Joan Is Okay(9)

So, outside his door, he started to leave filled boxes that by the end of the day were gone. Through my peephole, I watched other tenants come and inspect the items, then carry them away. Some even knocked on his door to chat and without exception, Mark would invite this tenant in or offer them homemade food.

For a while his resolution seemed to be working until Mark mentioned that his steep drop in stuff now bothered him and that he’d never set out to be a minimalist, after which packages started to arrive for 9B, in piles in the lobby, and whenever I saw him sign for them at the desk, he was holding large shopping bags, one under each arm.

Our ninth-floor hall had a window that was equidistant from 9A and 9B and aligned perfectly with the bathroom window of an adjacent building, less than an arm’s reach away. If I opened this window, I could touch the brick of that building, I could tap on the glass. Multiple times a day, the same man on the other building’s ninth floor sat in his bathroom, on the toilet, and thus in the center of both our two windows, framed by them, like an old painting. I called him Enormous Man, because even after three years, I still had no clue about his weight or height. He sat at eye level with you, motionless, his own eyes cast downward and with one sock draped over each bare shoulder.

The constant influx of new things into 9B and efflux of old things reminded me, yes, of a roundabout, but also of people who liked to eat while on the toilet, though I never saw Enormous Man eat.



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THERE WERE TWO PIECES of mail in my box today. The first, a Shen Yun brochure in a trifecta of colors, golds, reds, and greens—absolutely the number one show in the world, a must-see. (I’d never gone to a Shen Yun show but got flyers from them all the time, along with Chinese pamphlets about Jesus and Falun Gong leaflets about the terrible evils, like organ harvesting and imprisoning, that happened every second on Chinese soil. I didn’t know how these people found my address, but being on these mailing lists was an exercise in cognitive dissonance, that on one hand the four-thousand-year history of my motherland was glorious, and on the other modern China was the worst, so please turn to Jesus.)

The second piece of mail was a West Side Hospital brochure in our trademark color of calming ocean blue with a white font. West Side Hospital cares about your health, it said. Come learn more about our multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, evidence-based, team approach to care.

But if you came, wouldn’t you be sick or visiting a patient? Does anyone come to a hospital to learn more about the fortress itself?

I’d once heard an EMT liken being in an ambulance to being in a show. The lights, the sounds, and, if you do your job right, the glory.

On the brochure’s front flap was the familiar picture of Reese that I had seen around the hospital, on side tables, chairs, stuffed into an acrylic holder mounted to the walls of reception rooms. Distinguished, experienced-looking, but not fatigued, with his white coat and polished stethoscope, posing with the stacks of machines beside a pristine, empty bed.



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IT WASN’T GLORY THAT had drawn me to health care work but the chance to feel pure and complete drudgery in my pursuit of use. I had to feel totally spent after work, else I wouldn’t have felt like I worked. So being in the trenches was a delight but it also meant that the sky was as pitch-black when I entered the hospital as when I left. Then in passing the grand cathedral, the facade of which was lit up by artificial lights, I would realize that I hadn’t seen the sun. The sun had risen and set that day, and supposedly all the days of this week, but I hadn’t thought about it once.

As the director had put it when he hired me, I was a gunner and a new breed of doctor, brilliant and potent, but with no interests outside work and sleep. I’d asked if he was trying to compliment me or insult. Compliment, he’d said. Because being a gunner was good. Disease is war, and in war, gunners operate the artillery.

For whatever reason, the director still liked to compliment me. The remarks would come on spontaneously, without warning, and the overall situation left me feeling worse, like he thought I needed the praise or else I would keel over. But did I say thank you during or you’re welcome after? Did I say nothing at all and just let him carry on?

On my first Friday back on service, around 3:00 p.m., the director paid the shared office a visit when no attendings were around except me. Per protocol, attendings were summoned to see him. A director’s office was much nicer, and our director in particular loathed in-between-meeting gaps.

I asked if I was in some kind of trouble.

Not trouble at all, he said, and sat perched at the edge of my desk like a professionally dressed five-six, 149-pound bird. He went on to say that my work this year had been more than satisfactory, that as with last year, I had gone above and beyond, etc.

I listened. I smiled. I felt my teeth get cold from not being able to recede back into my mouth.

When the compliments were done, he said he wanted to check in and make sure that I was okay to work and didn’t need more time off.

I said I’d just finished two weeks of doing nothing.

But do you need more time?

My director had never asked me that before, so I asked if this had something to do with my father.

He had heard about my father, yes, but this had nothing, or at least very little, to do with him. If I needed more time to process, it was a complete nonissue. He could just make Doctor Baby-Blue Eyes work extra.