Juxtaposition

My 11 o'clock patient sits down with his usual rustle of plastic bags. He tells me that he has been feeling much more anxious since the weekend.

'I have been feeling a tightness in my head. I think maybe it's high blood pressure. Do you think it could be high blood pressure? I know you can't answer that, but I was just wondering. I'm just anxious. I'm afraid of being sick again.'

My cellphone rings. I forgot to turn it off. It's my mother. I send the call to voicemail.

'I went to the doctor's on Friday but he forgot to take my blood pressure. I wonder if I should go again.'

(My heart is pounding. My mother doesn't usually call me during the week. We just talked yesterday. She said that my uncle is in the hospital with pneumonia and he's not doing well. He's in the last stages of Alzheimer's.)

'I could go back to my doctor. Do you think I should go back? Though I have been taking my blood pressure medication. But my head feels tight. No it's not anxiety! I'm anxious because of it!'

(Could he have died? Why else would my mother call me on a Monday morning?)

'I heard that drinking water is good for high blood pressure. Have you heard that too? No? Well, I have. Though it's hard to drink too much water. I get bored of swallowing.'

(He no longer knows how to chew his food. They have started to feed him by IV because he cannot swallow.)

I take a sip of my coffee.

'I used to drink lots of coffee, you know. Always black though, never liked milk. But now I cut down, I only have a small cup in the morning, with my dry wheat toast. Food is just fuel for the body, not the other way round, right?'

(Oh, how he loved to eat! He used to call himself the human sink. You don't like that? I'll have it. Those leftovers? I'll finish them!)

My stomach lurches. I hold on to my coffee cup.

'So I spoke to my sister. She said that she's coming to see me on Saturday. I said 'ok' but only for a couple of hours, no more. I don't want to have her in my apartment all day long. She talks too much. I like my quiet. I like walking on the boardwalk, looking at the water, thinking. Exercise is good for the mind. Calms me down.'

(The last time we spoke he had just been diagnosed. He told me he wanted to come to NY to run the marathon. He was training, he said. He sounded so normal, so much like himself that I thought perhaps the doctors were wrong, perhaps it was just a misdiagnosis, a mistake that would clear itself out while my uncle, my funny, smart, loud-talking uncle would turn out to be fine.)

Something inside my head spins. It disorients me. I put down the coffee cup and grab the arms of my chair.

'I wish I could walk more, but I get tired easily now. Plus I don't want to overdo it. 30 minutes, tops. That's a good amount of exercise. Sometimes I just sit on the benches and read. I've been reading this book about the history of Japan. Incredible culture. Reading relaxes me, but only history books, or philosophy. Novels are tricky, they can give me nightmares.'

(He was planning a Japanese garden for the backyard. He had a complicated plan for a pond and a bridge and possibly some fish for the pond, maybe water lilies if the could live through the cold winters. Without wanting to, I see him hunched over his architect desk, drawing, drawing.)

It's only 11:20. I want to listen to my mother's voicemail. My patient's face goes out of focus, briefly. I blink twice.

'I think I have nightmares when I eat certain foods. I don't believe that dreams mean anything. Except perhaps for those dreams I had that were clearly warning me of things to come. I'm gifted that way. Always have been.'

(Didn't I dream that someone I loved was dying? Wasn't I hugging my mother in the dream? Could he really have died? So quickly? And if he had, would I feel it, somehow, before anyone told me?)

'When I was a kid, they used to tell me to think about this person or the other before I went to bed, and I usually had a dream about that person. Then the next morning they would ask me what I dreamed, and the person would pay my father. Can you believe that? My father made money out of me, and never even gave me a present for it. Not even a trinket! What a family.'

(He gave me my very first necklace. It was long, with a round medallion, all beaded. It was beautiful. I felt like an Indian princess. I decided that I wanted to marry him when I grew up. I was five. )

The top of my head spins again. I close my eyes, open them, swallow hard.

'And to think that my sister was treated so much better. She was so white though, like you. Looked so European. Maybe that's why.'

(His skin is all freckled, white, his eyes dark blue. A mole on the corner of his left eyebrow. No, the right. No, no. The left. I try not to picture him sunken against a hospital pillow.)

'You may have a point. Sometimes I think I look for things to make me anxious. My whole life I've had to worry about something, now I have nothing. Maybe I'm afraid that I would feel lonely if I didn't have my anxiety. I would miss it.'

(I miss him I miss him I miss him. His back burnt from working in the yard, his smell of sweat, the red mini-morris he had before he got married, his horrible singing voice, his passion for dogs. I want to see him in his bee-keeper outift, shaking bees out from under the sleeves. Let me see him one more time.)

My patient rustles his plastic bags. 'This session went by so quickly. I'll go see my doctor's today. Have my blood pressure taken. See you next week.'

He leaves.

I dial my voicemail. My mother sounds like she has food in her mouth. She wants to know if I can send her my new address again. She seems to have lost it, and wants to send me a package.