Redux: Notes from an Emergency Room
I remembered something! And now my notes make more sense.
Yesterday I wrote about a scrap of paper I scribbled all over while I was in the ER for a bike accident two and a half years ago. There was a huge chunk of it that didn’t make much sense. You can read that here:
Memory is a funny thing, because as I noodled over some of the missing parts, I suddenly remembered in sharp detail, as if the scene were playing out on a scene in front of me, a crucial display of human tenderness.
Here was the scene that had escaped me:
“An older couple — way older than my parents — she walking him in the wheely him into the waiting room A walker of some sort, in with his [illegible], who is bleeding from the eye holding a rag to his eye. He goes [illegible] in the wheelchair to throw up; his [illegible] holds his shoulder + then, maybe due to [illegible] instinct touches the back of his hand to his colleague’s head. It is a token gesture, one I feel we should make more of to each other.”
Some of the words looked like “colleague,” but that didn’t make sense, because I thought I was still observing the older couple. But I had misread “worker” for “walker,” and now…
