So This is Your Scrap of Dignity IV
Excuse me
Too busy
Writing your tragedy
These mishaps
You bubble wrap
When you've no idea what you're like...
--Frou Frou, “Let Go”
Walking scares him beyond the imaginable boundaries of the infinite universe. The cane can stick in a sidewalk crack and not break his mother’s back, but his own. It can break his precarious existence, since he teeters on the verge of nothing and everything, of Cameron, of comfort…of familiarity.
(And this is new, unchartered territory-land of the living-and its details fill his head, but mostly there is uncertainty.)
She walks beside him and is another crutch if he wants, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t need help because being strong means never asking for another human being’s help. Being strong means never giving up, means never losing…and usually it means never winning, either.
(The patient wakes up and three feet from the bed must take a breather.)
There’s dialogue, but for him it’s never intrinsic. It never has been he feels and it never will be. Words are pathetic. Words are useless. Words are a waste of his time. And God knows how much he hates useless things.
(She hates God-there must be some attached strings?)
He doesn’t trust people because everyone lies to protect themselves, to protect someone else, to be a “good” person…because lies of omission are so much less damaging than outright lies. That’s why he doesn’t trust love, because people are evil.
(This disease-perhaps something medieval?)
He tells her these thoughts and she launches into a diatribe on how he needs to trust and love…experience life. This is Wilson’s pulpit speech. Perhaps they spend too much time studying each other’s notes (okay, it’s Cuddy’s too, but everyone in the hospital is out to get him…paranoia takes flight.) Even she doesn’t like it very much, but she lives it. And didn’t we have this conversation nary a few minutes ago?
(She’s infuriatingly pretty and the thought’s so hard to let go…)
He trusts her now. He blames it on the nicknames-highly personal considering she thinks God is crap and religion is shit. Adam and Eve. How perfectly ironic.
(These symptoms are chronic.)
He doesn’t know where she’s taking him and the feeling is disorientation. It throws him off his well-placed guard and he knows what she’s doing. Manipulation makes a coffee date (APPOINTMENT) seem rather meaningful.
(He’s lived with himself for 40-some years now and he’s never felt himself so doubtful.)
It’s her presence that is unsettling, he concludes. Too much heady perfume. But it’s not heady, and it’s not cloying, it’s oh-so-beautiful, enhancing her natural oils (or are the oils enhancing the perfume?) She’s beautiful. She’s beautiful. And he’s…not.
(Male. 46. Painful swelling in the heart.)
He’s the ugly duckling except he’s not going to be beautiful and handsome because this is not a fairy tale. Life isn’t for Disney and magic. Life is life. There is no way around it. It’s morbid and morose and melodramatic, but it’s life. And all he can do is muddle through it and happen upon a safe place where he can crawl up in the fetal position and stay there…just stay there.
(And now the wind flies through her hair.)
He’s weak, but he covers that. He has to or else they’ll all take advantage of him. The cane bears the sign: “take advantage of me! (oh, and pity me later.)” If he doesn’t put up his façade of strength then he’ll never make it. How can she ever understand that?
(He has more lives than an alley cat.)
But he’s not weak, he reminds himself. He’s strong and strong people aren’t weak. Obviously.
(She talking and he’s listening blindly.)
“We could record this,” he thinks. If people voluntarily listen to William Hung, he’s sure that America’s impressionable young generation will pony up $15 to buy a CD filled with the harmony of his dragging cane and her clicking heels.
(And now the man’s going insane-going against all his well thought of ideals.)
The destination remains wrapped in her memorable membrane. There’s nothing he knows and there’s nothing he can do. She makes him cross roads when the side reads, “don’t walk” and she avoids the crosswalk because rules are silly. They mean nothing. It’s like everyone’s conforming to fate and fate conforms to destiny. And everyone knows destiny is an avid conformist.
(The old women smile on the street because she’s such an angelic atheist.)
When they arrive outside the Piggly-Wiggly he grimaces and her mouth turns squiggly. So this has been the destination that he suspects she never knew would be the end. Because she is still making this up as they enter the store. Because he knows she’s exactly like him. And he’s infinitely unsure.
(So, he spends his life spinning in a mist of unknown maladies and searching for an ambiguous cure.)
His cell phone rings a mirthless tune. She quirks her head and leaves him to explore. He picks up the offspring of his enemy.
“House.”
“Where the hell you’ve been? No one picked up at the apartment.”
“Jimmy Wilson my sworn protector. I went out for some coffee with the lovely Dr. Cameron. How was your delicious experience at church?”
“Not one I want to repeat. Damn Julie’s niece. Wait! You, coffee, Cameron? I think I felt the universe tilt.”
He moves down the aisle, investigating a can of olives to avoid the scrutinizing gaze of inept consumers.
“So, call Cuddy and spread rumors.”
Wilson snorts and he bends down to look at the Nutritional Facts on the back of the can. How…fascinating.
“I’m glad you’re out. You need it. Badly.”
“Oh, here comes Dr. Cameron bearing condoms. I’ll call you later.”
He clicks the ‘end’ button and moves onto the other brand of olives because olives are interesting. Because olives are safe. Because olives aren’t Dr. Allison Cameron.
(And because it’s not his style to write love-worn declarations like Lord Byron.)
She comes skipping down the aisle with a bag in hand and he realizes she’s checked out and he hasn’t stopped staring at the olive can’s sunny little label. She’s so fast, so sure, so young…
(His confusion’s only just begun.)
“You gonna buy that?”
(He doesn’t know how to do this-maybe he’ll love her when the world’s flat.)
“No.”
(He needs different blood…he’s a type O.)
He watches through eyes that cannot be his own as she quirks a smile and takes his hand again. Again.
(She’s got eyes that realize there will only ever be hard liquors. He’s not one for bubbly Champaign.)
“C’mon, Adam.”
“Lead the way, Eve,” he grunts his consent.
(Being diagnosed is not a happy event.)
The automatic doors swoosh open for another anonymous couple and he knows people stare at him because of the cane, because of pity, because…
But everything’s okay now…she’s next to him.