The Porter

He starts at seven in the morning for his shift, his white gown already donned, his fresh new face mask with its stretchable lining, his heavy black shoes with extra padding. Already he is making his way to his first call. A woman with severe abdominal pains turns out she needs surgery immediately to remove a swollen gallbladder. The porter nods to the woman’s son and gives him his best smile. The son greets him back with a weak smile in return. They reach the third floor of the hospital. He lowers the bed with its built-in pneumatic pump. He greets the nurse and hands off the woman and her son, while feeling his pager go off for the next pick up. A man who’s suffered a stroke and needs a new shunt in his heart.

It’s only 7:15, and he already feels the waves of anxiety and existential crisis coming on. Questioning why he ever chose to become a hospital porter. A human luggage carrier. A trafficker even when he makes mistakes and takes a person to the wrong ward. It’s a maze out there but after so many years he knows all the shortcuts, and exactly where every single room number and ward is. “After today I’m going to give my two weeks notice and move to Panama”, he thinks. His second pick up is an old senile man. No one is with the old man. The porter doesn’t ask questions. That’s gotten him into trouble before. He only speaks when spoken to. So nowadays he makes assumptions. “His wife must have already passed away”. He now remembers he’s seen him before. That familiar accepting face of the old man is defeating yet peaceful. “Maybe he just wants to join his wife once and for all”.

When he was a kid all he wanted to be was be successful. His idea of success for the longest time was to have a briefcase, for breakfast have a glass of OJ and the morning newspaper out and a kiss goodbye to his wife. Just like his dad. He’s now 47 and still has none of that but he can’t just “up and quit”! A full pension is waiting for him in a few years. Maybe it’s time for a new achievable dream.

He drops off the old man to the Nurse, smiles and asks, “Same time tomorrow?”

“Same time,” says the nurse.

He switches shifts with the next porter, Gregory. The porter lies in the moving bed and ol’ Greg here shimmies him off to the parking lot. One of the few perks.

He goes back to his apartment and drinks some green tea. Then he waits to do it all again tomorrow.