I Lost My Patient. Then I Found Him.

from July 17th

I went to see Mr M yesterday, a day so hot that I’d rather have been indoors and not in my car, especially since my car is currently lacking air conditioning. Hot is a relevant term, since some people are quite happy in the sort of weather that makes me wilt, but all the same, it was hot.

When I got there I noticed the smoking woman from the last visit was outside again, smoking. I went inside and headed for Mr. M’s room. His roommate was there, the smoking man with only one leg, sitting comfortably on his bed, but when I walked over to the other side of the room, behind the curtain, there was no Mr. M.

The roommate indicated he had no idea where he’d wandered off to, shaking his head as if to say, “How the hell would I know?” Not overly friendly, but the man’s missing his leg, so I give him a break.

I went out to the nurse’s station, which is right next to the room, and I ask the overly extended person if she knows Mr. M’s whereabouts.

“He’s in his room,” she says, certain that she knows his location.

“No, he’s not there.”

She comes out from behind her desk and goes into the room, as if I’m mistaken, I just didn’t look for him, obviously he’s there. It’s not as if he wanders around by himself all that often after all.

He’s not there.

“Maybe he’s in the restroom,” she says, and she goes to look. He’s not there.

“Maybe he’s in the shower,” she says, and she goes to look. He’s not there.

“I don’t know where he is,” she says, “but maybe he went out the back,” and someone else walking by confirms that he was last seen headed for the back door. “He goes out there sometimes to get a snack.”

Okay then. At least I have a destination now. I head down the hall, turn left, and go out the door marked, “Back Door.” I see a big sign saying, “No smoking except in the designated area.” It occurs to me that he went for a smoke, but since I have the cigarettes with me still that’s not exactly likely. There’s a fenced-patio, a couple of vending machines, another building with laundry facilities. There’s no Mr. M. I look around the corner, to a grassy area. No Mr. M. I walk along the path and find a smoking area, under some trees, a couple of inside chairs and a can for butts, and a picnic table. But no Mr. M.

I look in corners and in darkened areas, but no Mr. M.

I wonder if he’s run off. How far can a man in a wheelchair get?

I go back inside.

I look out front, thinking that perhaps he found his way out there, but he’s not there, just the smoking woman. I go back to his room, and someone asks if they can help me. “I’m just looking for Mr Marshall,” I say, and she tells me, “He’s in his room.”

“I don’t think so,” I tell her, and she goes to look. He’s not there.

“I think he’s out back,” she says, “You should go look there.”

Despite the fact I was just there and no one at all was out there, I go back. I mean, I’m here, what else am I going to do? So I go out back. He’s not there. This was not exactly a surprise to me.

Coming back in I see him, coming up the other end of the corridor, the one that runs along the front of the building.

“Where the hell have you been,” I greet him with.

No, I don’t. That would be rude. Instead, I ask him how he is, and he starts to tell me about his long journey, out the back, around the side, up to the front, down the corridor. It’s as if he’s in training for a triathlon.

I hand him the pack of cigarettes I got him the night before (my husband choosing to stay in the car as I shopped for cigarettes, something I’ve never bought for before, not wanting to enable him in helping a smoker smoke), and the lighter I thought would come in handy. It’s yellow. I got it because it was pretty.

“Where would you like to go now,” I ask, and he wants to go out front to enjoy his new cigarettes.

We go out front, and I park him in the shade, and I sit on the outdoor couch. I’m exhausted. I’ve been running around in the heat looking for a 61 year old man in a wheelchair, and he’s in better shape than I am. And Mr M talks.

I mean, he talks. And he talks. Two of his sisters have called. His sisters! They’ve called the facility! He tells me about his sisters, one’s an RN, another sister has a bit of a delicate of constitution and they haven’t told her about him yet, and his brother is a janitor in Boston at the federal building. His son, he tells me about his son, and how there were problems with that relationship because of a girl, but his sisters will talk to him. He tells me about his dad, who got sick and told no one and no one knew until he died. He tells me about being homeless in Portland, and how he’d sleep under Burnside, by the Portland Saturday Market, and how the cops would come wake everyone up in the middle of the night and tell them to move on. Vancouver is, he tells me, a much better place to be homeless. It was in Vancouver that he got picked up by the police, and it was then that he found out he had cancer that couldn’t be fixed.

He speaks quietly, so much so that when there are other people talking close by, smoking woman and smoking legless man, who has come out, I can barely hear him, and I miss some of the things he says, but it doesn’t really matter. He talks about how they want him to come back so they can look after him, and how he’s not sure if that would work, but his sister is an RN, so it might work. It’s all still theoretical, of course, and he knows that.

He smokes two cigarettes, taking a long break in between. It’s hot, even here in the shade, and eventually his voice winds down. I think he must be exhausted. I ask him if he’s ready to go in, and he says he is, he’s getting hot, but he’s not tired.

I wheel him inside. I’ve already opened the door twice, once for legless man and then for smoking woman. I’m getting quite good at this door opening thing. I wheel him back to his room, but he doesn’t want to get out of his wheelchair. He says it’s more comfortable than the blue chair they usually place him in. I park him next to his glass of water, and I ask if there’s anything he’d like when I come back on Friday.

He thinks for a moment. There’s so many things he hasn’t had in so long, after all.

“A couple of stamps,” he said, “I need to write some more letters.”