Habit (13 page)

I call Suchandsuch's office and, of course, they will have to
see
Ma before they can prescribe an x-ray. We might be psycho-deviants hoping to get see-through pictures taken of our chests to share on the Internet with a global ring of perverted x-ray fiends.

I call Pete, the surgeon at Huntingdon, and get his assistant—can they help us?

—Why doesn't the hospital just do the test and get the authorization later when your primary's in the office?

—Good question!

She says she'll try to pull some strings and get back to me, but we wait and wait and the strings don't work.

What it boils down to is we can't have the x-ray today no matter how hard we try. So Ma does the CT scan and we have no choice, we have to give up on the x-ray and hope another nonfiery tail day turns up soon.

Now, here's the part that makes me mad:

I call Maxwell's office when they all (all three of them) waltz in from their long weekend (mental note to revisit the group practice idea, we love Maxwell, but honestly since when does an entire office get to go on vacation at the same time?) and they tell me they actually did send the x-ray thingy in, at exactly the same time as the thingy for the CT. So it was the hospital that lost it. If I had just insisted last week, we might have that stupid x-ray behind us. Now we have to go back.

I've run out of old
New Yorkers
to read while we wait, and lately I've found solace in Sudoku. It's actually a bit of a problem. Addiction runs in our family. Instead of losing myself in a bottle or pills, I tend to get overinvolved in things like Spider Solitaire on the computer. I once had to see a chiropractor because I got too compulsive with a little hand-held game of Tetris.

I have a nice pocket version of Sudoku, not too easy and not too hard, and I remember to bring it with me the next time we go over for the x-ray. We park near the entrance, lumber in, sign the clipboard, and wait for our turn in the cubicle, with Irene this time. Today is unfortunately a fiery tail day for Ma, but Pete needs this x-ray now, so she waits standing up. I sit with the Sudoku. We tell Irene in today's cubicle what we're there for, and:

Still no thingy in the computer.

This is not good because Ma can't put up with this too much longer. We don't have the patience to call all the doctors and wait for them to resend the thingy. Anyway I know it's there; I just have to get the hospital to admit it. So I ask Irene to look again. While she looks and Ma hovers, I fill in a few numbers:
a 2 and an 8.

—She's not in here, says Irene.

—That's impossible, I say. Why does this happen every time we come here? It's like your computer system's a black hole. Does this happen to everyone? How do you get anything done?

—No, says Irene. This never happens. Your doctor must have messed up.

We've all heard that before. I know Maxwell sent in that darn thing. This is crap.

—How about try under M instead of V—her last name is two words. (
I fill in a 6.
)

—Not there under M.

Ma is beginning to pace up and down the hallway outside the cubicle.

—Look, I say, and I'm barely even looking up from the Sudoku.

I was one of those decent students who did their homework in front of the TV. It's best to multitask because I bore very easily. It's a little rude, but I've been through this so many times. The process is fairly mindless, and I spend so much time at it between my mother's appointments, orthopedic people for my athletic children, orthodontists, pediatricians, vets for the pets, and on and on. For my own sanity, stimulation is essential if there's a wait. This woman has her screwed-up computer to keep her entertained, so I get to play with my Sudoku. It's part of my battle plan. With Sudoku to keep me occupied, I figure they can't bore me out the door, and we will get the x-ray even if it takes all day. But each second that ticks by may bring us that much closer to a fiery tail attack, and there's no way of knowing how long Ma can hold up. Well, we've been through this. Maxwell's office assured me the authorization is in there this time. We are not leaving until Ma gets her x-ray.

—Look, my mother is in real discomfort and can't be kept waiting again. You are obviously trying hard, but this seems to be beyond your scope. Who can I talk to get this done? (
A 3 and a 3 again.
)

Irene seems completely stumped.

So often we assume the people behind the desks know their jobs better than we do. It can be liberating when you realize it's time to make a stand.

—Okay, forget it, I say, raising my voice a few notches.

Step. Slide. Heel-ball-change.

People in the waiting room can hear us and are looking.

—Maybe we should just go home, stop monitoring the cancer and DIE. Let's go, Ma.

—No, no, Irene says, I'll take you to the manager.

So we box-step around and around, past stacks of file cartons and other mess that's not for public viewing, to this tiny office with one extra chair. There's a lady sitting behind a desk who looks somewhat startled to see us. I plunk myself down in her one chair since Ma can't possibly sit still and she's shifting her weight from one foot to another and sort of squirming. I still have the Sudoku book in hand as I speak to the woman:

—My mother has a rectal tumor, which is being monitored monthly. We were here last week for a CT and an x-ray, which were prescribed, pre-ordered, pre-authorized, pre-approved, pre-certified, and called for by her primary doctor. Ayesha couldn't find the thingy. We went home because we believed the hospital. Now we know the thingy has been here all along. My mother is very uncomfortable and needs to get this test done and go home as soon as possible, and Irene has tried very hard and she can't find the authorization any more than Ayesha could last week. But this time, we aren't leaving until she is x-rayed because she has to bring the results of these two tests to her surgeon's the day after tomorrow. Can YOU find my mother's thingy?

Ma is pacing again, and she is beginning to slap her hips. I take a moment to fill in
a 9, a 4, and a 2.

The manager gets it, thank God. She scoops us up and leads us through to the x-ray department where there are about six people ahead of us. We all promenade around them into the work area, where the manager collars an x-ray tech holding a clipboard. He looks like he is in the middle of something.

—Your mother can go with him, she tells me. You can go back to Irene in her office and get her paperwork.

And the manager disappears.

—I have to find a bathroom NOW, says Ma. She is jumping up and down, and it looks like she is getting ready to hitch up her skirt and do something unseemly.

—Where is the bathroom? I ask the tech.

He blinks at us and looks distractedly down at his clipboard.

—I can't do an x-ray without paperwork, he says.

—SHIT, says Ma.

A few years ago, my mother announced she had a confession to make. I had no inkling of the guilt she'd apparently been wrestling with for quite some time.

It seems there were plenty of tap classes to be had near our home when I was a kid. She knew her little girl would have died and gone to heaven for a tap class; everything down to my toes needed to
tap, tap, tap
! But Ma had her own ideas, and sent me to ballet class instead.

Tap dancing was not for
our kind of people
. Tap dancing was
vulgar.
Ballet would be
much more appropriate.

—SHIT, says Ma. She wiggles her hips and hops.

The x-ray tech can't begin to appreciate the profundity of this moment. My well-bred mother has unexpectedly been transformed into a potty mouth and appears to be fixing to shuffle off to Buffalo, and there's nobody but me and this stranger to admire the significance of her amazing breakthrough.

Guess I'm not adopted after all.

He points to a bathroom door and Ma makes a dash for it. I had no idea she could move like that. She leaps in and slams the door.

The tech is trying to sidle around the corner.

—Oh, no you DON'T! I call out.

He backs away further and I charge around to block his escape, brandishing my Sudoku book. I point my pen menacingly at his chest.

—Where are YOU going? She doesn't know where to go when she comes out. I'll get the goddam paperwork, but
you
have to
stay
with her till she gets this x-ray done!

In the car going home, x-ray in the bag, so to speak, we are warriors galloping back to camp with scalps and prisoners flung across our horses' necks. We holler like the winning team on the bus back to school. If Ma knew how to high-five or bump my chest, and what it meant, she would do it right now. If I had a bottle of champagne, I would pour it over her head.

For a long time afterward, Ma keeps telling friends and family about how I blasted those buggers without skipping a beat in Sudoku. I myself will never get over Ma's climactic jig in the hallway, and especially the S-bomb.

Weeks ago, I gave the hospital's archive room a copy of the Power of Attorney to put in the computer so I can pick up test results without Ma's signature on the release. The archive people seem to lose everything, too, but I have made a friend there, Iris, who recognizes me now. She knows very well that she will have to look in three or four places to find that POA. She never tells me I'm wrong—we both know it's in there somewhere. I'm just now putting this together with the recent thingy problem, and a pattern is emerging. Next day, I go to the counter to pick up the CD and reports of the tests, and I'm glad to see Iris is on duty.

—What is it with your computers here? Nobody seems to be able to find anything and they all act as if it's this big mystery and it only happens to us.

—Don't you let them tell you that, says Iris. They took away the good computers to save money when we went private. Now nobody can't find
nothing
around here.

I wonder how long they'll keep someone like Iris around. She's a little too smart for her own good.

G
RAFFITI ON A DESKTOP
in the Anthropology 101 classroom freshman year:

God is dead.

—Nietzsche

Nietzsche is dead.

—God

Lately, I've been fretting about transportation.

When they canceled Ma's driver's license after the car impoundment debacle last summer, I committed to help her figure out how to get wherever she needs to go. Her friends and I do most of her transportation, and there are a couple of useful local people who can be hired. Still there have been times when we've found ourselves in a bind.

There's a city service you can sign up for called CCT Connect. They have small vans that transport senior citizens door-to-door for a pittance. They can even take you if you're in a wheelchair. All you do is fill out a short application and send it in with a copy of your driver's license, birth certificate, or passport.

—Don't take the passport. I might need it.

(I'm at Ma's apartment getting ready to root around for one of the things on CCT's list of options.)

—Why? Are you going somewhere? You still haven't had your surgery.

Ma's been stalling about the surgery. She says she'll make up her mind by the end of the summer. I don't think she has a trip set up, but I'm always a little suspicious. Colette and I wring our hands a lot over Ma's travel bug, so she has learned to keep her plans to herself—she finds our remonstrations about travelers' insurance and her lack of overseas health coverage to be just so much
negative thinking
. Whenever she can get her hands on some money of her own, she's off, usually somewhere religiously oriented. She's been to Yugoslavia (the site of some apparitions of the Virgin Mary), Russia (to see their icons when she joined that first local Orthodox church), and the Holy Land (baptized in the Jordan). Her present spiritually themed dream destination is Greece, because that seems to be where her current crop of priests and monks are more closely aligned. She thinks I don't know this, but it's obvious—she's trying to learn Greek, and she has a new, gigantic
National Geographic
atlas of the Greek islands displayed prominently in the living room.

—Of course I'm not going anywhere now. I keep the passport in my purse for identification because they took away my license.

—Right, well, it looks like it has expired, so good luck with that. Where do you keep your birth certificate? Is there a file?

Most people know how to find their vital documents when they need them. I have my own special file in my office where I stash any number of things: marriage certificate, baptism records, proof of immunizations, passports. There's even a card with Eliza's tiny three-year-old fingerprints, made by a group that visited her pre-school to simplify identification in case something unspeakable happened.

Ma has beautiful files, at first glance. She hired someone to come in and organize her life several years ago. Everything is alphabetical, and not hand-labeled like mine. Whoever did the work had a gadget that typed the headings on the little cards. They even slipped them in the slots on the files in a perfect descending pattern, like music scales. It's impressive, until you go looking for something and find yourself in a netherworld of complete and utter chaos.

There are nine drawers. Each one holds items that are meant to be compatible. In the accounts drawer, there are three different places she can file her bank statements: under CHECKING or BANK or NATIONAL PENN (depending on her mood I guess, because there is certainly no system I can identify). INSURANCE has a couple of obsolete car insurance policies (not the most recent one) as well as some Explanations of Benefits from her HMO. The rest of the HMO stuff is filed under HEALTH PLAN, but it takes up a lot of space because mixed in with it is a five-page history of the state of Pennsylvania.