I knew Picky wasn’t deaf, but I found myself pointing to the name tag on my chest, and mouthing Alan.
Picky lifted a small whiteboard and orange marker off his hospital bed, and wrote hi, Alan.
I asked him how he was doing.
He erased, wrote, and showed me fine.
“Do you have much pain?” I said.
He looked at me with eyes black and dense as onyx, then at his board. He pointed at fine.
I could smell the marker stink from ten feet away.
Picky was my first one-on-one, live patient, after I had spent six months on the volunteer telephone hotline at Oregon Cancer Support Network. Picky had requested OCSN help. He lived alone and had no family.
“Are they treating you okay?” I said.
While Picky kept his head down, squeaking his pen across the board, I inspected the top of his scalp. It was the color of sawdust, and covered with baby chick fuzz.
aint the rits, he wrote. His smile revealed brownish toothless gums.
I stepped closer to his bed. I wanted to pull the blanket up to cover Picky’s hairless scrawny thighs, sticking out of his hospital gown, but I just met the man.
“Is there anything I can get you?” I said.
im ok.
I could not imagine what I could do for him. He had lost part of his mouth to cancer. He didn’t have a soul in the world who cared enough to be there. And he didn’t seem to have any needs.
I turned down Picky’s offer of a chair, and stayed standing, leaning toward the door. All the questions I thought of required more than a three-word answer, such as “Where did you get your name?” and “What are your hopes for the future?”
I said, loudly enunciating, “I just wanted to stop by and introduce myself. I will call you so I can set up a home visit, probably next week.”
Picky nodded his head and mouthed, “Thank you.” He grinned at me, in what I assumed was appreciation, but I didn’t get much warmth. His mouth had turned down too quickly. The eyes stayed as hooded and wary as a horned toad’s. I vowed to myself to break through, to befriend and enliven this helpless little man. As I had vowed to my sister’s memory, after she died of leukemia, to make a difference.
I patted a bump at the bottom of Picky’s bed, where I imagined his feet were, and left the room, feeling loathsome by the bleakness of the man’s life. When I pushed the button on the elevator, I thought, “Call him. Really?”
●
A week later, I drove into Eastmoreland, the government-assisted-housing neighborhood where Picky lived. I relayed the message that I was coming through my supervisor at OCSN and Picky’s social worker. Rolling through Eastmoreland, I watched every movement. I had read about a gang shooting in the newspaper just a week before. I parked in front of the single-story, ochre-colored duplex with Picky’s address on it. I sat, breathing deep to keep my stomach down. Maybe it was too soon. Maybe I wasn’t ready for this. I could drive away and tell them to send another volunteer. I needed more training, or maybe a client with less to deal with. This guy didn’t seem to care if he got help or not. What was I going to add to his hopeless life? My heartbeat thumped in my throat. I put my shoulder into the car door and pushed it open. Half the battle, they told us in training, is to show up.
