The Thirteenth Ride to Omaha

Becky

The infusion room on the fourth floor has big windows down one whole side. Winter daylight comes through them flat and pale, and on a clear morning you can see clear out over the rooftops.

Becky saw me come in. She was at the nurses’ station in her navy scrubs with a clipboard, and she looked up, and she looked past me at the hallway, waiting for somebody else to come through the door.

Nobody did.

“Linda,” she said, and she came around the desk. “Who brought you this morning?”

“I did,” I said. I held up my keys. I am not sure why. I think I wanted somebody to see that I could still do something on my own.

Becky looked at the keys. She looked at my hat and my scarf and my gray wrap.

She pulled her pen out from behind her ear and held it still, which is what she does when she means business.

“Honey,” she said. “You know your premeds have Benadryl in them. A big dose. Through the IV.”

“I know.”

“You cannot drive home on that. You’ll be asleep before Fremont. We have this in your paperwork, it’s why we ask every patient to have a driver.”

“I’ll sleep it off in the parking garage,” I said. “I’ve got a blanket in the back seat. I’ll go home when it wears off.”

Becky did not laugh. She did not argue either. She looked at me for a long moment with her mouth pressed together, and then she said, “Go on and get settled in your chair. I’ll be right there.”

I found out later what she did next. She went back behind the desk and pulled my chart, and on the very first page, in the box for emergency contact, it still said Tanner Brekke, with his cell number.

I went to my chair. It is always the same chair, the fourth one down by the window, a big vinyl recliner with the IV pole on the left side and a little side table on the right.

I slipped my heavy gray wool wrap off my arms and let it hang over my shoulders like a cape. I left my hat on. I am a little vain that way, and besides, the room is always cold.

I set my car keys on the side table. Then I took the twelve slips out of my purse, still folded inside their two sheets of white paper, and set them down beside the keys.

I had a pen in my purse. A blue ballpoint from the co-op with the old logo on it.

I had brought those slips all that way, and I still had not decided what I was going to do with them.

Becky came and accessed my port, which does not hurt anymore but still makes me hold my breath.

She hung the premeds. In a few minutes the Benadryl hit me like a warm wave, and everything went soft.

The drip started at nine-thirty. I remember the time because I looked at the clock over the door, and I thought, Tanner would be in the parking garage right now, sitting in his cold truck.

And then I thought, no he wouldn’t. He is home. He is eight miles out of town in his warm kitchen, and I am here alone, and I did that to myself, and I did it on purpose.

I watched the line on the pole drip, one drop and then the next. I looked out at the winter daylight on the rooftops.

I tried very hard not to cry, because the lady in the next chair was asleep.