Edward Adrift

see that she was. She said, “It’s OK, Edward. This isn’t even close to the worst thing that’s ever happened here,” but after she left my room to go get new shoes and socks and the outfit that the nurses call “scrubs,” I could hear her tell her supervisor at the desk what happened, and she sounded really disgusted by it.
    Sheila Renfro tells me that I need to forgive myself for doing what I did. It would be different, she says, if I’d intended to do it, but it most definitely wasn’t my intent. (“You didn’t mean to do it, did you?” she asked after asserting that I did not, as if she needed verification. That flummoxed me.) She says that accidents happen, especially in a health care environment. She actually said that: “Especially in a health care environment.” I think I’m starting to rub off on Sheila Renfro a little bit.
    She’s probably correct. It’s just really embarrassing, and I’m not someone who deals well with embarrassment. I’m not sure I’dwant to know someone who deals well with embarrassment. That would suggest a person who regularly messes up on a grand scale. I think those people are best avoided.
    I’m also embarrassed about something else—the Dallas Cowboys played last night, and I completely forgot about it. If you had told me before this trip that I would forget about a Dallas Cowboys game, I would have politely but firmly disagreed with you. But now there’s proof. The one plus, I guess, is that the Dallas Cowboys won against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. That’s good, but it’s not surprising. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are terrible.

    Sheila Renfro is acting weird. She seems annoyed at me because I was trying to make sure all the data got recorded properly in my notebook. She kept telling me “I know how to do it,” which was completely beside the point. I know she knows how to do it. My point is that I’ve been doing it longer than she has, and thus I know better.
    Finally, Sheila Renfro left. She didn’t say where she was going, just that she would be back in time to get me loaded into her truck after I am released from the hospital. But she did take my notebook with her, which is damned dirty pool. (When I say “pool,” I’m speaking of billiards, not a swimming pool. Besides, if I were speaking of a swimming pool, that sentence would have required the indefinite article “a,” as in “That is a damned dirty pool.” The absence of the “a” is a giveaway as to the nature of the noun “pool.” I hear people say that grammar is difficult to understand, but it’s really not if you just pay attention.)

    When I awake from my nap at 10:37 a.m., a uniformed police officer is standing at the side of my bed. This alarms me. I’m not a fugitive from the law, so I have no reason to fear cops, but my past interactions with them have not been good. This is another instance of what Dr. Buckley would call a conditioned response.
    “Are you Edward Stanton?” he asks me. This is a dumb question. My name is written on the dry-erase board over my bed. Still, I am self-aware enough to not tell the officer that he’s being dumb. Nobody likes to hear that. Policemen take it particularly personally.
    “Yes,” I say.
    “This is for you.”
    He hands me a slip of paper, which I take in my right hand—I’m learning to avoid using my left arm, which will aggravate my broken ribs—and hold close to my face so I can read it.
    I’m being ticketed for my crash on the interstate. The ticket says I was traveling too fast for the conditions and that I was driving recklessly when I ran into the back of the snowplow. The ticket also says I owe the state of Colorado $562. I’d never received a traffic ticket before this trip, so I don’t have the means of comparison, but this seems like a lot of money. I’m fucking loaded, so I can afford it, but that doesn’t mean I can just blithely (I love the word “blithely”) part with $562.
    “This is a lot of money,” I say to the policeman, who introduces himself as Officer Jonathon Hunter of the Colorado Highway Patrol.
    “It is,” he agrees. “We like to make speeding and reckless driving unpopular violations.”
    I giggle, and Officer Jonathon Hunter looks at me quizzically, so I stop. I do not want any more trouble. Policemen also do not appreciate being laughed at. I know this from experience.
    It’s just that Officer Jonathon Hunter’s statement reminds me of something Sergeant Joe Friday said in an episode