Mari, how many fingers am I holding up?” a booming voice engages me in a scene from hospital dramas featured on the major networks. Have I fallen asleep while watching television in Golden Horizons’ lounge?
“Can you tell me your last name?”
“Ham…Hamilton.” I squint and can begin to make out the figures above me. There is no candle glow, only a sharp, piercing light directed at my pupil.
Now that I am blinded by the spots that linger after light exposure, I use my hands to feel about me. I’m on some kind of cot or table and dark walls are close-in.
“Mari, it’s me.” Finally the sound of a familiar voice. My vision clears, and I can see Sonya’s chin and then her full face tilt toward me.
“This has never happened to me before.” I strain forward for a moment to measure the look of concern in Sonya’s eyes, but I succumb to the weight of my own head.
“This is Dr. White. He’s our on-call physician. It seems that you passed out from…?” She is baffled.
The man next to her is not in a white lab coat but in golf attire graced with logos promoting a life I know nothing about. They have called him in off the green to check on me. He speaks with stern kindness and authority. “Actually, the way you were holding your right glute, I believe you were in the middle of a muscle cramp. Though it is very uncommon, the pain of a muscle seizure can cause a blackout. Are you still in pain?”
No matter how I feel, I am determined to say no. I start to shift my position. He must be right because I am favoring my right cheek. Which is funny, my mind interjects, since I have never been particularly fond of either. I release my back and press down on my right side. A shriek escapes my lips. The scream is so loud the doctor steps back instinctively to preserve and protect his ear drums and his love of the symphony.
“Mari, I feel so bad. This has never happened before. I should have been watching you more closely.” Sonya doesn’t blame me for ruining her class.
“You are so hired,” I whisper as the doctor makes a quick call on his cell phone.
“Are you sure? Look what I did to you.” Sonya is horrified.
“Believe me, this represents the way my life works. It has nothing to do with your teaching methods. Our exercise group will love you.”
She hugs me gently. I cannot believe she is this excited to join Golden Horizons. I hope I’m not around when she realizes what she is signing on to.
Now the doctor is speaking to someone just outside the door. Sonya is helping me try to slide off the table to see if I can put my full weight down on my legs. While the pain is not as excruciating in this position, it becomes clear that I cannot hold my body upright for long without triggering the spasms.
“We are bringing in our best masseur to rub out the cramp, Mari.” Sonya has given me some aspirin and a little purple paper cup with daisies on it. She is removing what looks like a designer hospital gown from the cupboard near the rock fountain in the corner. The doctor has left us alone to give me privacy to change.
“It had better be a woman.” I laugh, but her expression makes me nervous. “It’s a woman, right? I mean, this is my never-before-seen right buttock we’re talking about.”
“Charles is the best, Mari. And I will stay in here with you if that makes you feel more comfortable.”
Tough choice…alone with a guy while wearing an open gown or alone with a guy and the woman who is my only link to a new life and who, up until now, thought I was somewhat professional. I will never be able to hold my head up if I ask her to hold my hand through a stinkin’ massage.
“No. No. I’ll be fine. I’m just feeling groggy. Of course I am fine with Charles. He’s a professional. He is a professional, right?” I’m a dithering dupe. “It is so nice of you to take care of me like this. I cannot believe I missed my chance to meet Lionel. You kindly set it up and here I go and ruin it. After all of your effort, the guy still doesn’t know my name.”
Sonya wrings her hands and looks away from my rambling mouth toward the peaceful bliss of the fountain.
“He does, actually.” She visibly cringes at the scene she witnessed.
“What? What, Sonya? Don’t tell me he was still there when I…cramped?”
“Mari.” She is reluctant to speak. She motions for me to sit down and remembers that is not my best position of comfort right now. “Mari, he is the one who carried you in here.”
The scene in which Lionel was my heroic leading man to my passed-out damsel in distress flashes through my mind like lightning. My future goes up in flames. One by one the symbols of beauty and success melt away…the mural, the complementary cup of tea, the marble polished to a sheen, and the heavenly slippers that forgave my calloused feet. These are erased from my recent past. But, of course, the biggest tragedy of all is that they have been torn from my future.
“Nooooooo,” I wail. My humiliation is complete.
Sonya pats my back and comforts me as well as a stranger is able, but it is no use. “I had better let you change. Do you need any help?”
“Not unless you are a licensed psychologist too.” I try to lighten the moment for her sake, but I am too deep in irrationality to find humor in any of this.
After the door closes behind her, I wish I had accepted her help. Wiggling out of my sweats is proving difficult. I cannot lean over the way I normally would, and squatting isn’t a pain-free option either. I figure out that if I lie down on the massage table and bend my knees, I can get my sweatpants as far as my lower thighs. My logic is that if I then stand for just a few seconds, my sweatpants should fall the rest of the way to my feet.
I am thankful there are no mirrors in this place. If I had a glimpse of what Charles will soon be exposed to, I’d never go through with this. I copy the Lamaze lady’s breathing pattern and prepare to stand. One breath. Two breath. Three breath…Go.
My feet hit the floor and the pain nearly cancels out any further breathing. These form-fitting sweats do not quite fall to the floor as I had hoped. I brace my hands on the table and walk in place to loosen the grip of Lycra. “Onward Christian soldiers…breathe…marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus, going on before.” I hum a vacation Bible school favorite to mask the pain.
“Hey, I know that one.”
A voice startles me into action. I try to turn and squat and pull my pants back up—an impossible motion that triggers searing pain. And that thing that never happens to me…that passing-out thing…happens for the second time in one day. In the most compromising position imaginable, I fall to the marbled tile that will never be mine to glide over in self-massaging slippers the color of sapphires.
Charles the beautiful masseur is in the room.
And Lady Luck has so left the building.