I am writing this on Charlie’s clipboard. I know this because the other man named Joe, who is extraordinarily fat, leans over and says, “Hey Charlie, where’s your clipboard? You got your clipboard so he can use it to write on?”
I also know it’s Charlie’s clipboard because a rectangular slice of computer paper with Charlie’s name printed on it is taped across the front. The clipboard itself is an awful yellow-green, phlegmy, like someone got the color balance wrong during production–too much green, maybe, or not enough yellow.
At the moment I am on Highway 370, westbound, in the back of an ambulance. Charlie’s and Joe’s name tags say they’re from Midwest Medical–not dispatched from any of the Omaha stations, apparently, but Auburn, some eighty miles to the south. It’s just one more thing on top of all the other things that haven’t made sense during the past couple of days. In a way it explains both of the men’s appearance, though. Their untucked polo shirts and sagging trousers. The subtle backwoods stink rising from them. The seeming lack of any self-awareness. Joe especially.
As we were waiting for someone to buzz us out of the Emergency Department, there was a moment when I found myself just taking it all in, the experience of being strapped into a gurney again, the long hallway stretching away to some other part of the hospital, and Joe, Joe standing off by the double door peering into the tiny windows, the sight of his enormous body. The hair on the sides of his head was dark, stained damp with sweat. His black, tactical cargo pants hung low on his waist. His collared, navy-blue top–emblazoned with the logo of a little white ambulance–stopping short of covering his belly so that as he swayed in place, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, the shocking paleness of his skin peeked out into the open fluorescent light.
But now Charlie is behind the wheel, and Joe is in the back of the ambulance with me, seated behind the driver in what all of us Emergency People call the Captain’s Chair. I gave back Charlie’s clipboard once we really got moving, and all my words started crashing together on the page.
We are headed to Fremont, the hospital there. At Midlands, the doctor didn’t think I was safe enough on my own to discharge home. He wanted me to stay at some kind of inpatient facility. There was also the fact that police were holding me in emergency protective custody. My nurse called around. There were no open beds downtown, at Lasting Hope, or anywhere else in Omaha. I was mad all of a sudden. Mad to hear about a long-distance transfer to some place I’d never been, mad to even hear the word Fremont. Mad that I’d been hanging around in my room all morning without any idea of my fate, then learning abruptly I’d be leaving within the hour. I cussed out a transportation aide when he tried to explain the situation and said that I’d have to give up my phone, that–where I was going–phones weren’t allowed.
“What–now what can I do if I don’t want to go?” I asked my sitter, the man who was providing one-on-one observation, after the aide left the room.
“I don’t think you have a choice at this point,” he said.
