Yellow Running Shoes

She is light and sweet. Light hair and light eyes. I want to ask her to travel somewhere away from skyscrapers and construction cones, because I am stir crazy and tired and wanting out of this place–to get on an airplane with me, one with two aisles and movie screens in the back of each seat. We could fly somewhere warm, with a beach, fly to Mauritania and drink wine until we pass out covered in sand. Or to Darfur and hand out AZTs to women and their children with HIV or immunize small boys and girls that wear jean overalls and have dusty, dirty feet with tough skin for polio and MMR. We would spend African nights beneath African stars, tucked away from the gunfire in a bed with no mattress springs under a mosquito net that protects us from Malaria and for a day or a week or a year she could forget about her mother and I could remember the things that are important and why I’m doing this.

And if she asked me what we should pack, I would tell her yellow running shoes and a flashlight. That is all we would need. They would make everything better.

Tonight

Tonight I’ll drink to forget you. To forget everything we had. Everything I can’t stand to think you threw away because of her.

Breakeven

There aren’t phone conversations now. There are unanswered calls and instant messages and texts that come with the ringtone I set for her last October.

I hate you, I tell her.

I hate you for saying you hate me, she says.

I hate you and I still have your sweater. And your note from the care package you sent. With cookies and sour patch kids. And a box of nerds.

She tells me it can’t work. It involves too many other people. That she’s not that kind of girl. That it’s not just about her and me. There are too many lives at stake.

Too much to lose, not enough to gain. At least not right now.

She tells me to cut the losses. Find a new girl. I do. A brunette. One who isn’t more than five feet four inches and loves country music, salsa dancing and strawberry-banana smoothies. Someone different.

Another medical student? she asks. Does it matter? I say to her. No, it’s better I don’t know, she says.

You always seem to break even, she says out of consolation. Like when you dumped me over Thanksgiving for whats-her-name. You always have someone.

There’s one more text later that night. Around midnight.

Tell your new girl she’s really lucky.

“You got his heart and my heart and none of the pain. You took your suitcase, I took the blame. Now I’m tryna make sense of what little remains, oh ’cause you left me with no love and no love to my name.

I’m still alive but I’m barely breathing. Just prayed to a God that I don’t believe in. ‘Cause I got time while she got freedom. ‘Cause when a heart breaks, no it don’t break, no it don’t break, no it don’t breakeven, no.

What am I gonna do, when the best part of me was always you? And what am I supposed to say when I’m all choked up and you’re okay?

I’m falling to pieces, yeah. I’m falling to pieces, yeah. I’m falling to pieces. (One’s still in love while the other one’s leaving). I’m falling to pieces. (‘Cause when a heart breaks, no it don’t breakeven).”

The Script, Breakeven

Surviving the War

There’s a song I heard. On Pandora this weekend between learing about spasticity and the corticospinal tract, and how Weber syndrome is an infarction of the posterior cerebral artery in the medial midbrain while crossed brain syndrome is ipsilateral cranial nerve loss with contralateral body hemiparesis.

There were highlighters. Gel pens. Dry contacts and a trip to Trader Joe’s with my Red Sox date buddy.

And this song.

You never change your mind once it’s made up. –How You Survived The War, The Weepies

Old Eggs

It’s been almost 3 months since I’ve seen her. 3 and a half since we’ve spoken.

She called me last night at 11. After I locked myself out of my condo and before I finished my laundry and the storm came.

She asked to come over. I don’t want to see her. I consider telling her I’m tired, that the Red Sox are playing, that she is boring and a terrible kisser who wears her hair down so it gets in my mouth and puts her hands in all the wrong places and tastes like garlic and old eggs.  

 

“Please turn red. Another light is another minute, another kiss that you knew I meant. Please turn red.” Please Turn Red, Andy Davis.

What I Need

I threw up early Sunday morning at 5.

Then again at 6.

Once more by 7, and had neuroscience lecture at 8.

They say to drink gatorade, the friends that bring it over in the afternoon. They bring soup in a can, a 12 pack of sprite and saltines to go with my peanut butter sandwich dinner.

I tell them thanks, and hug them as they leave. The one whose car is in the shop and the one she asked to drive her to the store.

I look at her picture on the wall. At the one in the gold frame next to my bed.

I need my nurse.

Because she is love, and she is all I need.  

Maybe Next Year

It’s been 10 months. There’s a sweater on my dresser, in a new apartment with chipped paint and a balcony that overlooks a Chevrolet car dealership and a Portillos. 

An apartment where there are pictures in black frames next to the TV, hung on the wall. Pictures from Millenium Park, from the amphitheater and on the trolley by Navy Pier. Pictures only we have. Because it’s a secret. A chapter in a book no one is allowed to read. 

The best kind of chapter. The dangerous one. 

I called her today. 

I told her I wanted to grow old with her. To drive a mini-van with no hubcaps. Wanted us to drive below the speed limit in the left lane with the windows down and the air conditioning on. To do this together. Drive with no seatbelts. 

She said October was busy. Clinics. Flu clinics taking up all her free time. 

She said maybe next year.

“Never took the chance, could have jumped the fence but was scared of my own two feet. Could have crossed the line, it was black and white, no contrast to be seen. Was it all a joke? Never had control. I’m not better on my own. I’m not over, I’m not over you just yet. Can not hide it, you’re not that easy to forget. I’m not over you just yet.” I’m Not Over, Carolina Liar

Her Insight

She said: Your life is full of eight minute moments where you’re constantly conflicted about what you want. 

I told her I just want a girl who fucks with the lights on and the window open.

What I Found Out

Two nights ago. 

Me: Can I ask you something?

Sweater Girl: Ask away.

Me: Do you love him?

Sweater Girl: Oh geez.

Sweater Girl: Is love toe jam?

Me: Stop it.

Me: I’m serious.

Sweater Girl: No, I’m not in love with him. Stop looking sad.

Holding her sweater in front of the camera.

Me: I have to search for spots that still smell like you now. They are getting harder to find. It’s been almost four months.

Sweater Girl: Be nice to my sweater, it is sad without me.

Me: Do you say it to him?

Sweater Girl: He says it to me. But I have not said it back.

Sweater Girl: Last time I told someone I loved them was in Chicago.

 

Stand Up To Cancer

This is what she carries on her way out of the hospital. The heavy-set woman with no belt and who wears a scarf and hat that she probably knitted herself. A hat with bright colors. Orange. Red. Yellow. Something to cover up what’s left of her hair. Something hopeful she wears when it’s cold in Chicago. 

And I see her on the other side of the door to the Radiation Building. I pull. It’s locked. Push only. She pushes. With everything she has she pushes the door but she’s weak and I try to pull and we sit at this stalemate and I consider another door but she’s struggling and her forehead is wrinkling and she’s desperate to open that door. 

I want to help. Try to help. Try to pull harder. Shake the metal. 

Until it clicks. She wins. The woman smiles. The door opens and I pull it the rest of the way for her. Like a knight in shining armor. Like the doctor I want to become. 

And she passes and she nods and I see moles on her face. Down from the hat with bright colors and hope. She drags her purse and waddles out the door with the pamphlet “Stand Up To Cancer” tucked under her arm and a jacket that’s not buttoned when it’s below freezing.

Like it’s something psychological. A bully on the playground that pushes you in front of the girl with suspenders and blonde pigtails you like and let go in front of you on the spiral metal slide. Something she brought on and now she can fix. She can undo the genetics. Re-gain control of her p53. Un-mutate the sun damage. Because she can Stand Up To Cancer. It’s all right there in the pamphlet. 

I hate pamphlets. And I hate a disease that makes women who carry nice purses with big, gold buckles and wear knitted hats and scarves weak. Too weak to open a door. Too weak for me to help.