Part Four

The hospital, the doctors and nurses, they patched me, wrapped a brace around my fractured knee, tape around my fractured ribs, and a neck brace collared around my neck. I asked for my personal belongings. The doctor, a suave, tan, peppered man with the condescending bedside manner down pat, made it official that they wished I would stay the night, for my own good, to make certain that I was all right, though it was unofficially clear that he would be doing little to convince me to stay. It may have had something to do with the postit I put on his back when he was assessing me. I think I wrote, “Doctor Cosmopolitan Condescending” or something along those lines. I placed it delicately on his back when he turned to speak with the nurse – my beautiful yellow square set perfectly between his broad shoulders on that white field of his coat, and the label written in a sweeping and curly italic twenty-six point font. He had to have known it was me because he had just handed me my postits and sharpie.
Now he left the room after his official and unofficial messages were relayed. I waited for my clothes and wallet and such. I wrote on my braces and my tape things like, “brace” and “tape”. I wrote “sheets” on the sheets, and “pillow” on the pillow, and I wrote on the bed, and floor and wall. It was so much more satisfying to write on these things directly instead of via the postit. It was so much more permanent. I decided there that if I could get away with direct I would, keeping the postits more for emergencies.
The nurse came into the room as I was writing something sarcastic but true like, “expensive cylindrical plastic” on the IV tube, and she looked at me quizzically with her head tilted to one side like a dog, or maybe she was trying to read what I wrote. She was young, but burgeoning to fill the unflattering floral print uniform that she wore. I smiled at her and held out my hand as if I needed help getting up from the bed. She reached out for my hand. I suddenly grabbed her plump wrist and jerked her arm toward me. As I hugged her arm tight to my chest and tried desperately to write “formerly-hot nurse” on her soft forearm like a hospital i.d. bracelet, the nurse yelped and pulled so violently and gave me such a knock on the head with her clipboard that I only got “former” in a jerky and jagged eighteen point font before she pulled her arm away. She smacked me on the head one more time with the clipboard, for good measure, and dropped my bag of personal belongings on the bed beside me. Turning on her heels, she stomped out of the room with a huff.
I got dressed slowly, deliberately. I grabbed my wallet and keys out of the bag. As an afterthought I flipped open my wallet to make sure that my cash was still there. My license caught my eye, my visage staring back at me from the black folds it was encased in. Everyone has one of these, I thought. This is the state version of my postits and my sharpie. All of the pertinent labels were there: height, weight, hair color, eye color, assigned number and name. And a photo to verify it by.
I pulled the license from its protective sleeve and rubbed my thumb over the picture. This wasn’t me anymore. I wrote 363.75 across the face of it with my sharpie, crammed it into the hazardous waste disposal box and walked out of the hospital.
Stepping into the darkness, away from the discoloration and hum of the fluorescent lights, I looked to the clock on the sign at the bank next to the hospital. Only 10:15. Too late for a haircut, but I could probably still find an open tattoo parlor. I hobbled carefully to the stop light and pressed the button to cross the street, and waited for the sign to tell me to walk.