A day in life

Reasons exist for what happened yesterday. It's just painful to admit it.

Because I didn't write down the page numbers of sources I used for an essay and because the editor needed them, I had to drive to Vermilion, run into USD library, find the book I'd used (on library loan), look up the passages I quoted, scribble down the page numbers, and get all the way back home in two-and-a-half hours, if things worked according to schedule--and they did.

The plan was for me to return to Sioux Center, where I'd dropped Barbara off for a Bible study, then zip off south to Sioux City, where she had an appointment. Somewhere between USD and 1-29, it came to me, erroneously, that the appointment was at 12:15 and that I'd completely miscalculated time from the moment we'd left. I'm flying along, telling my phone to call Barbara Shaap (Google doesn't like to pronounce my name with a hard ch). But Google says it can't find this person in my address book.

Like every other ad on TV says these days, it's dangerous to fuss with a phone while barreling down a highway, so I pull over and call Barb and get ready to apologize for yet another "my bads" (happens daily, at least) with numbers. We'll never make Sioux City at 12:15, I tell her. 

"Appointment's at one," she says. For her I'm happy, but I'm furious at myself. What wires got crossed--again!--in my head to think it was 12:15? 

Thus, we make it to Sioux City, maybe five minutes late, which is deadly for Dutch Calvinists, but just fine for most of the rest of the world.

Post-appointment, we eat--great meal at Paneras--and I drop her off at Target, then scoot off to my appointment downtown. Now there's beaucoup construction, so I angle my way toward the hospital through a forest of orange cones in a fashion that makes me, well, unforgivably late, maybe ten minutes. 

Lo and behold, I'm at the wrong hospital. I haven't had an appointment with this specialist in five years, and he and his whole unit have changed addresses. Sweet receptionist looks at me as if I'm the lame old man I am, calls Dr. Pham's office at St. Luke's, points north as if I know where St. Luke's is. I hobble back to the car (my running days are over), and I go north because I know St. Luke's is somewhere up the hill and by now I'm about 20 minutes late. 

I don't find that hospital, of course, so I pull over under shade because I can't read the phone in the sun. I push Pham's name into google and discover he's not the only Dr. Pham. Finally, I just guess, call a number. Sure enough, I win--he's, you know, just up Pierce, the secretary says.

Takes me another ten minutes to find it, and the parking lot is under siege by more orange cones and the kind of tape TV cops use to cordon off crime scenes. I get in finally, get out of the car, and search for the front door because somewhere there's a government regulation, I guess, that all hospitals have to be constantly under construction.

I go directly to Go. The woman at the hospital's front desk points me right down the hall, where a young lady gives me four pages of forms. I'm 40 minutes late. A guy who looks more like a wrestler than a nurse gets me, weighs me in, checks my height, runs me through a bouquet of personal questions. A woman comes in, nods toward an operating table, and says she's glad I found the right place.

"You know?"

"We're a small office," she says as she peppers my chest with electrodes, then performs the world's fastest EKG.  

They leave, I sit, pull People magazine from the stack and determine the world is going to hell in a handbasket because all I see is celebrities, although the two royal wives, who fill up half the issue, have perfectly beautiful faces. 

Dr. Pham comes in--it's now 3:30 or so. He shakes my hand, says I'm looking good, smiles, tells me to return in two years, and then claims--I'm not making this up--that it's always nice to see me. He was with me for a minute and a half. 

Meanwhile, Barbara's been at Target for an hour longer than she thought she'd be. I come down off the hill, and when I see a line of cars moving across the railroad tracks, I follow them--stupid, because a quarter mile up there's another train with yet another line of cars, none of them moving; but the train is poking along and I can see the last car. I take spot #9 or so and wait. And wait. And wait. Then the train stops, a car short of the intersection, and #s 1, 3, 4, 6 peel off, u-turn, and so do I. 

I go south maybe ten minutes until I think I'm clear of Sioux City trains. I turn left, following two cars down a street I'm certain they wouldn't take if they knew there were trains around. 

I'm wrong. There's another train. 

I message my wife. "I'm behind trains," I tell her. She says she's already waiting outside Target's front door. I tell her to go back in because most of the city still lies between us and I'm not at all sure how to negotiate the orange cones--there are millions. 

There should have been sunset when finally I picked her up. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir should have been singing something heavenly as we ran into each other's arms.

Didn't happen, of course. We're old. That's the whole story.

Your sympathy is encouraged and appreciated.