Jodi Compton - Sympathy Between Humans

The door that led into the inner offices swung open. “Washington?” the nurse said.

The housepainter rose from the chairs and ambled toward the door. I sighed, reprieved.

I looked out the window. On the radio, newscasters had been talking about heavy weather coming, and through the plate glass, I could see the yellowish clouds on the horizon. It was still a ways off.

The door opened again. “Pribek?” the nurse said.

I didn’t lift my head, looking up instead through the hair that had slid forward across my face. She couldn’t tell I was looking at her.

For God’s sake, what are you doing? Get up.

“Sarah Pribek?” the nurse said.

I got to my feet, weak-legged. I still didn’t make eye contact with the nurse as I turned to the exit door, the one to the outside world. I stepped on the rubber mat, and the door slid pneumatically open. My knees felt as though they would give out underneath me. I was half expecting some apprehension attempt, as if the nurse would say That’s her! and reinforcements would rush out to wrestle me back inside.

But nothing happened, and I was out into the rays of the late-afternoon sun. My legs regained some of their strength and I began to walk faster, reaching my car.

I lasted two hours at home, heating towels in the dryer and holding them to my ear. Then I had an idea.

“This is a different look for you,”Cisco said.

I’d changed into my oldest jeans, faded almost to velvet, and Shiloh ’s blue-and-orange-striped pullover, and a pair of basketball shoes over thick socks. Cisco was inventorying me through the crack of the door that the chain allowed, and no sooner had he spoken than he seemed to realize that this was not a time for levity. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “Can I come in?”

The same drill: Cisco shut the door, undid the chain, and rolled back in his wheelchair to let me in. Then he said, “What’s wrong?”

“My ear is killing me,” I told him. “It started hurting a few days ago, like you said, and hasn’t stopped. The thing is, I’m not sure it was just the cold that did it. I was in a drainage canal last week, I mean over my head. The water was runoff water. It was probably dirty.”

I was rambling, so afraid he’d send me away without treating me that I was throwing every extraneous bit of information I could at him. “Can you look at it?” I finished.

“Go ahead and get on the examining table,” he said.

I did as he said, while he retrieved my notes from his filing cabinet, washed his hands, and took out his equipment. I don’t know why Cisco’s place didn’t scare me the way the clinic had, but here I felt, if not relaxed, at least in control of my fear.

Like before, Cisco took my blood pressure. “You’re a little elevated,” he said. He put a finger on my wrist, finding the radial pulse, and made a note on his yellow pad, then took an otoscope from his footlocker. “Which ear?” he asked.

“The left,” I said.

When he put the small, square end of the instrument into my ear, I jumped a little and flinched. “Easy,” he said.

I closed my eyes and tried to relax. His breathing fluttered the loose hairs on my shoulder.

Cisco withdrew the tube and rolled back a little way, and I could see the change that had come over his face. “I seem to remember telling you to go to a clinic if your ear started bothering you,” he said.

“I know.”

“Please tell me why you didn’t do that.”

“I hoped it would just go away on its own,” I said lamely.

“Well, it hasn’t,” Cisco said. “At this stage, your eardrum needs to be lanced.”

“You can do that here, right?” I was so far gone with the pain of the infection itself that the prospect of having my eardrum stabbed with a needle didn’t really sink in.

“I’m trained for it,” he said slowly, “but I’m not ideally equipped here.”

I leaned down and dug in my shoulder bag. “This is three hundred dollars,” I said. I’d stopped by the ATM on my way over. I laid the money on the shelf where I’d put the forty dollars the other night.

“Money’s not the issue,” Cisco said. “You need to go to an office for this.”

“I can’t,” I said.

Cisco tapped a fingertip impatiently on the handrim of his wheelchair. “Why on earth not?”

“I don’t like those kinds of places,” I said. “I get… I get scared.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” I said. Fear was making me inarticulate. “Please help me with this,” I finished. “I can’t go anywhere else.”

He would say no; he had his principles, just as he’d told me the other night. But there was something new in his eyes. Maybe compassion.

“This is going to hurt,” Cisco said. It was a concession.

“I’ve got that covered,” I said. Reaching back into the bag, I pulled out the bottle of whiskey I’d bought on the way over.

Cisco lowered his head slightly to rub the bridge of his nose with two fingers. “Jesus,” he said. Then he sighed. “Do you want a glass?”

“No,” I said.

“Then get some of that in you,” Cisco said. “Plenty of it. I’ll get ready.”

He rolled away from me; I drank. I closed my eyes and heard his movements as he readied for the procedure. From somewhere beyond the walls I thought I heard a dog bark. A big dog, from the timbre of the sound. That wasn’t right, was it? A dog, here? I drank again, deeply.

“So,” Cisco said, his back turned to me, “while we wait, why don’t you tell me how you decided to jump into a drainage canal.”

“I went in after a couple of kids who fell into the water.”

“I thought the hooker with the heart of gold was only in the movies.”

“I’m not a hooker,” I told him.

It was important for me to make that distinction, I guess, because I’d already shown him my real self. I didn’t like the idea of being caught between identities, half-and-half. “I’m not,” I said again, when he didn’t answer.

“Duly noted,” he said lightly. I didn’t know whether he believed me.

When I felt I’d drank enough, I lay down carefully on the massage table. I closed my eyes and the room spun a little. I opened them again. Again I found myself looking at his med-school diploma. C. Agustin Ruiz. Not F, for Francisco, as I would have expected. That was odd.

Cisco rolled close to me. He’d tied a dark-blue bandanna around most of his hair, and gathered the rest up in a small ponytail on his neck, like a surgeon might put his hair under a cap. He held a towel in his hands. “How are you feeling?” he asked me.

“Preoperative,” I said.

Cisco laughed, a low, pleasant sound. “You don’t sound as slurry as I’d like. Have a little more.”

Obedient as a child, I drank, both hands on the bottle.

“What happened to the kids you pulled out of the drainage canal?” Cisco asked.

“You don’t really believe I did that,” I said. It was getting easier to say what was on my mind; there was no two-second delay between thought and words. “It’s okay, I don’t care that you’re humoring me. The answer is, the older brother lived. The younger one didn’t.”

Cisco turned sober. “I heard something about that on the radio,” he said. He believed me.

“Is your full name Cisco?” I asked, speaking on the random thought.

“No.”

“What is it, then?”

“ Cicero,” he said. “A simple-enough name, but some people find the extra syllable unmanageable.”

“I like it,” I said.

“My father loved the classics. My brother’s name is Ulises.” He paused. “I think you might be ready to do this. No, relax. I need to clean your ear first.”