alex beaumais – urgent care

You follow Raj through the doors of the ER. He says he’s already called ahead to tell them about your episode. You sit in a plastic chair as he speaks to registration. A man reads a magazine about the dead queen, mania tickling your face. Raj sits and looks at his phone, perhaps scheduling a delivery of meth. You watch him type something until a nurse with a clipboard calls your name.   
            You follow her to triage as she says, “You were having heart problems?”   
            “The heart is a complicated thing.”   
            A smile blooms on her face and you feel like Kurt Cobain.   
            “Do you have headaches? Chest pains? Dizziness?”  
            “All of the above.”  
She puts a pulse oximeter on your finger and you believe that she enjoys you, sees value in you. Another nurse enters and speaks in a low voice. She looks appalled as you talk over her about mold allergies. The first nurse asks more questions and you go back to the waiting room. You feel exposed and naked. You giggle. Everybody looks at you. You’re unfit to be here. You don’t understand why they’re leaving you out here in the open. Why don’t they do something? You’re going to detonate!  
            A man in a skullcap sings Islamic prayer-songs.  
            The woman from registration calls your name. You sit down in front of her and provide information that they obviously already know. You realize that this is a sobriety test. You feel duped and protest by kicking the table leg, maybe too gently for human ears. Hold out your wrist. The woman fastens a plastic blue bracelet around it: admit one.  
            A nurse appears with tangled curly hair and tight denim that shows off her peach butt. Not in scrubs—maybe she’s a volunteer. She holds open the double doors and you look back at Raj, waving goodbye. She blazes a trail to the ER command center—what looks like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, with high-IQ people in scrubs diddling computer screens with their corneas. She puts you in pole position facing the ER’s head secretary-nurse, a tall, pert brunette air-traffic controller type. You breathe the wind of plastic, disinfectant, and bodily discharge.    
            “Can you put this on?” says the volunteer woman, holding a hospital gown.  
            “Do I have to? That makes me feel like shit.”   
            She puts another sensor on your fingertip and hovers hesitantly, facing the other way, her massive butt oscillating. Test 2: sexual response.   
            You decide to share that, “My friend is never coming back.”   
            “Who? I’m sure he is,” she says.   
            “No, his girlfriend’s family won’t accept him and his dad won’t accept her. They’re gone.”            
            She walks off, hips swinging. You smile and the smile curves and stretches, reaches across the room to an oxygen-fed man barely hanging. Your thoughts fly up in a great oily splash and blend together. By the door you see a paunchy, square-shouldered man in an orange sweater. He comes down the shiny floor like a cannonball and glares at you. He has zero confidence in your bullshit and you glare back. Test 3: authoritarian intimidation.   
            He leaves.  
            A stout ginger-haired man appears outside your space and loiters, slipping a hand in a scrub pocket. He turns his head towards you and sort of half-peers, as if thinking up an opener. He seems worthy of your confidence. “You look smart,” you say. “I like you. But why is everyone so stupid?”  
            The man steps forward to hear more.  
            “My friend disappeared with his Stan girlfriend. He disappeared.”  
            The man glances swoopingly through the ER. He steps in and closes the curtain around the dim half-moon cubicle.   
            “How can I help you?” he asks. “I just want to get you feeling better. What do you need?”  
            You think a second: “Heroin.”  
            “What happened?”  
            “My best friend, he’s running from his dad with his Stan girlfriend. She’s running from her family. They’re running together.”  
            “Stan girlfriend?”  
            “From a Stan republic in Asia.”  
            “How is that your fault?”  
            “I’m useless as a human. It wasn’t really my fault. But at least he’s not useless. So I feel like it’s my fault.”  
            “Do you have suicidal thoughts?”  
            “I’m not going to answer that question.”  
            “Do you take medication?”  
            “I forgot to take my Effexor the last few days. The doctor gave it out like date-rape candy. My opinion is it doesn’t fix anything, just gives a little rub and tug to the reuptake and recycle process, doesn’t fix shit.”  
            “I’m not going to get into pharmacology.”  
            “Let’s talk about the Israelis and Palestinians.”  
            “No.”  
            He opens the curtain and steps out. You want to leave this ward, this hospital, want to step sideways out of reality into the ether. Another nurse comes and sticks a butterfly needle in your arm and vacuums out two vials. You say, “It’s probably chock-full of THC.”  
            You start to feel ravenous and cry.   
            The volunteer with the hourglass shape peeks into the half-moon. “Time to get your heart checked,” and she explains where. “Where?” you ask. She repeats herself but you’re busy thinking about your sexual marketplace value. You stand up and try a westward course. Peel back a curtain to see a bed-ridden lady beside a cheap, snarly teddy bear on a chair. By the far wall a monitor flickers and you bask in the ambient glow. You peek behind the curtain at a teenage girl. She fumbles like a cat in a garbage bag to find the sleeves of her hospital gown.  
            “Will someone fucking do this for me!”   
            This seems to be the right place. You get dizzy looking at the electrocardiogram rig behind a stern nurse in problem glasses at a computer. The teenage girl puckers her lips and touches your arm solicitously. Her hands are tattooed with dozens of navy-blue crosses, stars, letters, like she was an etch-a-sketch for a trainee artist in a one-weekend romance.   
            She yells, “Where the fuck am I supposed to go?”   
            The nurse says something to the girl and the girl yanks at the curtain till it detaches from half the rungs, plastic swinging limp. The girl walks out.   
            You step into an undertow of nausea. “I’m fucking starving! I feel like I’m gonna puke!”  
            “You’re an emergency patient! Do as I say! Take off your shirt and sit down now! Don’t be smart with me, bucko!”  
            You peel off your wool sweater and the nurse fixates a few seconds on your naked chest, perhaps admiring the skinny virgin pecs, you imagine. She seems surprised you obeyed. She hooks on the ECG tentacles and tells you three times, as though addressing a dog, not to move. Not a dog like a golden retriever pup in the park, but like a snarly, rabietic cur digging through trash cans, a mutt that people don’t mind kicking down.   
            She finishes the test and peels the electrodes from your arms and chest. You say, “That poor girl. Methamphetamine kills.”  
            “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”  
            You return to your quarters and wait in the cubicle, disillusioned with the nurse-technician who’s drawn up sectarian lines between automatons and romantics, between her ilk and you and the girl with the tattooed hands. She’ll never understand.   
            You see some medical residents doing the rounds with clipboards, looking like they “have their shit together.” They’re the kind of people who say, “Give me a task! I’ll discharge it!” People who use the word “discharge” like that.  
            The nurse who took your blood comes back with a tiny pill. “Put this under your tongue,” she says. Her smile is a force-field that will deflect any bullshit you could possibly throw her way.  
            “Is this peyote?” you ask. “For a vision quest?”  
            She smiles. She’s alright. Maybe the best person in the hospital. You laugh a little and the ginger-bearded doctor comes back, waits for another cue.   
            You reopen with, “I did too many drugs, read too many books, and it went to my head.”   
            It sounds like a refrain, so you say it again.  
            “I want to help you get rid of your delusions,” says the doctor, monitoring your response to the D-word.  
            You say, “Humans should do more space exploration.”  
            He opens his mouth, but decides against speaking.  
            You look at the doctor’s thick, meaty hands. His ID hangs in a staticky shadow, the name unreadable. You wonder whether hospital-blue is arbitrary, or does it have scientifically soothing properties? The sound of a wheelchair rolling down the floor. A minute of silence with the doctor waiting, forlorn, trying to syringe blood from a rock. Your line of sight lies parked on the floor, which would shine and sparkle in sunlight. Ever so gradually, a ballooning levity floats your vision up higher from the floor to the doctor’s New Balance runners… up to his pouty little beer belly… up, up, to his badge. Your vision attaches to his face and everything rebalances, order regained. What the fuck happened? This is the lowest day of your life.  
            Say: “I’m so sorry, nothing like this ever happened before.”   
            Shame, shame, shame.  
            “I’m going to recommend you see Dr. Dallas,” he says, annoyed. “No guarantees she’ll work out for you.”  
            “Yes, yes, yes, I just want to sleep better at night. I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened. My heart went crazy this morning.”  
            “I think you’re heading for disaster.”  
            Delivered of this verdict, he peels off a yellow memo with a phone number. He walks away and the volunteer nurse comes back. You say “sorry” four times, trying to dissociate from the chimera of two minutes ago. But she won’t have it, her face unmoved by the ravings of the crazy kid. She tells you to follow her.   
            You exit into the waiting room. Rajveer sees you and stands like finally. He shakes his head. Just apologize a thousand times, to everyone, eternally.



ALEX BEAUMAIS  is the author of the novel Dox (tragickal, 2021) and various short fiction. Website: beaumais.neocities.org.     


HOME