Notionally Defunct
I ogle the waiting-room painting that’s hung across from me as I sit in apprehensive abeyance and wait
to get the staples removed from my head.
It’s some generic hospital art entitled Garden Path scrawled in cursive at the bottom along with the artist’s signature,
which looks to be Carrie Gladson
from what I can make of it.
I start to think about this Carrie Gladson.
Had she ever fallen down a steep hill after having had too much to drink and cracked her head open on the sidewalk?
If we were married would she change her name to Carrie Carren?
There’s a touch of Van Gogh’s Starry Night in her hedges, splattered there,
muted and dark and inviting,
and I want to wander into those gray hues tinged with purple splotches
and fall asleep in their warm dotted arms.
I sit and wait and try not to claw at my healing head wounds and stare at the painting,
glad for the first time in a decade that I won’t have to deal with alcohol’s horrible half
half the time,
as I am on the decaf coffee and tomato juice now.
Ten days sober and away from trauma’s heightened grip.
I wonder if Mrs. Gladson ever felt this way:
both nervous and rapt by what was to come,
clear in her vision of a future that wasn’t bleak and unimaginable for once.
Perhaps she too had to overcome her own shortcomings to dab those
flowering shrubs and trees to life.
I hope she’s well compensated to produce bland art for hospital waiting rooms.
I hope her contract gets renewed for multiple years.
Vapid greens and subdued blues
splash along the garden path,
as shade gives what it can,
bit by effortless bit,
to this sterile world encapsulated in her restrained brushstrokes.
Everyone here has no idea what is coming,
what may befall them in hasty moments,
times when they might not realize their own condition,
and times when they will need help,
a lot of help,
from others.
I have escaped death’s clutches by a fluke,
a neighbor happening upon me bleeding profusely in the lobby,
after midnight —
ignoring my pleas to leave me be,
that I was fine,
that it was just a scratch —
and calling an ambulance to the rescue.
I vaguely recall being in an emergency room
lying fitfully on a bed while a woman prodded my skull
and gasped.
I was intent on tearing my hospital gown off and trying to retrieve my shoes and jacket
so I could escape that place.
I wanted to be home.
They kept finding me wandering around
with my shoes untied and my jacket half-on over that unbuttoned cerulean gown,
and having to usher me back to the bed.
“You’ve got to wait for the doctor. He’s coming to fix your head. You have a very serious laceration. Here, let me take your jacket for you.”
I told them, “My head’s fine. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be alright. It’s just a little blood.”
Luckily, they didn’t listen.
So,
now,
I have given up battering my life with booze.
I do not want to be that person anymore.
I remember that imposter all too well.
He dons my outfits and runs up tabs all over town.
He never says when,
only one more, and one more.
He’s a dangerous and absolute moron,
and worse,
an uncontrollable one.
This is not some honorable or extraordinary duty to undertake,
but I have been given another chance for some reason,
and it is mine,
and I’m throttled to it until the end.
I sit and watch the comforting soft-white light reflect from Mrs. Gladson’s garden path,
the piles of pity claiming its virgin territories with a forgiving swoop,
while a doctor in a pristine white lab coat steps through the double doors
and,
with a razor-thin whoosh that sounds like a long-sealed tomb being jimmied open,
calls my name.
This is who I am.
These scars will far outlast who I was, then.
And I am glad for these midnight-blue badges,
these indelible reminders of my fixed faults.
This
here
I guess
is where the rest of my life begins.
