep I made a mental note to say hello to the guy the next morning, to introduce myself and find out what was wrong with him and so forth. But because of the way my brain was deteriorating, my mental notes were like deck chairs on the Titanic, always doomed and forgotten in the same exact instant that I thought of them. I believe that the man and his girlfriend were aspiring actors—something ridiculous and impractical yet still endearing like that. I never did find out who the guy was or why he was in the hospital. I overslept and woke up late the next morning. When I got up to use the bathroom, a new derelict Santa was already in his bed.

A day or so before my surgery, I learned that all my “street” clothes had somehow been lost. My mother looked inside the locker in my hospital room and discovered that it was empty. Whatever shoes I’d been wearing, whatever pants and shirt and jacket I’d had on when Jason checked me into the hospital on zero-one-one day, were now gone. After my surgery, and after my time in rehab, I would visit the Lost & Found Department at St. Paul’s, which I figured would look kind of like the warehouse where the Ark of the Covenant is stowed at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. I spoke to a security guard on the first floor of St. Paul’s. He asked me what I was missing and I reluctantly told him. To my great disappointment, he repeated my list of missing items verbatim into his walkie talkie. Once he was finished, I said, “So there’s no room that I can go to so I can look myself?”

He assured me that there was no “room,” and that this was the way Lost & Found requests were handled at the hospital. A few minutes later, the walkie talkie responded: they didn’t have my shoes, my pants, my shirt, my jacket. Not exactly a big surprise or anything.

Six months have passed since I went into the hospital. I still haven’t found my things. I never will, I guess. It’s easy for me to imagine more melodramatic fictions surrounding the plight of my clothes. In more pitiful moments, I think that someone in the hospital who was aware of my dark prognosis disposed of them prematurely. He won’t need these old New Balance sneakers anymore so let’s get rid of them now. In less pitiful and more optimistic moments, I think that somehow my clothes were indeed thrown away not because I would die but because when I finally woke up I wouldn’t be the same person that I was before. I wouldn’t need those clothes anymore because those clothes belonged to someone else, to the old version of me.

With my clothes already in limbo, I woke up early the next morning and was carted down to surgery. This is the part where things get really sad.

10 thoughts on “LOST & FOUND

  1. “This is the part where things get really sad…” Goddamnit man this is like pulling out a toenail out slowly. As hard as it is on my personal empathy-well to discover all of this, I will be awaiting the next entry.

  2. I’m thinking that perhaps your derelict Santas are enjoying whatever pieces of your clothing they could pilfer. Yes, let’s go with that. As far as it getting sad; I remember the operation feeling like a relief that something was finally being taken care of. Something concrete. And aren’t those things frequently started by taking two steps back before you move forward? Yes, they frequently are!

  3. I’ve seen your wardrobe, Mr. Jones. You always look so dashing 🙂
    I honestly think someone just saw some nice swag and decided to take it for themselves! Which really sucks. My father went into St Pauls for a thyroid operation and they totally misplaced his medications (he has painful arthritis). But he had to go without his meds for a few days and his joints swelled up like balloons :-\ They never did find those meds. Damn hospitals.

    Eagerly awaiting your next entry.

  4. Thanks Please continue. It’s your “Style” to leave us with an awkward cliff hanger. Practicing to be a writer for Melrose Place are you?

  5. I love the way you write. Please continue to update us on your hopefully speedy recovery. If only life were like a video game. Just grab a scapel press x to do your own surgery, smash a crate, find a blaster, kill a zombie, and then you are outta there

  6. “Life is filled with holes, Johnny’s laying there, his sperm coffin
    Angel looks down at him and says, “Oh, pretty boy,
    Can’t you show me nothing but surrender?”
    Johnny gets up, takes off his leather jacket,
    Taped to his chest there’s the answer,
    You got pen knives and jack knives and
    Switchblades preferred, switchblades preferred
    Then he cries, then he screams, saying
    Life is full of pain, I’m cruisin’ through my brain
    And I fill my nose with snow and go Rimbaud,
    Go Rimbaud, go Rimbaud,
    And go Johnny go, and do the watusi, oh do the watusi”

    HORSES–PATTI SMITH

  7. Scott,

    I’m a big fan of your work. Some of your Vic’s Basement stuff was outstanding. Now EPN seems in danger of slipping into a type of Jim and Tammy Show.

    Keep writing and best wishes.

  8. Scott… hang tough. We are all pulling for you. I pray that years from now this will be just a horrible year that is just barely on the tip of your memory. As for now, stay strong.

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