I've had a number of times in the past few weeks that I've seen or experienced things I wanted to write about, but haven't. Not sure what makes tonight the night I vomit it all out here, but here it is. I guess you can call it a mental gastroenteritis - some of these things I've been chewing on for a while and have digested fully, while some are more fresh. Chunks and everything.
Anyway.
***
Coming home after a late shift recently, I caught the bus going into the city to get to the train station, which then takes me to my suburb. It was a weekend night, and after 10pm, so all the riff-raff from the southern suburbs were making the trek into downtown Sydney to party, be drunk and disorderly and urinate in the subway stairwells.
By the time the bus picked me up, clearly the kids in the back had both been on the bus for a while and drinking for a while. There's no law in Australia about public alcohol consumption, so if you have a bottle of whatever you can walk around with it in plain sight, drink it on the street corner - all fair game. It still makes my eyes bug out a little bit when I see 18 year olds who can't grow beards yet slamming cans of VB on the steps of Town Hall.
These kids had cans being passed among all of them, and some of the girls were in various levels of undress. They were deafeningly loud, singing Happy Birthday in their abrasive, loud, nasal accents followed by more cacophony. It was actually getting so raucous that I was a little unnerved, and considered getting off the bus to wait for the next one.
Then I saw him.
Some kid was pouring plastic stubby glasses full for his friends - from wine in a box.
I don't know why I thought that was so funny, but my anxiety dissipated and I laughed to myself for the next three stops.
***
I walked past a wooden bench painted in a peach hue, and on it someone had put a sticker with the handprinted statement: "UFOs are made by man." right in the middle of it, where you'd expect a plaque for the dedication of the bench to go. I think I'll try to get a photo of that.
***
One of my work nights over the past month I had the unfortunate happenstance of caring for a man in cardiac arrest who did not survive.
He had fallen over in front of his wife after telling her he hadn't felt well all morning. He had been up late the night before working on a presentation for his students at the university, he was an art teacher, and his wife said that it wasn't unusual for him to stay up late to work on the lessons he was planning. Just hadn't felt well, she said, and he'd showered and they were making breakfast when suddenly he fell forward and landed face first on the hard floor, breaking his nose and bleeding out on the kitchen linoleum in front of her.
He had been without any cardiac activity for over an hour by the time he came to me, despite the best efforts of the paramedics and the neighbor who performed CPR. We called his death shortly after he arrived, as everything that could have been done had been done, everything that could have been administered had been discussed and his heart just didn't have the urge to beat anymore.
Death is not new to me. I have seen scores of people in their last breaths, or immediately afterward as the body is beginning its start of stillness. Normally, it doesn't bother me. I have a job to do, I do it, compassionately - but emotion about the passing of the person usually doesn't figure into it.
It was when I went to the Quiet Room with the doctor to deliver the news to the family, as I've done countless times before in all the hospitals I've worked in, that it changed for me with this man. This is never an easy task, and I'm usually prepared for the littany of reactions that people can have to this devastating news. I always arm myself with a box of Kleenex at the ready for the family.
This man's wife was in her late 50s, with a gentle face and clearly a demeanor to match. Her face and body language changed when she realized that there was nothing that could be done to save her husband's life, and I'm always ready for that moment. It's a mixture of horror, disbelief, intense longing, loss and sadness, all at once. It can be gradual, it can be violent or subdued. I'm prepared for this.
But then, when she started to whisper her nickname for him as she began to weep, I felt myself crumbling a little.
It had somehow, inexplicably, reminded me of the nicknames I used to share with my ex-husband, and that association shocked me upright. Suddenly the wall was cracked and I started to feel the leaching of emotion from the past few years that I thought I had locked away come creeping up my body like a cold and painful shiver, from my knees and into my sides and burning a hole through my chest. I forced myself to focus back on the woman in front of me and the questions that we were being asked. Usually the doctor addresses these, and I'm glad he was doing so, because I wasn't able to speak. I could barely control my breathing.
Since then I've had consistent nightmares about that meeting, and the emotions it's stirred in me - fears of being alone, of not being able to honor promises or trust myself, nightmares that I'm gravely ill or have died and noone is there to mourn my passing. I wake up in a sweat and have startled myself awake crying, and some days its hard to get out of bed. Some days I don't.
I know it will get better.
***
When I was back in MI in July, my folks and I were at the Ann Arbor Art Fair, on Main Street, among the throngs of people in summer crowding into the booths to check out the latest artwork. It was hot and breezy, with no clouds in the sky. Great summer day.
Suddenly there was a deafening sound coming from the north and getting closer. I couldn't place it at first, but then I recognized the sound of a plane engine. What is a plane doing so close to downtown? Everyone else thought the same, because the hundreds of people crowded out on Main Street stopped what they were doing and looked skyward, confused and shocked.
Then, from the north, and very close to the ground, the Blue Angels buzzed the Art Fair.
It took about ten seconds for everyone to get over the shock and understanding of what had happened, and when we all realized it together, the entire mass of people began hooting and hollering, cheering, clapping, chanting "USA! USA! USA!", all together. Wide grins and toothy smiles met each of us in the crowd and immediately we were all one family, all on the same team, all somehow related.
It felt a teeny bit cheesy, but it was incredibly patriotic, and I was so glad that we'd been at Fart Fair that day.
***
On another one of my late nights leaving work, I was again on the bus, this time sitting in front of a pair of transvestites. One was in very good makeup and hair, with a bright blue wig in a bob, hot pants with fishnets and stilletos. The other wasn't quite as great with the makeup, but the dress he was wearing was really smashing, and I was convinced that if I hadn't heard him speaking I would not have known the ruse.
It wasn't what they were wearing that got me, it was their discussion. The Blue Bob was saying that she (?) was the Bus Slut, and how she loved to give favors to bus drivers, and began to be very explicit about it. Nice Dress chimed in, but she was the Taxi Slut, and talked about how she'd pay for her fares with a little lip service. This continued on for about 5 stops.
Call it the Midwestern Girl in me, but I was so shocked by this conversation I think my eyes were the size of saucers by the time they both stood and sauntered off the bus together, toodle-oohing to the bus driver on the way out.
Gotta love Sydney at night, lol!
