Cold leg, warm heart.

You’re a survivor. I can read it in the way your skin sags from your bones, and your blood cultures grow almost pure bacteria like a bad lab experiment, and your heart just ticks away and you smile when I walk in the room.

“Mr. Verano! Good morning! How are you?!”

The medical student mutters to the other medical student, “Why does he always yell like that?”

Because you’re basically deaf. But you smile benignly. “It’s that time…” you say… You say that every morning. I have no idea if it is that time or not.

“You’ve still got a good pulse here!” I announce obnoxiously loud and then in a normal speaking voice, “Go ahead and take down those dressings, “ to the medical students.

One is disgusted. The other morbidly curious. They’ve never really seen your leg before, but they’ve seen wounds. Oh I made sure they saw some good ones. One of them, I can’t tell which one, moans quietly while they pull down your dressing revealing, honestly, some pretty good healthy beefy tissue.

“That looks good Mr. Verano, this thing is starting to heal,” to the med student, “Do you need to step out?”

“No… I think I’m fine.”

“That beefy red tissue is healthy, you should’ve seen it before his surgery, basically it was dry and yellowish black and more or less dead.”

“oh. That’s good.”

She has no idea. She is alarmed by the sound of my voice.

“I think I knew you in my old neighborhood,” you whisper. “You work at the grocery!” You tighten up your face which is a bundle of elastic that has lost it’s stretch, like sweat pants from the ‘80’s, sagging from the outlines of your skull, your skin, which is more liver spots, than that healthy tan you developed hanging out on the beach in Sarasota at your retirement community, is like some damaged papyrus that falls apart and wiggles away when we touch it.

“Close, we’re at a hospital. It’s Monday. You have bad blood flow to your foot, and we fixed it. You’re just a little confused, it’s okay.” So am I.

You look at me with a completely vacant stare, like a greek oracle, “This is it.”

“Alright Mr. Verano, We will see you later, I’m very happy with your leg.”

Outside the room the mediical students blink like they’re trying to forget the image of your foot, with its missing big toe, and beefy red wound across the side of your ankle.

“He had a nice pulse,” I explain, “that red wound, that’s healthy, overall this is a good progression for him.”

“He looks so sick.” One of them says

“Yeah, he is, he’s a 66 year old guy in a 90 year old’s body, he lived a hard life.” I spoke to your kids yesterday, they didn’t hide their anger or frustration.

I get it. They want you to get better. But no one can tell me what better looks like. From here, it looks liike your foot healing. Finally. From them, they want to see their Dad, as he was, 20 years ago, a white tanktop on, a cigarrete in his mouth, healthy pot-belly shaking with laughter, ambliing around the kitchen picking at Mom’s pre-dinner preparations and smiling innocently. Better is a matter of perspective. Today, your foot is healing. Last week, your foot was killing you. You’re delirious from being in the hospital. I can understand why your kids are mad. Better is a matter of perspective, but sometimes building a bridge from their perspective to mine feels impossible. I didn’t know you as you were. They don’t know you as you are. The tension between those visions is thin and tight, like a dream that could snap and recoil to either pole if anyone moves.