[Sorry, this is a “what I did today” entry, no acting relevance whatsoever. It's been 'in draft' for several days now, as I try to piece together a few minutes at a time to write. This parental leave thing is really cramping my style... anyway, it's both a true story, and a stab at creative writing]
As I entered the main lobby of the Riverside clinic, my eyes adjusted from the brightness outside. An assortment of mostly non-ambulatory, mostly elderly, patients waited with their wheelchairs, walkers and canes, to be picked up by someone. It had been almost 6 years since I last came here, and so I couldn't remember where to go. I walked up to the "You are here" map, and started looking for radiology. A little voice from off to my right interrupted: "Excuse me?" I looked over, and down, to see a little old lady in a wheelchair, looking up at me with wide eyes. "Can I ask you a little favour?". She was West Indian, so it came out "kyan ah ask you for a little fay-vah?". She was so tiny, pushed into her wheelchair by the weight of two big purse/duffelbags in her lap. "Sure," I said, and bent down so we could be face-to-face-and-handbags. "I need someone to push me to physiotherapy..." She was contrite, her voice so low as to seem conspiratorial. "Oh, no problem!" I said, straightening to find physio on the map board. "But..." she said. I turned back to her, an eyebrow raised (or at least that's how it felt to me).
An aside now: what sort of shitty world do we live in, that at this point, I started to feel like I was about to get a pitch for some sort of rip-off? That I actually began steeling myself for what would eventually end in "that's why I need twenty dollars, dear". I feel like a complete and utter ass, now, for having felt that way then, but that's how I felt. In retrospect, it's absurd, ludicrous, that I suspected, even for a moment, that this frail little septuagenarian was some sort of ruthless charlatan, a calculating mountebank performing con-artistry in the halls and waiting rooms of the city's healthcare institutions. In any case, she completed the sentence:
"... But I'm starving and just want to get myself a sandwich in the cafeteria first, could you push me there?"
Shame ... Relief ... Love... all at once. I think the end result was that I smiled. Of course, I felt like bashing myself to death with buddy's walker for being such a cynical jerk just a second before, but that was in the past, and I now had a mission to complete: "Good Lord, of course, no problem. Where's the caf?", I said, already craning to check the bloody wall map again. But she was now all smiles herself. It was as if I'd just offered her one of my lungs. "It's right over there. God bless you, you're an angel. Oh my..."
I had to start pushing her or I was going to get weepy...
"What is your name, my angel?" (Picture now, a 6'1", 210 lb guy, pushing a 90 lb old lady, blushing like an embarrassed private-school boy). "Eric. What's yours?"
"Oh," she laughed girlishly,"I'm black Mother Theresa." I chuckle back. "Fine, I'll just call you Mother."
I guide her to the sandwiches and help her pick out a vegetarian wrap, after sizing the alternatives. "Have you eaten, boy?" 'Boy', she calls me ... From 36 to 11 in the space of one word. "No ma'am," I don't know where the ma'am came from, reflex, I guess, "I'm ... uh, well, I'm here for a CT scan."
"You're here for what?"
"A Cat-scan, and I can't eat beforehand."
"oh, I see..."
We get to the front, and I pass along her request to have her wrap warmed. One of the ladies peers around and recognizes her. A brief, warm exchange follows, in which the most-used personal pronoun is "Dear".
"And how much for a chocolate bar?", she asks the cashier. Old ladies, I think with a smile, they sure like their sweets. Some confusion ensues, as 'Mother' doesn't have a chocolate bar in her hand to ring up. I intervene and ask the cashier to ring one in, then we'll go and pick one out. Mother is a bit befuddled by this exchange, but we straighten it out, and roll over to the 'chocolaterie'. "Oh, just pick any one out," she says, with a wave of a hand, still stashing change in a handbag cavernous enough to consume me whole were I silly enough to lean too far over it. I pick a Dairy Milk and present it for inspection. Now the accent comes out: "An WHY you wan' go an' pick a SCRAWNY little 'ting like 'dat?" ... Ok, I now love this woman. I scuttle back to the display and find this big caramel-filled Aero-bar thing. I hold it out, and don't even look up, 'cuz I don't want to see the handbag coming if it does. I will meet my maker wincing. "Dat's bett'AH. Now ... that's for you, for after your scan-thingy." "But..." she stops me mid-stammer: "Don't argue. I will feed my angel! And that is that." To argue at this point would be to risk handbagging: "Well, thank you very much, then," I say.
"No, dear, thank you, and God bless you," she says, patting my arm.
Her wrap emerges from the warming process, and now we're faced with what to do with it while we roll to the physio waiting area. I suggest that I can hold it and push simultaneously. "But you don't have five arms!" she protests. "Don't worry, Mother, I can push you 'round with one hand." We chuckle at this, the lamest joke ever. But what can I say, it's a friggin hospital, you take your humour where you can find it.
She blesses me in the name of God, again.
"Oh, Chris..." she says, distractedly, I think she means me, but am not sure. "Err ... who's Chris?"
"Well, aren't you?"
"Uh, I'm Eric."
"Well, who's Chris then?", a bit like this was all my fault.
"Um, I don't know..."
If Mother does indeed have some form of dementia, it's well hidden, as this exchange is just mildly funny, like she was caught pulling a name from out of a reverie. There's a moment of silence as we roll on down the hall, she moving her baggage, and me craning to read signs.
"Well, Eric," she emphasizes my name, "have you ever noticed how we all have angels looking out for us?" I smile again, and decide to myself that I can infer the broadest definition of "Angel": "Yes, I've noticed a couple here and there. And ... I guess, there were probably some I never got to see."
"Oh my, yes," she laughs here, and I just feel happy.
"Well, here we are," as I roll her up to the reception desk, where a young staffer in scrubs looks up to see us: "Hi there, you have an appointment with..?"
"Let me find my yellow thing," Mother answers, mumbling, into the chasm that is her bag-of-holding. Now, I'm not often accused of being a genius, but I can tell she's looking for an appointment card. Clearly, miss scrubs-and-lisa-loeb-glasses doesn't get this: "Do you know who you're here for?", she intones, using that condescending yelling-for-the-elderly voice. "Well," Mother answers, "I'm here for the person I'm going to see, of course."
Boo-ya... I would have high-fived her but for the risk of breaking her hand.
Blondie is taken a bit aback, and is about to patronize some more, when Mother finds her appointment card in the 4th sub-level of the East Wing of her handbag: "There, dear." Blondie is now all contrite smiles, and announces to someone over the PA that her 1:30 is here.
I wheel her over to the seating area, and help her set up so she can eat her sandwich. I wish her well, and she grips my arm as she thanks me again, invoking the deities and all.
As I'm turning to go, she calls: "Oh, and don't forget!", I turn back, again with the perceived eyebrow raised. "Mind you eat something with that bar. You can't eat chocolate on an empty stomach!"
She's too bloody priceless for words. "Don't worry, I won't. Take care, Mother."
She chuckles, and adds: "God bless you."
"God bless you, too..."
I turned, and left.
And I thought: God bless her.
){kind=link}