TUESDAY AFTERNOON VISIT

I went to visit Suzie on Tuesday afternoon at 4:45.

She had finished her therapy for the day and was in bed, awake but looking exhausted. She caught a glimpse of me at the sink outside her door, doing my pre-visit hand washing. She smiled and waved.

I noticed a few things immediately. She is much more active than the last time I saw her just a few days ago. Not active in the sense of getting up and walking around, but squirming, wiggling, raising herself up in bed.

The difficult part of this is, her movement often seemed to be discomfort-related. She would yell out “pain” and hold her left hand to her head while lifting her back off the bed and crunching toward her leg.

The pain seemed to go in waves and, when it would subside, she would calm down and re-engage with me.

I sat down on a chair next to her bed. She reached out her left hand and held mine. I asked her how she was doing.

“Fight,” she said. “You can fight.”

“You’re fighting to get better,” I said. "You have to keep fighting."

I told her about some things that were happening at work, and she widened her eyes and said, “Oh.” It was clear to me that she was reacting to what I was saying. Then I told her that Benjamin Solotaire said hello. Suzie said his name and smiled. She also said “the beach.” And then she said something surprising.

“You have an opening?” she asked.

“Damian does,” I said. “Damian has an opening tonight.”

I knew from everyone at MJM that Damian Costilla, one of our PAs, had an art opening that same night. I wonder if someone told Suzie. If not, it’s an odd coincidence.

She repeated it again, more definitively. “You have an opening.”

I sat there for a while, holding her hand, until one of the nurses came in and I said goodbye.

From the hallway I heard her yell “Pain!” three times, much louder than she had yelled when I was in the room . I hope the nurse was giving her something to make her feel better.

Then she yelled “Why why why?”

I’m glad she didn’t ask me that when I was in the room, because I don’t have a good answer for her. She doesn’t deserve this fucked up thing that has happened to her, but she‘s fighting hard to deal with it.