Little Feet

Life happens even when you live in a dump.  You get into the same stressful situations as people who live in sheetrock covered studs.  Your home’s condition doesn’t immunize you from whatever the day brings, even if you spent the previous night in a room without drywall.

Dealing with life is easier, I’m guessing, when you don’t have embarrassment constantly in the back of your mind.  I’m constantly embarrassed by where we live.  We shield our own home from best friends who have stopped asking when they can come visit our progress.

Not-so-good friends and Charlie’s colleagues don’t wait for an invitation.  They come over anyway.   After the initial shock of exposure we enjoy sharing our plans.  Still, we forget what a weekend without power tools might be like.

We don’t do anything on the house during the week.  We don’t get much done on it during the weekends, either, especially after allowing for bike rides, coffee breaks, and endless trips to Home Depot.  We promised ourselves this weekend would be different.

Charlie woke up and began to work on the deck before breakfast.  He attached deck joists to the front of the house before we left on vacation, so if you wanted to come to the front door you had to hop over each 2x6 like a basic training exercise.  Today he started screwing in deck boards so we could use the front door again. 

I went upstairs and avoided anything which might make me sweat or get dirty.  I had an idea that if we had money, we might get other people to do the work we can’t or won’t.  There’s no way we can fix up this house without professional help, one way or the other.  I’d prefer subcontractors rather than marriage counselors.

“You’d need an appraisal,” my favorite loan officer said when I called her up, begging for an increase in our home equity line of credit.  “I know how you don’t like appraisals.”

“If the house was good enough for an appraisal, I wouldn’t be calling you,” I said.  “I’d be calling a real estate agent.”

“I had a client who wanted to know, in all seriousness, if we had an appraiser who couldn’t see well.  I told him if we had a blind appraiser, he’d be very popular.”

The loan officer told me she had a few ideas.  She’d figure out a way to increase our debt, she said.  She’d call me back when she came up with something creative.

I knew Jenn had to work at noon, but I didn’t notice she was still asleep at 11:40 a.m.  At 11:41 a.m. she woke up, bolted into the bathroom and rushed around a few minutes until she landed in my doorway.  “Can you give me a ride?  I forgot to set my alarm.”

I tried to get the skateboarder to do it instead, but he’s been on Jenn’s assertiveness training program and said, “I don’t want to.”

“Good,” she told him.  He smiled and went back to playing on the computer.  His assertiveness is making me do more driving.

I drove her to work and she seemed fine.  Half an hour later, she stumbles out of a car I’ve never seen before and dry-heaves on the driveway.

“Something’s wrong,” she says and dry-heaves again.

Charlie dropped his hammer drill and ran over to her.

“I got to work, started my day like I always do, but instantly started throwing up behind the restaurant.  My side feels like someone’s pushing a cactus into me and twisting it.

“’You need to go to the hospital,’ they said.  I told them, ‘I don’t want to go with you, no offense.’” 

Charlie went into autopilot and raced to the emergency room.   Even though he didn’t have on his uniform and was without lights and sirens, the Cop in him comes out in emergencies.  It’s a Cop family benefit to have his service and protection off-duty.

“I shouldn’t have left work,” she said.  “One cook quit and another one is on vacation.”  Then she doubled over in pain.  “They’re going to be screwed.”

The emergency room was empty except for a crying overweight woman whose daughter had a broken arm.  The daughter was in a wheelchair and scared.  Her mom kept talking to her in baby talk between sobs. 

“It’s just a broken arm,” Jenn said.  “I broke bones so often as a kid my Mom dropped me off at the door and told me to call when I was released.  Can you get me a Mountain Dew?”

“Are you sure?” I asked.  “You seem to be doing better.”

“I want to get in there first.”

She drank a couple of sips and started throwing up in the intake nurse’s trash can.  “Sorry,” she said.   She told me later that’s what you need to do in Albuquerque emergency rooms.  “You need drama or you’ll be in the waiting room five hours.”

When they found out she was pregnant with a sharp pain in her side, and now throwing up, she got a room.

A nurse stood at the door.  “Jennifer?”

“That’s me.  The one in the bed.”

The nurse took her vitals and asked her a few questions.  “When was your last period?”

“End of April sometime.”

“Is it possible you’re pregnant?”

“It’s possible.  Want to see the ultrasound photos?”

“That might be a good thing to write on your chart,” she said.  “Be right back.”

“You guys must be starving,” Jenn said.  “It’s going to be a while and you haven’t eaten all day.  I’ll be here.”

She looked like she was hit by a truck.  “Yeah, right,” Charlie said.  “We’re not going anywhere.”

“Even the emergency room’s better than being at home,” I said.

Then we proceeded to talk about relatives.  When you have nothing to talk about and you need to get someone’s mind off their pain, talking about relatives is a surefire cure.

We told her about everyone we saw on our vacation.  “I don’t know what to think about my step-mother,” I said.  I was thinking about my Dad and step-mother’s recent real-estate transaction.

“I finally got a good one,” Jenn said.  She looked directly at me.  It took me a moment before I figured out she was talking about me. 

“Thank you,” I said.  I still don’t believe someone said that about me.

After she got morphine, she called the father of her baby to let him know she was in the hospital.  “Why’d you go and call me?” he said.  “Something’s always wrong with you.  You’re stressing me out.”  She acted like this response was out of the ordinary.

Four hours later, Jenn went to get an ultrasound.  We stood next to her, watching a black and white screen full of gray blobs.  Apparently we were looking at Jenn’s kidneys.  It looked like bad art to me.

“You probably have a small stone in your kidney you’re trying to pass.  I can’t pick it up on the ultrasound.  Everything looks very healthy.”

“Doesn’t feel very healthy.”

“As long as we’re here, want to see your baby?”

“Yes!” Charlie said.

“Yes!” I said.

“Uh-huh,” Jenn said, obviously full of morphine.

“You’re having a daughter?” the nurse said.  “Here’s her head.”

Charlie and I looked at each other in confusion.  We could still be looking at kidneys for all we could decipher. 

We looked back at the screen and both of us gasped like in the movies.  Instead of gray blobs, we saw two very unmistakable, very little feet. 

I’d miss lunch any day to see those little feet. 

A little help? [] 11:48:56 PM